Elections 2021 | Pereira Coutinho forecasts around 10,000 votes needed for AL seat

Incumbent lawmaker José Pereira Coutinho forecasts that at the September direct elections for the Legislative Assembly (AL), candidate lists will need to gain around 10,000 votes to guarantee a seat in the plenary.
Pereira Coutinho spoke yesterday on the sidelines of the submission of the list’s candidates and political platform to the AL Electoral Affairs Commission (CAEAL).
According to Pereira Coutinho the elections this time “will be difficult.” He said that “[this year] there will be 19 lists [running in the direct elections], while four years ago there were 24,” explaining that this means the number of votes necessary to achieve the election of one member will grow by 1,500-2,000. As a result, he added, “I will need 9,500-10,000 votes to be elected, so this means that my seat is on the line here.”
Pereira Coutinho also noted that it will be important to understand to whom the supporters of Angela Leong and Ho Ion Sang will redirect their votes, as they transfer from the direct to the indirect elections. He said that it is particularly important to understand how the traditional Leong voters will behave on September 12.
“We are doing a test here. I don’t know if people still believe in us, but either way I feel very honored to have been able to perform these duties for 16 years,” he said, noting that if he is not elected, it is “hardly [likely] another […] Portuguese lawmaker will be elected to the AL.”

300 nominations a difficult task
Gathering the necessary 300 nominations that comprise the nomination committee for the list to be accepted as valid and legal in standing for the elections was this year a difficult task, Pereira Coutinho said.
“We had to remove [and replace] over 100 signatures [nominations] that we had previously gathered as they were from Civil Servants and members from the [Macau] Security Force that were forbidden to support any candidacy lists,” he remarked.
Still, the head of the New Hope (Nova Esperança) list said he was happy that two of his list members, including the second candidate, are people that work in the public service and, in his words, “had the courage to side with him.”