The announcement came over the weekend. After 18 years – the most recent of which have seen the party’s following decimated, and seats in parliament drastically reduced – PCP leader Jerónimo de Sousa is stepping down. The new party leader has already been named (with no apparent ‘contest’ having been held): He is Paulo Raimundo, a former baker and carpenter; a man so typical of the PCP ‘cloth cap worker ’ that television commentator Luís Marques Mendes has predicted this is the moment when the already struggling party will fade into “complete irrelevance”.
