Warns “freedom, equality, prosperity, security are at risk”
On a day when a former chief of staff of the Armed Forces has warned that NATO is effectively dead given the position of the new American administration, former Naval commander-in-chief Henrique Gouveia e Melo has written an opinion article in Expresso, almost certainly designed to pave the way for his candidacy for the presidency of Portugal (elections taking place in January next year).
If opinion polls are correct, Gouveia e Melo is already by far the favourite to win the presidential elections, in spite of the fact that he has not yet officially entered the race. There are already a number of names in the ring, the majority backed by political parties.
Gouveia e Melo’s message is that this is not, in fact, ideal. “We should want a president free of parties”, he suggests (…) “turning the presidency into an appendage of party interests is a threat to liberal democracy’s ability to maintain a balanced and functional system’.
“Bridges are not built on networks of influence, cronyism or party-political intrigue”, he goes on, “but on consensus based on humanitarian values, the desire for freedom, prosperity and effective solidarity and, above all, the uncompromising defence of liberal democracy”.
The allusion to bridge-building comes after the PSD’s candidate, Luís Marques Mendes, argued that the next president should play the role of “bridge builder”.
Indeed, Marques Mendes has already given speeches in which he maintains that a president must have political experience (seen at the time as a dig at Gouveia e Melo) – but the former military man has retorted in his text this week, accusing the country’s main parties of succumbing to the temptation to seek to elect a head of state aligned with their political area, who will function as a “partisan instrument to unbalance or sustain the current government”
“No president can truly be ‘for all’ if he is clearly associated with a political faction”, as “he will not have the independence necessary to represent the collective interest”.
“The president is not at the service of the parties, he is at the service of the Portuguese and Portugal. He guarantees the Constitution, the unity and integrity of the country and is therefore a counter-power of a balanced democratic system at the service of the freedom, security, equity and prosperity of the Portuguese and, consequently, of Portugal”.
One of the president’s most important informal powers, continues the former submarine commander, “is the power of the word”: “When the president speaks, he is not an ordinary citizen, he is the Republic. He has the obligation to use the word following the rules of relevance, impartiality, balance, restraint and gravitas.
“In the current climate, a president without the necessary independence undermines democracy. That is why, for the sake of the democratic system, we should want a president who is impartial and independent of party loyalties”.
It is a thought-provoking piece that will give those interested in this so-far undeclared candidate a better idea of what he intends to bring to the presidency, if successful.
Gouveia e Melo describes himself as ‘non-partisan’, politically “between socialism and social democracy”, and a defender of liberal democracy, the values of which “are being called into question”.
His two-page article can be found in Expresso’s magazine edition. It is entitled “Honouring Democracy”.
Expresso adds that it sees Gouveia e Melo declaring his candidacy in March or April – with the ‘race’ only truly ‘hotting up’ in October, following the results of the municipal elections.
As for Gouveia e Melo’s opinions on the geopolitical context, these have already been trailed: and there is no whiff of his ever having been recruited as a Russian asset…
