These positions were defended by the proponents of lists B and C in the presentation of candidacies to the Contact Group (board) of Livre, at the party's 14th Congress, which takes place until Sunday at the municipal pavilion of Costa de Caparica, in the municipality of Almada. The leader Natércia Lopes, first name on list B, went up to the pulpit to ask for an "open and plural party". "We are a team deeply committed to defending the essence of Livre as an open and plural party. (...) The union we need is not a union that dilutes or homogenises us, but a plural union of profound respect for differences of opinion and perspective", she defended. Natércia Lopes, who in 2022 ran on list B and belongs to the minority list present in the outgoing board, considered that the party's current moment of growth requires "a careful strategy". The leader listed several proposals from her list, including the expansion of the internal discussion already started on regionalisation. "List B defends that Livre support and prepare a proposal for a referendum on regionalisation in 2026", she said. List C, headed by João Manso and which defines itself as the "libertarian current", called for a "shared party" and appealed to the dream "of decentralised power". "The era of the glorification of personalities has to end, we are in the era of the collective", he appealed, in an intervention in which he pointed out that with list A, headed by the parliamentary leader, Isabel Mendes Lopes, and including Rui Tavares, "what we see is a centralisation of power around the personalities of the parliamentary group". João Manso defended that Livre has the "responsibility of being the political alternative in the national political panorama that advances this dream and materialises it every day". "In this congress we can decide to advance or regress in this dream. We regress if we take the path of becoming a party increasingly similar to the others. Or if we imitate the way of doing politics of these parties, with an excessive focus on star characters, on the most media-friendly faces, a centralisation of power in a dome where the people who represent the party are the same who hold the party leadership positions", he criticised. For João Manso, "this excessive accumulation of positions is always to the detriment of a collective, of diversity and of plurality". Livre's Contact Group is composed of 15 members, elected according to the Hondt method, so it is certain that it will include members of several internal currents. The new national bodies for the 2024-2026 term will be elected on Sunday. Read Also: Isabel Mendes Lopes defends the union of forces on the left for Belém (Portuguese version)