We, Citizens! wants more investment and bets on technology for Defense

In an interview with Lusa, the president of the party, founded in 2015 as a citizens' movement, considered that the current international context requires Defense to be a priority for the next Government and defended a new national strategy.

"In Defense, the important thing is to invest, not to spend money", stated Joaquim Rocha Afonso, referring to the importance of maximizing the country's potential and mentioned, as an example, the Portuguese technology company that has supplied surveillance drones to Ukraine.

For the head of the list for the Lisbon constituency, Portugal can contribute in the context of the European Union precisely through its commitment to technological development for Defense, but this should not be the Government's only focus.

It is also necessary to "guarantee the Olympic minimums for the sustainability and modernity of the Armed Forces", added Joaquim Rocha Afonso, who was an officer in the Portuguese Navy.

The leader of Nós, Cidadãos! refers, for example, to the maintenance and updating of all equipment, but also to the improvement of the salary conditions of the military, who cannot "be on the front line worried about whether their wife, at home, has money to buy milk for the children".

"The rearguard, which are the politicians and the Portuguese State, are the ones who have to ensure that the military, when they go to war, only think about the objective, which is to win the war", he explains.

In addition to Defense, another priority of Nós, Cidadãos! is the review of the electoral law, of which Joaquim Rocha Afonso has been critical over the last few years, as he believes that the Assembly of the Republic should also be open to civic movements.

On the other hand, he criticizes the model of electing deputies, using the d'Hondt method, which he says harms "the credibility of the entire political system, because around a quarter of the votes go to waste", referring, above all, to the smaller electoral districts that elect only two or three deputies.

Alternatively, it advocates compensation circles, a method that already exists in the regional elections in the Azores to correct imbalances in party representation through five additional mandates that are allocated based on the total votes, in order to compensate parties that have been underrepresented.

Running for the fifth time in legislative elections, Nós, Cidadãos! achieved its best result on its debut in 2015, when it received 21,439 votes, but since then it has had consecutively worse results compared to previous ones, and in 2024 it did not get more than 2,399 votes.

For May 18th, the "expectation is always to believe in a miracle" and Joaquim Rocha Afonso believes in a "revolution of citizenship".

"It's going to happen. Everyone knows that people are fed up with nonsense and petty issues," he says, taking aim at the PSD and PS, parties that he believes have more in common than ideological differences.

"We have to help our politicians, which naturally includes me, to have common sense and think about the national interest instead of thinking about party-political interests," he explains, defending a kind of "National Salvation Government" between the two largest parties to define medium and long-term strategic objectives.

In the legislative elections on May 18, Nós, Cidadãos! will be running in eight electoral districts: Aveiro, Évora, Guarda, Lisbon, Porto, Setúbal, Europe and Outside Europe.

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