The Municipal Assembly of Vila Real de Santo António approved, on Monday, a proposal by the Socialist Party that recommends to the Government the merger of this municipality with the neighboring municipalities of Castro Marim and Alcoutim. But this decision is causing a wave of negative reactions.
The Municipal Assembly was only supposed to pronounce on its position in relation to the aggregation of parishes, but the PS proposal went further and ended up approved with the votes of socialists and the PSD, and the opposition of the CDU.
The curious thing is that the three councils have Municipal Chambers governed by the PSD, but the socialist proposal ended up being successful in the other autarchic body, the Municipal Assembly of VRSA, where the Social Democrats also have a majority and, if they wanted, they could even have rejected it. The decision immediately generated widespread protests.
Francisco Amaral, mayor of Alcoutim (PSD), has already said that "it makes no sense to want to associate these three councils". The mayor even classified the proposal as a "lack of respect for the citizens of the three councils, who were not heard".
For his part, José Estevens, mayor of Castro Marim (PSD), outspoken, said that the proposal is "a monstrous nonsense and a lack of respect and consideration for the institutions of the three municipalities that cries to heaven." According to Estevens, the socialist proposal approved at the AM in Vila Real is “a joke in very bad taste”.
Luís Gomes, president of the Chamber of VRSA and of the PSD/Algarve, has a different position, who said that it was "a motion presented by the PS that deserved the support of municipal deputies of the PSD". However, for the merger to take place, there will have to be a referendum and be approved by the remaining two municipalities.
Luís Gomes added that, being “a generic proposal”, “in principle it doesn't seem bad to me”. “It is interesting to deepen the relations between these councils, but an alteration of this type would always have to be approved by the population in a referendum”, stressed the Vilarrealse mayor.
The PCP of Vila Real de Santo António, in turn, voted against the proposal at the AM meeting and even considers it a "gift from the PS", which "the PSD took advantage of and voted in favour, as such proposal fell like soup in the government's strategy of attacking Democratic Local Power, instituted with the April Revolution, as it allows to reduce the number of municipal councils, the number of elected officials and employees, even if this means moving away from solving the problems of the day. the daily life of the populations and the increase of administrative centralism».
The communists also reaffirmed, in a statement, their “opposition to the liquidation of any Municipalities and Parishes at local and national level, for what they represent and for their importance to the population”.
The PCP says that it is not possible to "quiet in the face of the so-called Administrative Reorganization of Local Administration, because this is based on artificially created criteria, theoretically and merely economic interests, and ignores the history, experience and tradition of each location, denying the population centuries of history of its existence and proximity» and clearly asserts itself against the extinction of the municipality of Vila Real de Santo António.
The socialist proposal approved in a somewhat unexpected way by AM Vilarrealense transcends the parameters agreed for the ongoing municipal reform, which only contemplates the obligation to reduce parishes, but which even rewards municipalities that opt for the merger.
Article 16 of Law 22/2012 even says that “municipalities created by merger have preferential treatment in accessing credit lines guaranteed by the State and in supporting projects in the fields of entrepreneurship, social innovation and the promotion of territorial cohesion ». New municipalities can also count on a 15% increase in the Municipal Guarantee Fund.
The merger of councils also has the firm opposition of the National Association of Portuguese Municipalities, whose president, the social democrat Fernando Ruas, has repeatedly criticized the intentions of extinction and merger of councils and parishes to "save resources". The mayor of Viseu guaranteed that any changes would not serve to make savings and that this is not what solves the problem of public accounts.
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