Chega will “urgently” summon Infrastructure Minister João Galamba to parliament to explain the government’s conceded possibility of privatizing TAP between 51% and 85%, the party leader said on Friday.
“The government still doesn’t know who they’re going to be, or doesn’t mean who are the international entities that are interested in buying TAP and we don’t know what model we’re going to have in TAP, if we’re going to have a privatization on 51%, 80%, 70%, we don’t know. And we need to know,” said André Ventura.
The president of Chega spoke in Funchal, on the sidelines of the presentation conference of the head of the list of the party for the parliamentary elections in Madeira, commenting on the news published by Jornal Económico, this Friday, that the socialist executive is studying the sales from 51% to 85% of the Portuguese airline.
“That is why today we are going to summon Minister João Galamba to the emergency parliament to explain two very simple things: how is the TAP privatization process going, who are the interested parties, who are the entities that are really interested in buying the TAP and whether It is true that Iberia, the Spanish reference company, belongs to that group of interested parties,” he explains.
André Ventura said that Chega “has nothing against the Spaniards”, nor against any partner country of the European Union, but warned that “every Portuguese understands that it is not in the strategic interest of TAP and the Portuguese economy that TAP is in the hands of the Spaniards from Iberia, because they will of course prefer the ‘hub’ of Madrid to Lisbon”.
“This is a clear strategic mistake that Chega will vehemently oppose,” he stated.
André Ventura, on the other hand, stressed that “it is not the same to privatize at 51% and 85%”, insisting that Chega wants to know “how much we will receive for privatization, compared to the 3.2 billion we already spend in the process of nationalization”.
“We have a minister [João Galamba] completely vulnerable, completely alienated and unable to provide these answers,” he lamented.
Chega’s chairman said it was essential to ensure a “set of strategic axes” in terms of business framework conditions, including ensuring regular connections with the autonomous regions of Madeira and the Azores.
“If we were in government, in a coalition or not, we would demand this. impose a series of conditions on the company, if it is legally possible and if the courts validate it,” he said.
Still on the sidelines of the presentation of the head of Chega’s list to the Madeira parliamentary elections, André Ventura made it a point to express the party’s “total solidarity” with the nurses’ strike taking place at the national level, by stating that his fighting “is very fair”.
“It is curious that today we also see two of the parliamentary parties – the Bloco de Esquerda and the PCP – close and in solidarity with this nurses’ strike – which we are and salute – but which for six years approved the budgets of the Socialist Party well, those that impacted nurses’ lives the most,” he said, then reinforced, “It took them six years to pass budgets that would make a difference. They didn’t and now they stand in solidarity with nurses. is a lot of hypocrisy put together.”
Source: DN
