Speaking in the Algarve this Monday, 5th January, Chega presidential candidate André Ventura accused Luís Montenegro of wanting a “puppet” in the presidential palace, and of being ‘afraid’ of his candidacy.
The Chega leader said that by urging voters to support Marques Mendes, the PSD candidate, the prime-minister had shown fear of Ventura’s potential presence in the second round.
‘I think the prime-minister should not have entered the presidential campaign. It was a mistake, but above all it shows he is afraid of something. And if he is afraid of who might reach the second round, and fears that I might get there, then he is not doing his job properly,’ Ventura said in Silves.
Speaking to journalists at the start of a walkabout in the town’s main square, Ventura was reacting to Montenegro’s call for ‘moderate socialists, liberals, social democrats and Christian democrats’ to rally behind Marques Mendes, warning that voting for Liberal Initiative (IL) candidate Cotrim de Figueiredo or Socialist Party (PS) candidate António José Seguro would not guarantee a run-off without ‘two populist candidates’.
‘If the prime-minister is afraid that I might become President of the Republic, then perhaps he is not fulfilling his role as he should,’ Ventura argued.
He added that the President of the Republic ‘is not elected to have an easy relationship with the government’.
‘We already have a government that is ineffective, in my view, in most areas, and I think the Portuguese people agree. If we elect a President of the Republic to be a government puppet…,’ he said, suggesting that Marques Mendes would play that role.
Ventura accused Montenegro of desperation for appealing to socialist voters and said he would not go around ‘desperately asking for votes from other parties’ in order to reach the second round.
He also took aim at Henrique Gouveia e Melo, who earlier that day visited the Feira do Relógio market in Lisbon, where he reportedly heard comments both against André Ventura and against the democratic system.
“I heard candidate Gouveia e Melo at a market with Roma people and immigrants, with people saying that Roma worked a lot, paid a lot in taxes, and that he was their candidate. Well, then I think things are clear now. Let him go to the Feira do Relógio and have the support of Roma people and immigrants. I want the support of the Portuguese people, that is the candidate I want to be,” Ventura said. He has previously been ordered by a court to remove posters targeting the Roma community.
Asked about comments made on Saturday in which he said that, if he were President, former prime-minister José Sócrates would already be in prison, Ventura said he would ‘ensure a reform of the justice system’, a reform that would have to be approved by parliament before being promulgated by the head of state.
Pressed further on how a president could guarantee that someone would be imprisoned, Ventura reiterated only that he would promote reforms to the justice system and the law.
Ventura also claimed to be the only candidate defending justice reform, despite the fact that most presidential contenders have criticised the current functioning of the justice system and also advocate reform.
After speaking to the media, the Chega leader took part in a walkabout of around an hour in Silves, a municipality where the party finished last in the 2025 local elections, electing one councillor with 15.55% of the vote, in a council still led by the CDU (PCP/PEV).
In the legislative elections held the same year, however, Chega emerged as the most-voted party in the municipality, with 37.57% of the vote, repeating a result already seen in the 2024 election.
Source: LUSA
