Jorge Pinto and André Ventura took part this Thursday night in a tense debate marked by personal attacks that dominated the tone of the discussion. The confrontation, broadcast on SIC, focused both on issues of internal management of the respective political spaces and on divergent views on the constitutional role of the President of the Republic, with both candidates trying to transform concrete episodes into electoral arguments.
The debate had several peak moments in which accusations were made directly and repeatedly. Jorge Pinto sought to question his opponent’s leadership capacity by stating that “André Ventura cannot put his house in order, let alone the country in order”. The candidate supported by Livre resorted to recent episodes of mayors leaving as proof of the organizational fragility that he attributes to the political project led by Ventura.
André Ventura, for his part, repeated several times the argument that Pinto and his party want to “sustain junk that doesn’t matter at all”. This is because, he said, !there are zero proposals for labor and tax law.”
Livre “votes against Chega’s measures because it wants an economy in which those who work are supporting those the party likes, those who do nothing, those who live off the State and the junk that doesn’t matter for anything.”
The Constitution and political model
In addition to the personal exchanges, the confrontation had a clear programmatic axis. Jorge Pinto defended the current distribution of powers and the constitutional role of the President, stating that “the Constitution has the ideal distribution of powers” and that “semi-parliamentaryism is good for the country”.
Pinto wanted to convey the image of a candidate who defends institutional stability and respect for the letter of the Constitution, summarizing his proposal with the phrase: “I want to be the President of the Republic who stands alongside the Constitution because it is good for our country”.
These positions served to contrast with the image that Ventura tries to project, as a more disruptive and media-friendly candidate, transforming the constitutional discussion into a rhetorical battlefield between stability and public visibility.
The debate also had a moment when Jorge Pinto announced that he would formalize his candidacy this Friday (the Livre candidate has not yet delivered the 7,500 signatures required at the Constitutional Court, something that Ventura recalled during the debate)
Pinto took the opportunity to say that his national representative will be Leonor Caldeira, a lawyer who defended the Coxi family in the trial against the leader of Chega.
To this, André Ventura replied that “Jorge Pinto represents the country of banditry, of subsidized people, of the April mama”.
Tonight’s confrontation made it clear that the presidential campaign is as much about programmatic arguments about the role of the State as it is about image and credibility battles. The polarization between the defense of institutional order and the commitment to media mobilization promises to mark the next episodes of the campaign.