60 members quit Portugal’s Left Bloc, declaring ‘the BE is over’

A group of 60 members of Portugal’s Left Bloc (Bloco de Esquerda, BE), including founding veterans, have announced their resignation from the party, declaring that “our Left Bloc is over” – accusing its leadership of abandoning the movement’s founding ideals.

In a statement, the former members said they were leaving “without regret, given the circumstances”, although they lamented what they described as the end of a political project created to unite broad sections of society against neoliberalism and pursue radical social change.

“We are no longer members because our Left Bloc has ended,” says the statement.

Among those departing are Mário Tomé, a historic member of the former Popular Democratic Union (UDP), one of the organisations that helped found the Left Bloc in 1999, and Pedro Soares, a former BE MP who has become an increasingly vocal critic of the party leadership in recent years.

“The Left Bloc we joined and helped build with enthusiasm and commitment is no longer the same party,” the group wrote, while expressing solidarity with members who remain committed to what they described as a “combative left”.

The resignations come after years of electoral setbacks for the party, which was once Portugal’s third-largest parliamentary force but is now represented by just one MP.

The dissidents argue that the decline accelerated following the end of the geringonça pact, under which the Left Bloc and other left-wing parties supported António Costa’s minority Socialist government between 2015 and 2019.

According to the group, the party leadership mistakenly turned what had been a pragmatic parliamentary agreement into a long-term political strategy – undermining the BE’s independence.

“The majority of the leadership drifted away from concerns and feelings of the public, became bureaucratic and institutionalised, grew insensitive to internal criticism and lost any credible autonomous political project,” the statement explains.

The outgoing members also blamed the party’s repeated electoral losses on what they described as a growing disconnect from voters and society, accusing the leadership of centralising decision-making within an “omnipotent” secretariat, marginalising dissenting voices, discouraging debate and driving away hundreds of activists and senior party figures over recent years.

The statement also criticised what it called the leadership’s “contempt for grassroots organisation” – arguing that the party abandoned its transformative agenda in favour of seeking participation in government.

“To err is human, and recognising mistakes is also human,” they wrote. “But the leadership imposed itself autocratically, refused any self-critical reflection regardless of the electoral results, and even slandered and persecuted critical voices that warned of the party’s loss of political influence and credibility.”

At time of writing, the Left Bloc leadership has not publicly responded to the exodus, or the statement.

Source material: noticiasaominuto/ Lusa