"Today we don't have to answer calls from any party, because the night is the best advisor", said Élvio Sousa.

However, he added, he will be up very early.

"At five in the morning, if you have the opportunity, or at 06:00, you can call me because I'll be up, I'm going to observe the stars tonight", joked the secretary-general of the JPP, who in these elections won nine mandates, four more than in the regional elections in September.

The secretary-general of the JPP and head of the regional list spoke in a hotel unit in the municipality of Santa Cruz, before dozens of militants and supporters, after the official provisional results of the Madeira legislative elections were announced.

According to information provided by the General Secretariat of the Ministry of Internal Administration, the Social Democrats obtained 36.13% of the votes (49,103 votes) and 19 seats in the regional parliament, made up of a total of 47 deputies.

In second place, the PS won 11 elected officials (21.32% of the votes, for a total of 28,981).

The JPP was the third most voted political force, having obtained 22,958 votes (16.89%) and nine mandates, followed by Chega, with four, CDS-PP, with two, and IL and PAN, with one deputy each.

BE and CDU, who elected one deputy in the previous regional elections, this time were left out of the Madeiran parliament.

After the official vote count ended, at 10:15 pm, the militants and supporters celebrated with applause, cries of euphoria and hugs, waving flags and chanting the party's acronyms.

Élvio Sousa was questioned several times about understandings, having only left the guarantee that "Miguel Albuquerque and the PSD are out of the equation" and insisted that the conversations will be held on Monday.

"We will only talk about understanding issues tomorrow [Monday]. Today our goal, our message, is to thank the support, the commitment, the stoicism of the Madeirans for trusting an autonomous force like ours, a federalist force of the regions", he reinforced.

The JPP leader considered that the party is an "agent of stability" and guaranteed that Madeira will not become ungovernable due to its responsibility, stressing, however, that he has not yet seen "any party say that it agreed with the reformist agenda" of Juntos pelo Povo.

"Today we have affirmed the JPP as the third regional political force, a regionalist party, a party of the people, of farmers, of young people, of the middle class, the party truly of Madeira and Porto Santo", he praised.

Élvio Sousa also said that the JPP "was one of the parties, perhaps the only one", that during the electoral campaign "raised essential issues that many others did not talk about".

"They didn't talk because they are still stuck to many monopolies that don't let them breathe and that won't happen with us", he added.

Last year, in the previous regional elections, the PSD and CDS-PP, who ran in a coalition, elected 23 deputies, so the Social Democrats signed an agreement of parliamentary incidence with the sole deputy of PAN.

Fourteen candidacies contested the 47 seats in the regional parliament on Sunday, in a single electoral district: ADN, BE, PS, Livre, IL, RIR, CDU (PCP/PEV), Chega, CDS-PP, MPT, PSD, PAN, PTP and JPP.

Sunday's early elections took place eight months after the most recent regional legislative elections, after the President of the Republic, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, dissolved the Madeiran parliament, following the political crisis triggered in January, when the leader of the Regional Government (PSD/CDS-PP), Miguel Albuquerque, was named a defendant in a process in which suspicions of corruption are being investigated.

[News updated at 00:06 on Monday, May 27]

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