The Assembly of the Republic elected in the legislative elections on March 10 meets today for the first time and will elect the new president of parliament, as well as the vice-presidents and secretaries.
The first plenary meeting of the XVI legislature – with nine parties represented, one more than in the previous one, the CDS-PP – is divided into two parts, one in the morning and one in the afternoon.
In the first part, at 10:00 am, with the 230 new parliamentarians elected on March 10, the eventual commission to verify the powers of the elected deputies will be approved, in a meeting that usually lasts a few minutes.
As, at this time, there will still be no president of the AR elected and the outgoing president, Augusto Santos Silva, is not a deputy, it will be up to the party with the most votes, the PSD, to invite one of the outgoing vice-presidents who has been re-elected or the most voted deputy. former member to temporarily manage the work.
The PSD will invite PCP deputy António Filipe to preside over the first session, as he is considered the oldest parliamentarian serving in the Assembly of the Republic.
After the approval of the resolution determining the eventual powers verification commission, work will be interrupted and resumed again at 15:00 pm, when the new president of parliament will be elected.
Until the end of Monday afternoon, only the candidacy proposed by the PSD of former Defense Minister José Pedro Aguiar-Branco was known, which Chega expressed its intention to support, saying that the Social Democrats will also give an indication for them to be their candidates for 'vice' and secretaries of the Board were approved.
The election of the President of the Assembly of the Republic is by secret vote and the deputies are called, in alphabetical order, to vote in a ballot box in the center of the session room.
Once voting is complete, the session is suspended again to determine the results.
According to the regulations, “the candidate who obtains the absolute majority of the votes of the deputies in office” is elected president of the Assembly of the Republic.
“If none of the candidates obtains this number of votes, a second vote will immediately take place, in which only the two candidates with the most votes who have not withdrawn their candidacy will compete. If no candidate is elected, the process is reopened”, states the rules.
The election of the remaining Board of the Assembly of the Republic will also take place today – which, in addition to the president, includes four vice-presidents, four secretaries and four vice-secretaries – and the Board of Directors.
The new president of the Assembly of the Republic will speak, followed by interventions from the parliamentary groups.
For the first time, deputies will also have to sign a term of office, in which they solemnly affirm that they will faithfully perform the functions in which they are invested and defend, comply with and enforce the Constitution of the Portuguese Republic.
The Democratic Alliance coalition (which brought together PSD/CDS-PP/PPM) won the March 10 elections and the PSD leader was appointed prime minister by the President of the Republic. Luís Montenegro presents his Government on March 28th and the inauguration is scheduled for April 02nd.
In the new parliament, the PSD will have 78 deputies (one more than in the previous legislature), the PS also 78 (42 fewer), Chega increases from 12 to 50 parliamentarians, IL maintains the eight deputies and BE the five it already had , while the PCP drops from six to four. Livre grows from one to four and PAN maintains its only deputy. The CDS-PP returns to parliament with two deputies.
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