The outgoing national coordinator of BE, Mariana Mortágua, said this Saturday morning, November 29th, that she hopes that the 14th Convention will bring “the change that the party needs” and, despite admitting mistakes, denied that they were “determining”, calling for a reflection on the left.
“I think the Bloc needs a change. I hope this Convention is the convention for change. I am sure that it is the convention that BE needs at this moment”, said Mariana Mortágua, at the entrance of the 14th National Convention, which takes place at the Casal Vistoso pavilion, in Lisbon.
The coordinator, who in October announced that she did not intend to reapply for the position she has held since 2023, admitted anderrors during his mandate, but considered that “they were most likely not decisive for something that is much bigger than us” which is “the extremely powerful advance of the right and its ideas”.
“If you ask me if my leadership and if my order was capable of combating this advance of the extreme right, no, it was not”, he acknowledged.
In this context, Mortágua considered that the party “needs to change, needs to reflect and this convention serves that purpose”.
In addition to BE, the entire left, which “is very fragile today”, has “today to reflect, to think, to discuss openly about what it did well, what it did wrong, about the context in which it lives and what are the conditions for the change that Portugal needs”.
In Mortágua’s view, “the left has to debate ideas.”
“We are losing the battle of ideas. The ideological battle really. The right has a very strong ideological power today in Portugal. And the left has to go to this fight”, considered.