The PDT made official, this afternoon (20), the candidacy of Ciro Gomes for the Presidency of the Republic. This will be the fourth time that Ciro will try to assume the post of president. In the last elections, in 2018, he was in third place, with just over 13 million votes, 12.47% of the electorate. Ciro also ran for president in the 1998 and 2002 elections.
“I want to unite the country around a new project”, said Ciro, in his speech at the party convention, citing his book, which works as a document of his government project. “I have been working on this project for years. With the national development project, we will overcome numerous challenges”. He proposed a tax reform that would correct inequalities, so that the richest pay proportionately more taxes than the poor.
Ciro Gomes also criticized Petrobras’ privatization proposals and defended the end of the state-owned company’s current pricing policy, which pegs the price of fuel sold in the country to the dollar. He also defended the end of the spending ceiling, a limit included in the Constitution for Union expenses. “It will be revoked in the first hours of our possible government,” he said. For Ciro, the spending cap is an “arbitrary and elitist” measure for “cutting only investments in the lives of the people and leaving the interest paid to bankers intact”.
The PDT has not yet defined the candidate for vice president. That choice will be left to the party’s National Executive, as decided at today’s national convention. The party has until August 15 to register the candidacy. As it has no formal alliances with other parties, the PDT may have to do as it did in 2018 and launch a “thoroughbred slate”. On the occasion, the candidate for vice was senator Kátia Abreu, at the time in the PDT.
Profile
Born in Pindamonhangaba (SP), Ciro Gomes built his political career in Ceará, where he was mayor of Fortaleza, elected in 1988, and governor of the state, elected in 1990. He resigned as governor, in 1994, to assume the Ministry of Finance , in the Itamar Franco government (1992-1994), by appointment of the PSDB, his party at the time. Ciro was Minister of National Integration from 2003 to 2006, under President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. He left the Esplanada dos Ministérios to run for federal deputy and was elected. He also served two terms as a state deputy in Ceará. He is 64 years old and has four children.
