The election of former Vice President of Loulé Council Hugo Nunes to preside over the Municipal Assembly of Loulé was criticized today by the PSD, which accused the PS majority of a “biased” choice in replacing the resigning Adriano Pimpão.
Former rector of the University of Algarve Adriano Pimpão announced on June 26 that he would resign from his role as president of the Municipal Assembly, which he had held since 2013 as an independent elected by the PS. Throughout his presidency he claimed that he had been “hurt” by “the pressures” of the socialist majority to be “more biased”, criticizing a municipal “lack of transparency” in certain areas.
The resignation led to Hugo Nunes being elected to the chair of the Municipal Assembly on Tuesday, with a wide margin, guaranteed by the absolute socialist majority, but with the opposition of the PSD.
Ex-president Adriano Pimpão explained to press that after announcing his resignation that he was leaving office for reasons related to the “need to reform the services of the City Council and to assist the citizen” for municipal management to be "more transparent", especially in the area of urbanism.
“The Council has a reputation that does not ennoble the autarchic bodies or the municipality, because, normally, the assistance to the citizen is an ordeal to them, the decision making is not very transparent”, stated the resigning president.
Moreover, Pimpão said that he always defended the trend of "many municipalities that are reforming the administration and creating citizen facilities" to allow citizens to "follow the processes that enter the council" online. "In the municipality, I hoped that this was the direction after the 2017 elections”, but the former municipal assembly head defended that "the PS in Loulé did not do that".
He recalled that, in 2017, with the absolute majority of the PS in the executive and in the Municipal Assembly, he felt that there was “an opportunity” to follow this trend and the feeling was “somewhat hopeful”, but then ended up “breaking down”.
The election of Hugo Nunes to preside over the Municipal Assembly is now criticized by the main opposition party, PSD, when considering in a statement that the socialist council leadership, led by Vítor Aleixo, ended up “designating a fervent PS militant” for the position after “having led to the dismissal” of Pimpão “for his suspicions of bias in the management of processes related to urbanism”.
