The PAN member argues that the Congress regulations, by authorizing the election of delegates by municipal structures, fail to comply with the party’s statutes. According to the member, the statutes do not grant electoral powers to these local groups, this possibility being reserved for regional and district political commissions.
“The argument that there are inactive district and regional political committees, as advocated by the CPP, does not work. What they are resigning from is that they remain legally and statutorily constituted, therefore active, because just as there is a formalization process for the constitution of District and Regional Political Committees, the same must occur for their extinction, a fact that has never happened with any of the committees that have been constituted to date”adds Jorge Silva in the same letter.
The former president of the PAN’s CPN board considers that, with the solution provided for in the regulations, “there are members who were denied the possibility of presenting lists” – because their districts were considered inactive – “without the CPP or even the CPN having sought to find a solution that ensures internal democracy”.
“Instead, they created and registered an adhoc solution for the Congress regulations in order to elect delegates from a council whose leader is an integral member of the current CPP and close to the party’s current leadership. Less party promiscuity would have been beneficial. The PAN is greatly pinched by these statutory and democratic abuses”criticism.
In Jorge Silva’s opinion, although internal democracy in the CJN was fulfilled, with the regulation being approved by a majority, “legality was not fulfilled” and the “electoral process up to Congress had a democratic bias contrary to the statutes”.
The PAN member says that whoever remains in the CJN, the secretaries Catarina Rocha and Teresa Passos, “must bear the burden of their vote having contributed decisively to illegality and to making the PAN a democratically poorer party, destroying the statutory capital for which it exists”.
Jorge Silva also guarantees that the decision to leave was “taken with a deep sense of legal, ethical and political responsibility, and above all with great regret” after 11 years of party activity that “involved the presidency of the CPN Board, the coordination of numerous working groups, parliamentary consultancy in the first PAN legislature in parliament”, among others.
The 10th National Congress of the PAN will take place next Saturday, in Coimbra, in which the party’s “strategic lines for the next political cycle” will be defined and the leadership will be elected.