Medina returns to AICEP

Outgoing Lisbon mayor Fernando Medina who unexpectedly lost his position as the capital’s mayor in the municipal elections last month is to return to Portugal’s overseas trade and investment organisation AICEP.

The former Socialist Party mayor, who will be replaced by PSD party winning candidate Carlos Moedas, officially stepped down from his post as city hall council officer to which he was elected in September after loosing the top job running the Portuguese capital. The announcement was made on Monday.
The press has said that he will return to Portugal’s overseas trade and investment agency AICEP where he had worked for two years between 2003 and 2005, having left there to take up the post of secretary of State for Employment and Professional Training in the government.
“I am informing that I am formally resigning the post of (Lisbon City Council) executive officer at the next executive meeting. It was a measured and thought-out decision taken after sounding out the opinion of various people over the past week, but at the end of the day it was a decision that I and only I had to make,” he said.
Fernando Medina was the executive officer for Lisbon City Council’s finance department for two years, and Mayor of Lisbon for six years. He said that resigning was the best solution to serve the interests of the city and the smooth workings of executive meetings as well as enabling the opposition in the city hall to focus on the future and not the past.”