“I have no intention of contesting the leadership of the ER. Not on the horizon”

Pedro Nuno Santos, former Secretary-General, considered, on Sunday night, that his removal from political life, which occurred after he presented the resignation of the party leadership when the PS achieved the third worst result of his legislative history in May 2025, “it was important”.

“ I suspended my term of office in the Assembly of the Republic for the maximum period allowed, which was six months, and it was six months important to me, to move away for some time after the Socialist Party's change of leadership and I think it was important to the PS itself that period. I think it was important for everyone that I at least had some period away and no more than that”, he began by saying in a long interview to Maria João Avillez, SIC Notícias.

TAP and the Ministry of Infrastructure

Asked about the amendment of some of his time as a minister in the Government of António Costa, Pedro Nuno Santos says he does not consider that his time in the Ministry of Infrastructure and Housing was “less successful”. “I had difficult dossiers in my hands and in each of the dossiers on which I had responsibilities”, he said.

“ Even in a process as difficult, as complex, as TAP's, the truth is that we took a company that was on the ground, it didn't fly, very important, and there's a government decision to intervene it and we succeeded. Save the company and leave it to give money”, he added, considering: “ We have successfully finished our intervention on the railway too. In housing, there is a misreading of how far we should have gone, particularly in demand regulation.”.

Housing

Pedro Nuno Santos also reported that “with regard to housing” is criticized. “ I'm criticized, like I can't talk about housing. The fact that I have had experience as a minister enables me to talk more about it. Unfortunately, what the country has done with health, with public school, with the pension system, has not done with housing. He believed that the market would try to solve the problem and the truth is that it did not solve ", he recalled.

On the public housing programs that were developed under its tutelage, shoots: “ The 32,000 houses that were delivered only because of our program, the overwhelming majority of the houses that were now delivered were in construction when the AD Government took office. Unless Luís Montenegro and Miguel Pinto Luz were carving bricks, they did not make a single contribution to these 32,000 houses being delivered. They are the result of the governments of the Socialist Party and not the governments of AD”.

“And it’s not just the 32,000. The other houses whose processes are under way are houses that will exist in a work that we have done with local authorities. Not this government,” he added, accusing the Executive of “several lies.”.

Demonstrations for housing and camping

The socialist, who came to be present in the camps in Lisbon, in Rossio, rejected that these are extreme left-wing demonstrations, “even because the extreme left does not have that many people”. “It is a manifestation of the Portuguese who have a severe problem in access to housing and who manifest themselves in the streets and public space by the right to housing. They are not manifestations of the extreme left ", elaborated.

“ Camps are the end of the demonstrations. Where there is a group of young people who decide to prolong the protest in Rossio Square and in D. João I Square. What are you gonna do? To criticize young people who are together in a square and who to try to reach a joint position debate and then vote? I've heard the most extraordinary things about popular assemblies, even from ER leaders. Those popular assemblies are just a space where those young people are and instead of decisions being taken by a party direction, since there is no party running that, those people come together to reach common positions on what to do there. It is not to replace the Government or the Assembly of the Republic,” he said.

The Socialist refuses to classify housing protests as extremists and considers the caricature of young protesters offensive. “The caricature of these protests is an offense to the young Portuguese. After so many people say they don't care about politics and have an opinion, what I started to hear was a caricature of those young people – who dress badly, who smell bad, who don't bathe. I think it is very important that the Portuguese have expressed themselves and I think it is very important that young people have devoted themselves to the subject, because it has the whole country discussing housing“, reiterates.

Back to the leadership of the Socialist Party?

“ I will not disappear, I will not disappear, as many would like, because I want to continue to intervene politically. But I have no intention of contesting the leadership of the ER. It’s not on my horizon”, took over Pedro Nuno Santos, considering that “things have a time”.