Eduardo Leite advances in PSDB-SP, and Doria’s ally is targeted – 06/20/2023 – Politics

The national president of the PSDB, governor Eduardo Leite (RS), advanced in control of the São Paulo directory of the acronym, the last stronghold of the party linked to former governor João Doria.

The mayor of Santo André, Paulo Serra, took over, this Monday (19), the presidency of the PSDB-Cidadania federation in São Paulo with the support of the gaucho —while the state president of the acronym, Marco Vinholi, an ally of Doria, has faced pressure to leave the post.

Under the command of Paulo Serra, the party, which has been losing mayors to other acronyms, will create an electoral commission to outline strategies for the 2024 municipal elections. In another gesture to Leite, the PSDB-SP treasury will be in charge of Orlando Faria, also an ally of the governor.

In practice, the rise of Paulo Serra in the federation empties Vinholi’s power in the directory — and it was a way of seeking a composition that would accommodate Doria’s and Leite’s groups in the party.

In addition to Paulo Serra, other toucans such as Barjas Negri and the mayor of Ribeirão Preto, Duarte Nogueira, are part of the federation. Vinholi, in turn, is the treasurer of the union between the legends.

Also this Monday, however, opposition to the current head of state in the acronym grew and part of the militancy began to ask for Leite’s intervention in the directory to remove him. That’s because the leader was, over the weekend, at a lunch in the interior of São Paulo where five PSDB mayors joined Jair Bolsonaro’s PL.

In addition to the former president, the governor Tarcísio de Freitas (Republicans), the president of the PL, Valdemar Costa Neto, and the state secretary and president of the PSD, Gilberto Kassab, were present at the event.

The host was the mayor of Jundiaí, Luiz Fernando Machado, who also left the PSDB towards the PL. Machado, like Vinholi, was part of Doria’s hard core in the party.

Toucans heard by the report claim that Vinholi’s trip to the event was a nod to Bolsonaro’s and Tarcísio’s group, as the toucan needs the governor’s support to keep his post as technical director at Sebrae-SP (Brazilian Service of Support for Micro and Small Businesses). Allies of Vinholi claim that this is an opposition narrative.

In a note, Vinholi said he saw “the exploitation of a factoid by some (opposition) members of the party as regrettable, who apparently want to use the occasion to invest in an attempt at a coup disguised as intervention.”

“This (intervention) theme, by the way, has been present long before the event that took place on Saturday, in Jundiaí, as widely publicized by the press itself. It is about pure opportunism, which does not match the democratic history of the acronym”, says the text.

Allies of the state president claim that, since Leite took over the national PSDB, there was the threat of an intervention in São Paulo as a form of retaliation – the gaucho and Doria were internal opponents and disputed primaries, won by the paulista. For them, Vinholi’s presence at the event ended up being the excuse that Leite’s allies wanted to remove him.

This week, meetings of the party’s state and national summit are planned to address the issue – an intervention is not ruled out. At first, however, Leite’s allies hope that Vinholi will leave the party on his own, although the leader’s surroundings claim that he does not consider this.

“I’m sorry, I think it was a mistake, a mistake by Vinholi”, says Paulo Serra regarding the presence of the Toucan leader at the event in Machado.

The episode spurred militants who started to defend in WhatsApp groups an intervention instead of the agreement reached with Vinholi – which involved keeping him in charge, but with Paulo Serra at the head of important decisions. For part of the toucans, the leader’s attitude was unjustifiable and seen as a betrayal.

“This generated the need for a reanalysis of the path traced, raised doubts”, completes Paulo Serra.

In practice, the agreement between Paulo Serra and Vinholi would initiate a transitional management in the PSDB of São Paulo. To carry out his plan to be a candidate for the Presidency of the Republic, Leite will need the support of the party in São Paulo, a state where the PSDB is more organized and more numerous than in the rest of the country.

The holding of state conventions, which will define the new command of the parties in the states, is scheduled for September – and Paulo Serra or another name supported by Leite is expected to win in São Paulo.

A Sheet the mayor of Jundiaí defends Vinholi and says that all the authorities, including him, were at the Conexidades event, which brings together mayors and councilors, and then were invited to lunch at his house, where the affiliations took place. Machado also said that he thanked Vinholi for his years in the PSDB and wished him luck.

Machado says that it would be “an enormous injustice to create a factoid as a subterfuge for decisions that some want to be taken”. He also says that the PSDB has more “intelligent and coherent” ways of finding its ways than an intervention.

According to toucans, Vinholi, despite being linked to Doria, had been making gestures of approximation with Leite and sought to avoid an intervention. In a diminished PSDB in the state, the group that supported the ex-governor of São Paulo no longer has the same representativeness and also seeks other directions, like Machado.

The permanence of former governor Rodrigo Garcia (PSDB) is also seen as uncertain.

Supporters of Paulo Serra claim that the creation of the electoral commission will signal to Tucano mayors that there is a light at the end of the tunnel and the party is dedicating itself to a reconstruction plan, which can help to hold back the general stampede.

Paulo Serra will be in charge of the main function of the party at the local level – preparing candidates from the PSDB to run in the cities of the interior.

“The new command of the federation is an important step in the restructuring of the party. It is the legitimation and consolidation of this movement”, says the mayor of Santo André.