António Miguel Pina is re-candidate for the post of president of the PS/Olhão and wants to continue to grow the socialist family of Olhão and consolidate the brand as the largest council of the party in the Algarve, with an eye on the candidacy for the presidency of the Chamber. A position that will compete with Custodio Moreno, in the internal elections of the PS/Olhão, which take place on Saturday, June 2nd.
The current vice-president of the Chamber of Olhão wants to complete the work he started six years ago and continue the municipal project of which he is a part. Perhaps for this reason, he does not hesitate to stand as a candidate for the Chamber of Olhão, in which he has been a councilor since 2005, if he wins the internal elections on Saturday. "I'm a candidate for the council and a candidate for the Chamber," he said.
Ao Sul Informação, the candidate for PS/Olhão leader recalled the PS's recent past. «Since six years we have been revitalizing the PS, with the aim of rejuvenating it, guaranteeing its continuity. At the same time, we have been concerned with telling what PS history is. There was no takeover of new people to do politics, to put out those who had been here for many years», he assured.
António Pina believes that he has been able to «gather generations», not least because he considers it important to «pass the memory». “The ideological matrix of the PS also goes through those who made the PS in the past, through the experiences they transmit,” he said.
In this new term, António Pina wants to "close a cycle", which he admits is linked to local authorities. “We already had a first cycle of municipal councils [2009] in which we prepared a group of younger people to renovate some places. Even because we already knew that there would be the end of many of our mayors, so we anticipated it», he said. And, he added, it is precisely on this continuity of the work carried out so far that the theme of the application «Together we prepare 2013» is based.
“We have been doing this work for six years. We didn't remember now that we wanted to coordinate the Socialist Party. People should consider why there are people who are running and appear only now, when they have been in the party for 20 years,” he said.
Even so, António Pina defended that «it is necessary to capitalize on the good municipal work that has been done in the last 35 years» and warned that one should not make the mistake of thinking, internally, «that any PS candidate wins the Chamber of Olhão». “This is devaluing the work that was done by previous mayors. They won because they worked well», he believes.
One of António Pina's trump cards, with a view to his re-election, was the growth of the PS/Olhão in recent years. «We made PS/Olhão the largest council in the Algarve, in terms of the number of militants, a task that can only be achieved if it is well established within civil society. For some this seems easy, but if they try to do it they will see that it is not. There is discredit around the policy and, not wanting to be pretentious, I think that many of the people we were able to bring in see themselves in people», he considered.
His experience as a mayor is another of the advantages he considers to have. The time that belonged to the executive councilor from Olhão, first as councilor and now as vice president, was «a period of learning». In the future, António Pina admits that an eventual municipal project led by him will “continue many of the things that were done, but there will necessarily be a big change from now on”.
For António Pina, "there is a paradigm shift in what is the role of local authorities", which will have to focus more on promoting economic development and less on infrastructure.
To the militants, he leaves the message that “they must look back and see what the work developed at the council level was”. "This is not the time to experiment with people who are not well prepared, either from a political party point of view or from the point of view of managing a City Council," he considered.
As elections for the PS/Olhão Municipal Political Commission will take place on Saturday, the 2nd, along with other municipalities, although in some the electoral act will take place tomorrow, Friday, the 1st.
Résumé
António Miguel Pina has a degree in Economics, with a Masters in Corporate Finance. He worked in private banking and AMAL before being appointed to the Board of Directors of the Hospital de Faro. In 2005, he took on the role of Councilor for Sports and Youth at the City Council of Olhão, and in 2009 he became vice-president of this municipality.
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