The party for animals and nature

The move comes more than a year after a 9.260-strong petition was delivered calling for PAN’s establishment.

Paulo Borges, one of the party’s founders (as well as being president of the Portuguese Buddhist Union) considers PAN’s genesis “historic and one of the best bits of news since the 25th April (revolution).”

PAN describes itself as “the first really independent ecological party” and, according to Borges, it has “a strong social support structure”, including “sympathizers and pre-members” from “dozens of ecological associations”, and more than 6.000 others, through the Facebook social networking site.

Borges – who’ll soon be confirmed as the party’s leader – said that in the next elections PAN would be running solo in order to avoid any kind of coalition with other parties currently in Parliament.

Those behind PAN believe there’s a “huge, fertile opening” within Portuguese society “for new civic and political initiatives” – particularly as we’re living through a “crisis of democracy”, very evident in the recent presidential elections.

Paulo Borges pointed out that “abstentions, blank voting papers and votes for independent candidates” polled around 66 per cent of the vote in the elections, showing that the electorate “ignored or veered away from Parliament’s current selection of political parties”.

Alteration to national eating habits – namely when it comes to industrial meat – subsidies for alternative remedies and the creation of a police force to protect the rights of animals, are three of the proposals for PAN’s future political manifesto.

The party has already drawn up a declaration of principals and objectives that will serve as a base for its political programme, and which should be approved at the first party congress – to be held within the next three months.

“PAN is a party embracing three major causes: humanitarian, animal and ecological/ environmental – considering all to be inter-related” said Paulo Borges. One of the party’s aims is to fight against “all forms of discrimination and violence against animals – especially forms of animal slavery, racism, sexism and classicism”.

PAN hopes to consecrate within the Constitution of the Republic the “premise that animals can feel/ are sensitive, and that they have rights to a certain standard of life and well-being”, and seeks to alter the Civil Code “in which animals are reduced to the same status as chattels”.

PAN also hopes to “redignify teachers” - as education is one of the “strategic investments” of the State – over and above “defence spending, and money spent on the army and spurious public works”.