PSD and PS postpone election of Constitutional Court judges to May and choose Tiago Antunes as new Ombudsman

The PSD and the PS reached an agreement to postpone the election of the constitutional court’s advisory judges to May, keeping that of the other external bodies of the Assembly of the Republic until April 16, with Tiago Antunes as the new Ombudsman and Luís Paes Antunes as president of the Economic and Social Council. A decision that should allow, in addition to the three vacancies that would have to be filled as their respective mandates ended, another judge still in office be replaced, which in this case should be the current president, José João Abrantes.

This agreement was accepted by Chega’s leader, André Venturaafter a conversation with Luís Montenegro and Hugo Soares, who presented him with “a new and supervening element that emerged in the negotiations”. According to a statement from the party, which has an agreement with the PSD to present joint tickets to various external bodies, “in this way, in all likelihood, a three-way agreement will be reached to fill the vacancies on the Constitutional Court.”

The agreement with the PSD had been announced minutes earlier by the PS parliamentary group, justifying that “with the possibility that, very soon, at the beginning of May, there would be a need to carry out an electoral process again to replace another judge still in office, it was considered more opportune” to separate the election for the Constitutional Court.

Also according to the PS, who has contested the idea of ​​PSD and Chega sharing the three seats in the Constitutional Court – replacing two judges appointed by the Social Democrats and one by the Socialists -, with the postponement “we will continue to seek a balanced, non-partisan solution and guarantee the independence of the STF, applying an already consensual methodology”.

For the five representatives of the Assembly of the Republic in the Council of State there will be a PS ticket, headed by the party president, Carlos Césarfollowed by Francisca Van Dunem, Alexandre Quintanilha, Edite Estrela and Alberto Arons de Carvalho. If the existence of a joint AD-Chega ticket is confirmed, the socialists should only be able to elect the head of the ticket.