On her personal Facebook page, Sónia Nicolau, in addition to viewing with "great concern the possibility of a single candidacy for the leadership of PS/Azores", states that Francisco César's candidacy represents "the past and not the future".

Francisco César, who headed the socialist list for the Azores electoral district in the last national elections, with the PS having lost in the region to the AD/Azores coalition, yesterday announced his candidacy for leader of PS/Azores, which his father, current president of the PS and former president of the Regional Government, Carlos César, has already led.

The elections for the leadership of PS/Azores will be held on June 29, with Vasco Cordeiro, who lost the regional elections to AD/Azores, having already stated that he is not a candidate for re-election, remaining as a deputy in the Regional Legislative Assembly.

For member Sónia Nicolau, the "political moment in which PS/Azores finds itself requires a real change of cycle".

According to Sónia Nicolau, if a "real change of cycle" does not occur, the first conclusion to be drawn is that "in recent years it has not been possible to create cadres in PS/A outside the closed cycle of leadership".

"The second conclusion is that the protagonist of this candidacy and his connection to the past of PS/A were rejected by the voters, showing neither confidence nor the guarantee of the best solution for the future of the Azores", the member points out.

Sónia Nicolau states that in 2024 PS/Azores "would need other responses, to demonstrate a party with a lively and healthy internal life and with political cadres".

"I am hopeful that we will have other candidacies. However, it should not be underestimated that Francisco César's candidacy already has the merit that others seem unable to achieve, namely the means to run, primarily through his political occupation, which has always been accommodated in the party, since 2008", she states.

According to Sónia Nicolau, PS/Azores "deserves plural candidacies for a challenge that goes far beyond the space of PS/Azores", concerning "the future of the Azores".

Pedro Arruda, another member who has been adopting a critical stance on the internal life of PS/Azores, states in today's edition of the newspaper "Açoriano Oriental" that "the worst that can happen to the party and to the candidate himself is to appear alone in a vast desert of opinion and contradiction into which the party has apparently transformed itself".

For the socialist member, "PS and the Azores, more than a leader, need ideas and policies that give hope and ambition for the future and not this kind of hereditary fatalism of someone who only knows politics in life".

Member of the Assembly of the Republic, Francisco César stated on Friday that he is running for the leadership of PS/Azores to give the party a "new future" and put the region in a leading position in social indicators, he himself revealed to the Lusa agency.

"We want a new future for the PS. A future that is enriched by its past, which in practice is its identity, but that builds a new future for the Autonomous Region of the Azores", he stated.

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