Autárquicas 2025. Chega appeals the Constitutional Court’s decision on the recount of votes in Lisbon

The Chega em Lisboa party presented this Tuesday, October 27th, an appeal to the Constitutional Court for not agreeing with “several of the decisions” of the ruling that determines the recount of votes in the municipal elections in a section of the parish of São Domingos de Benfica.

“The Chega party came to appeal the decision, with the process being concluded with the reporting councilor”informed the Constitutional Court (TC), in response to the Lusa agency, after being asked when the vote recount process for the municipal elections on October 12th will begin, which will be carried out by the general tabulation assembly of the municipality of Lisbon.

Speaking to the Lusa agency, Chega’s first elected councilor for Lisbon City Council, Bruno Mascarenhas, said that he appealed to the TC because he did not agree with the ruling published on Friday on the appeal filed by the CDU (PCP/PEV coalition), including for validating a null vote from the parish of Santa Maria Maior in favor of the CDU.

“There are six previous TC rulings that contradict the decision regarding the vote that empowered the CDU”stated Bruno Mascarenhas, considering that the act of validating a vote that had been declared null “is complementary wrong and reveals a certain partiality”.

In this ruling, the judges at Palácio Ratton also decided to declare null and void another vote that had been attributed to Chega in the Lisbon City Council election.

Chega was ahead of the CDU by three votes, after seeing the difference of 11 votes reduced, an advantage that has now been reduced to just one vote, according to the TC.

The difference in votes between Chega and CDU is relevant regarding the election of councilors in the Lisbon City Council, with whoever is ahead winning two mandates, while the other only gets one. If it is confirmed that Chega was the third most voted candidate, after PSD/CDS-PP/IL and PS/Livre/BE/PAN, the CDU loses a communist councilor in the capital, compared to the two elected in 2021.

The process of “recounting the votes from polling station no. 28 of the polling station in the parish of São Domingos de Benfica, in the municipality of Lisbon, in relation to the election for the Lisbon City Council” has not yet been scheduled.

Lusa questioned the National Elections Commission (CNE) which said it was not aware of the scheduled date for the recount, adding that “the electoral process is urgent in nature, so these procedures must be carried out in the shortest possible time”.

Waiting for the recount of votes, Chega’s elected official reinforced that this act “will reopen, once again, the electoral counting process”.

“We are learning a lot from this process. We are aware that, in some way, we are being deceived, because the count we had throughout the results tabulation process is that Chega had distanced itself quite a bit from the CDU. What was our surprise when, suddenly, the results published – when we thought we already had, not 11, but at least a 17 or 18 vote difference – we ended up with just three and having lost votes”, declared Bruno Mascarenhas.

Chega’s elected official explained that the party did not react at that time because there was an indication that it had won, considering that “winning by one or winning by 30 is exactly the same”.

“But taking into account that the CDU has successive processes regarding this matter, perhaps we should have made a protest”, stated the leader of Chega’s list to the Lisbon Chamber, highlighting that the party had an advantage of 11 votes, which was later reduced to three votes and, now, with the TC’s ruling, it is “just one vote” away from the CDU.

In the municipal elections on October 12, the social democrat Carlos Moedas was re-elected president of the Lisbon City Council, by the PSD/CDS-PP/IL coalition, with 41.69% of the votes, defeating the socialist Alexandra Leitão (PS/Livre/BE/PAN), who had 33.95%.