पेड्रो नूनो सैंटोस पीएस के नेता चुने गए

Pedro Nuno Santos, has been elected as the general secretary of the PS, succeeding António Costa as the leader of the socialist party.

Born in São João da Madeira, district of Aveiro, Pedro Nuno Santos, 46 years old, is the grandson of a shoemaker and the son of a businessman. He has a degree in Economics from the Instituto Superior de Economia e Gestão (ISEG) and began his political activity at JS at 14 years, in the youth organization that he led between 2004 and 2008.

As leader of JS, he was at the forefront of defending the decriminalization of voluntary termination of pregnancy and then the legalization of same-sex marriage.

Following the departure of José Sócrates in 2011, he supported António José Seguro for the leadership of the socialists, against Francisco Assis, but his alignment with “segurismo” lasted a few months. With Portugal subject to external financial assistance, he resigned as vice-president of the socialist bench, weeks after having made fiery statements, at a party Christmas dinner, in Castelo de Paiva, admitting non-payment of the public debt – an action that, from his perspective, would make “the legs of German bankers tremble”.

Afterwards, he was part of the so-called “group of young Turks”, with João Galamba and his successors in the leadership of JS, Duarte Cordeiro and Pedro Delgado Alves, who defended the renegotiation of Portugal's debt before the “troika”, contrary to the line by António José Seguro and, later, from 2014, also by António Costa.

Pedro Nuno Santos supported António Costa against António José Seguro in the PS primary elections in September 2014 and, after the October 2015 legislative elections, he was one of the main socialist leaders involved in negotiations with the Left Bloc, PCP and PEV for the formation of “Geringonça”.

In the first of António Costa's two minority governments, he was Secretary of State for Parliamentary Affairs, having negotiated, among other processes, the feasibility of four State budgets. In February 2019, at the end of that legislature, António Costa. In the second PS minority government, he combined Infrastructure with the Housing portfolio.

Within the PS, in 2018 Pedro Nuno Santos began to show signs of political demarcation from the leadership of António Costa. At that year's congress, he presented a motion in which he defended, among other ideas, a strengthening of the weight of the public sector in the Portuguese economy and which was seen as an alternative. António Costa closed this congress by announcing that he had not yet submitted the papers for the reform.

After the 2019 legislative elections, with the PCP not having to sign a new joint declaration with the PS to reissue the “Geringonça”, he also criticized the socialist leadership for not having made a greater effort to close a written agreement with the Left Bloc .

As minister responsible for TAP, he clashed several times with the company's private representatives and even with the state-appointed administrator Diogo Lacerda Machado, known as “Costa's best friend”. With the covid-19 pandemic, he completed the process with Brussels for the nationalization of the national air carrier.

Disagreement

On June 29, 2022, already in the Government with an absolute majority of the PS, he was involved in the most serious case of disagreement with the Prime Minister by issuing an ordinance from his Ministry on the location of the new Lisbon airport, without the knowledge of António Costa, and contrary to the political option of agreeing this process with the PSD. António Costa did not fire him, contrary to what was expected. He demanded that Pedro Nuno Santos revoke this ordinance and publicly apologise.

Resignation

Pedro Nuno Santos ended up resigning as Minister of Infrastructure and Housing in December last year, following the case that involved a payment of 500 thousand euros, as compensation, to the then Secretary of State for the Treasury, Alexandra Reis, for her to cease her role in the administration of TAP.

First, the idea circulated that he had not been aware of this payment to Alexandra Reis. But, weeks later, the former minister, after consulting his message log, announced that, after all, he had been informed of this payment.

He returned to parliament at the end of the last legislative session and, in October, he began making political comments at SIC, where he criticized, among other aspects, the Government's position of not accepting to recover all of the teachers' frozen service time and the idea of Minister of Finance, Fernando Medina, to create a financial fund to allocate surpluses budgets.

On November 7, António Costa resigned as prime minister, after his name was involved in a judicial inquiry. He said he would not run for office again in the March 10 legislative elections. The following week, Pedro Nuno Santos announced his candidacy for the position of general secretary of the PS.