Another casualty on the PS list in Lisbon City Hall: the ninth since the elections

Rodrigo Lino Gaspar, an independent councillor in the Socialist council of Lisbon City Council, is leaving office. O PS is thus left with only three councillors, the same number as the Cidadãos Por Lisboa (CPL) movement. At the beginning of the current municipal mandate, in October 2021, the PS had five councillors. Since then, three councillors have left, their positions eventually being filled by those elected from the same list but from the CPLs.

João Paulo Saraiva and Miguel Gaspar had already resigned from their respective positions in 2022; the first because he accepted to be part of the Administration of the Lisbon Metro, the second when he joined the team of the technology company SIBS, responsible for the Multibanco system. These departures allowed the entry of Floresbela Pinto, the CPLs, and Rodrigo Lino GasparHe is an independent but a member of the PS council. Now, with the departure of Rodrigo, comes in Rui Franco, also from the CPLs, as it is the next to the socialist-led list for the 2021 municipalities.

See here the evolution of the composition of the Lisbon City Council Executive since the elections:

Citizens for Lisbon equal number of councillors with Socialists

In the 2021 vote, the PS presented a joint list with Livre and also with two independent civic associations, Cidadãos Por Lisboa (CPL) and Lisboa é Muita Gente, by José Sá Fernandes.. It managed to elect seven members to the Municipal Executive of the city of Lisbon: five Socialist councillors, one from Livre (Rui Tavares) and one from the CPL (Paula Marques). Soon after the elections and even before the inauguration, there was a mass departure of several elected members of the Socialist list, including Fernando Medina, the number one. Medina saidHe said at the time that his resignation as a councillor was to facilitate the future of city governance: "My departure from the city council makes life easier for the future bodies of the municipality, reducing the level of personalization of the debate and focusing the political discussion on finding solutions to the challenges of the future."

They also resigned to positions Inês Lobo - architect and Medina's nominee for the Urban Planning councillorship if his list had won - and Inês Ucha - who replaced Manuel Salgado in the municipal company SRU and was appointed to the Works and Housing portfolio. The departures of Medina, Lobo and Ucha gave way to João Paulo Saraiva, number three, Miguel Gaspar, number seven, Inês Drummond, number eight, Pedro Anastácio, number 11 of the coalition, and Cátia Rosas, number 12. In the meantime, numbers five, Rui Tavares (Livre), and six, Paula Marques (CPL), were also elected.

Accounts made, from the list that the PS presented to the 2021 municipalities, there have already been a total of nine casualties. Despite everything, the Socialists say they continue to have the capacity to oppose the Lisbon City Council. "The correlation of forces in the council remains unchanged. The PS councillors will continue to scrutinize and denounce a governance that is leaving the city at a standstill in the central aspects of the management of the municipality ", said the socialist councillor to Lusa news agency. On the resignation of Rodrigo Lino Gaspar, the PS explained that, "from the moment he is part of a list to the Order of Architects, he can no longer reconcile his personal and professional life with the council". "Opposition councillors have no portfolio or salary from the municipality, and have to reconcile their professional life with that of a councillor, which is a task that takes up long hours of meetings, evaluation of proposals and preparation of intervention, every week.", justified the socialists.

How city government works

Unlike in central government, the executive of a city council - considered the "city government" - is made up of the councillors from the most voted list and also from other lists, in proportion to votes. In the case of Lisbon, 17 members sit on the Municipal Executive: there is a Mayor, a Vice-President who is also a councillor (usually number two on the list), and there are 15 other councillors. Thus, in an Executive we often find represented several political forces and also citizens' movements that have been suffraged. But there is a difference in the role and responsibility of each member: there are councillors with portfolio and there are other councillors who do not have portfolio. Having a portfolio means having a portfolio (such as Mobility, Housing, Urban Planning, etc.), which requires a full-time commitment and comes with a fixed monthly salary.

Councillors without portfolio are paid for each attendance at the City Council meetings that are held throughout the mandate, and in irregular numbers, so they accumulate the work of councillorship with other professional occupations. The portfolios are distributed by the Mayor, who usually chooses councillors from his list, although this is not always the case. In Oeiras, for example, Isaltino Morais made a post-election agreement with the PS and the socialist councilor Filipa Laborinho now has the Sustainability portfolio, among others; thus, Carla Castelo, independent, elected by the Evoluir Oeiras movement, became the only councilor without portfolios. Councillors without portfolios are considered opposition to the part of the Executive that has direct responsibilities for city government.

In Lisbon, the City Council continues to operate with seven coalition elected representatives New Timesled by the PSD and CDS and who are the only ones with allocated portfolios (in January this year, Moedas did substantial changes to your team). The opposition has 10 members: three from PS, three from Cidadãos Por Lisboa (CPL), two from PCP, one from Livre, and one from BE. On the future, the CPL told Lusa news agency that "have with the Socialist Party the same project for the city, which must be maintained and strengthened in order to meet the growing challenges facing Lisbon". The relationship between the CPL and the Socialists is long-standing, having existed since 2007.