New municipal elections, a new support structure, a new project, the same face. José Vitorino assumed this Monday the candidacy for the Chamber of Faro, with the support of a civic alliance that also presented today, becoming the first candidate to make official the intention to assume the leadership of the Farense autarchy.
The Civic Alliance «Let's Save Faro, com Coração” (CFC/SF) is the result of a fusion between the movement that supported José Vitorino in the last municipal councils, the “Com Faro in the Heart” (CFC), and the entry into the game of “various representatives of the associative movement of the city”.
José Vitorino says he presents "a victorious candidacy", which appears as an alternative to the ruling coalition and the PS, the most voted in the last elections. For the former mayor, the executive council led by Macário Correia «is sinking Faro», with the connivance of the socialists «who have not yet voted against the executive's proposals in any relevant matter».
Armed with a set of proposals that refer not only to Faro, but “to the entire region and to the state in which the country is found”, the candidate justified the non-reuse of the acronym CFC with the entry of new supporters, which he considers to be of importance. “We didn't want to put people representing civil society under the armpit. We want to give them the role they deserve. Here we are all equal», he defended.
In the room were five association directors in these conditions, António Milheiras Rodrigues, president and founder of Provectus, the president of Sport Faro and Benfica Juvenal Rodrigues, the delegate of the Algarve Hotel Trade Union João Fava, the leader of the Farfruta Franklin Rosa producer association and the president of the Association of Tenants of Faro Mary Magdalene Rodrigues.
Also on the table were five members of the CFC, most of whom also direct associations based in the Algarve capital.
One of the banners raised by José Vitorino was “participatory democracy”, that is, giving a voice to citizens and asking them for their opinion on matters of importance to the municipality.
Another justification for dropping the CFC, a movement that is even represented in the Municipal Assembly, but whose legal validity “expires in 2013”, was the fact that this was “a much deeper and broader project” than in 2009. of proposals that it will present to the electorate, the CFC/SF called “New Direction”.
José Vitorino stressed that this is a candidacy that “does not look to ideologies”, but rather to objectives. That is why it refused to define itself in the political spectrum, today, when in the past it was linked to social democracy and was supported by the PSD when it won for the only time the local authorities in Faro.
At the end of the session, José Vitorino reinforced to journalists that his intention was to return to being the highest leader of the Chamber of Faro, despite not having managed to garner more than 5 percent of the votes for about three years. “We also have to remember that, at the time, I spent half of the campaign at the Hospital [broke a leg], something that we hope will not happen this time,” he said.
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