A pre-election row has erupted in the hillside town hall of Monchique as mayor Rui André comes under heavy fire from his Socialist Party opposition which has managed to push through a motion of censure.
The motion was approved at a meeting of the Municipal Assembly of Monchique last Thursday.
The main accusation was that the Social Democrat Mayor, Rui André, was guilty of the "inconsequential management of ideas and practices."
The motion was approved with the socialist councillors gaining support from the Communist Party and the Independent Monchique Movement.
This was enough to defeat the seven Social Democrat councillors and saw Rui André’s performance sharply criticised in a series of allegations that bought into question his performance and abilities.
In the document, the Socialists claimed that the PSD mayor has a politically biased and ineffective management style and presents projects that are not implemented.
The socialists had analysed 25 local projects, some of which dated back to 2011, and concluded that none of these had actuially been completed.
Among the various projects are a Civil Protection resource center, an interpretive center, the multipurpose pavilion, the improvement of the municipal road network and a medronho community shop.
According to the socialists, the municipality registered "a huge and exacerbated depopulation due to the absence of policies aimed at fixing the population and halting the departure of young couples seeking a better standard of living on the coast."
The socialist list of complaints included one that the municipality's management is based on "superfluous expenses, without obvious benefit or return for the population, where expenditures have been identified in annual programmes that have no visible results."
Rui André is having none of it and, pointing out that this is an election year and the opposition has had plenty of opportunity to criticise his performance in preceeding years. The mayor today issued a statement that the allegations "are based on incongruities, manipulation of data and falsehoods that all go towards making this a real scam."
"We completely refute all the accusations in a motion in which the opposition chooses falsification and bad faith statements as a weapon in an election year. This is an exercise of ignorance, listing a set of projects to which they make absurd comments, revealing a complete distortion of the facts," blasts Rui.
The popular young mayor considered that the motion "does not make any sense" and accused the socialists of lacking political honesty.
For Rui André, "it is very strange that the criticisms and accusations from the socialists sitting in the Assembly have only arisen in the election year, when they have been informed all along of the council’s projects and have not complained.”
"These are criticisms that don't make sense, because they are aware of the effort that has been made to pay off almost €12 million of short, medium and long-term council debt. This has prevented the council from making investments, apart from those using European funds,” added the mayor in whose opinion the censure motion presents a pretty weak argument “based on the manipulation of information and revealing little rigour."
"The Assembly has always been kept informed of municipal activity and I was always open to participation in, and discussion of, the documents. Therefore, it’s strange and I regret this type of attitude," stressed Rui André who was most annoyed about criticism of his performance in projects relating to the poor and elderly for which he has become renowned and much respected by locals, but not by his fellow councillors, it seems.
