Lourinhã, Portugal, Nov. 10, 2025 (Lusa) - Presidential candidate Luis Marques Mendes accused his opponent Gouveia e Melo of talking rubbish on Monday, entering into contradictions and generating rushes and polemics, predicaments he considers bad for a President of the Republic.
"Admiral Gouveia Melo, whenever he speaks, has a certain tendency to do three things: either to talk rubbish, or to contradict himself, or to generate rushes and polemics," said Luis Marques Mendes, considering that "these predicaments are not good for someone who wants to be President of the Republic".
Asked to comment on the content of an interview given by Gouveia e Melo and published in a book, Marques Mendes considered that "a President of the Republic has to be less hasty and have much more common sense".
Luis Marques Mendes was speaking from Lourinhã, in the district of Lisbon, where he visited the fire station today and criticised the existence of "a bad practice in Portugal concerning fires and the actions of firefighters", which is to only talk about "fires, forest fires, the intervention of firefighters, when they occur, usually in August".
After that, "we never talk about fires again", he criticised, explaining that his visit to the fire brigade "is precisely to educate people in the opposite direction".
For Marques Mendes, we need to "talk about the reality of fires when we are preparing to fight them", in winter and spring, and "change the wrong practice of only talking about fires when they happen".
Asked about the reform of the labour law that is being discussed, Marques Mendes once again pointed out that there is still no proposal for a change approved by the cabinet, and stated that "the CGTP and UGT trade union confederations, which decided to call a general strike "are fully within their rights".
"Striking is a worker's right. It's a right provided for in the Constitution," he declared.
"I'm convinced that, even after the strike, there will be a new period of social dialogue, of social consultation, in which the parties will sit down at the negotiating table to find the best solutions," said the candidate, maintaining that "a spirit of openness will help resolve" the differences between the unions and the government.
If a law had already been approved, "everything would be more difficult, because whoever approves it afterwards doesn't want to move, doesn't want to back down, doesn't want to give in," he said, considering there to be "enormous negotiating openness" and calling on the government and unions to "even after the strike, sit down to negotiate again".
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