PSD, Chega and IL defended on Friday that the planned parliamentary hearing with the outgoing Secretary of State for Defense will be maintained, with various parties also wanting to hear the current Minister of Defense and the previous portfolio holder.
At his own request, the Prime Minister has submitted to the President of the Republic a proposal for the resignation of the Secretary of State for Defense, Marco Capitao Ferreira.
His resignation comes a day after it became known that Marco Capitão Ferreira had hired a ghost consultant when he ran a listed company.
The now-resigned Secretary of State for Defense hired José Miguel Fernandes, former administrator of Alfeite, for idD Portugal Defense, the defense industries holding company, but the manager has never been seen in the publicly traded company, according to Expresso.
In the initial reaction of opposition parties to the resignation of Marco Capitão Ferreira, the parliamentary leader of the Liberal Initiative, Rodrigo Saraiva, blamed António Costa for the situation of “instability” in the government.
He then argued that Marco Capitão Ferreira and the current foreign minister (former holder of the defense portfolio), João Gomes Cravinho, “should never have entered” this executive branch.
“The problem is not with the captain”, the now dismissed secretary of state, “the problem is with ‘General’ António Costa”, said Rodrigo Saraiva, who considered that “yet this episode” justified the possibility of the motion of censure that was submitted by the Liberal Initiative to the socialist executive with an absolute majority.
“We are facing yet another case revealing that the PS does not learn or regret,” he said, before referring to the cases of budget slippage verified in the works of the Belém Military Hospital and “the web of corruption under the Directorate General of Defense Resources”.
“Alberto Coelho, after being dismissed as Director General, was appointed to Empordef. And who suggested Alberto Coelho’s name to Empordef? It was Marco Capitão Ferreira. All this was reason enough for these two personalities, João Gomes Cravinho and Mário Capitão Ferreira, were not in government,” added Rodrigo Saraiva.
At the press conference, the parliamentary leader of the Liberal Initiative said that the outgoing secretary of state was “already known in the field of political struggle during the governments of José Sócrates”.
The PSD, through deputy Jorge Paulo Oliveira, defended that Marco Capitao Ferreira should go to parliament next week as scheduled, claiming that “it would be in his own interest” and the government’s interest to explain and that the “circumstance of the resignation waives control of all acts under suspicion”.
The coordinator of the Social Democratic parliamentary group in the National Defense Commission also said that he “will not refrain” from explanations from Defense Minister Helena Carreiras if the hearing of the Secretary of State does not take place or if the Social Democrats are not satisfied with the explanations, and also demand explanations from “other former members of the government if they push themselves to get to the truth”.
The deputy complained that the government is “permanently involved in internal issues” and believed that “it is falling apart and unable to focus on solving the country’s problems” and called on the Prime Minister to “bring order to bring home”.
Along the same lines, Chega’s leader said that the resignation announced today “is not unexpected and should have been done already”, as Marco Ferreira no longer had “government conditions” after the various controversies he was involved in.
Like the PSD, André Ventura said he hoped this resignation was not to “prevent Marco Capitão Ferreira from being heard in parliament”, after a party request to do so was approved this week.
The President of Chega announced that from now on the party will add a request for a hearing from the Minister of Defense, wondering how he understood that this Secretary of State could remain in office as the request for resignation was made directly to the Prime Minister .
For BE, MEP Joana Mortágua also considered this resignation “a predictable result” after the succession of cases involving the Secretary of State, and points out responsibilities to the Prime Minister.
“The questionnaire he imposed on members of the government was a story to put children to sleep, it does not solve the fundamental problems,” he said, also criticizing the government’s excessive use of outside advisers.
Finally, he believed that an executive “permanently managing business and affairs is too distracted to run the country”, and defended that, in addition to the current minister, the former defense minister and holder of the foreign portfolio Business, João Gomes Cravinho. , must explain, as many of the cases date back to when he oversaw the defense.
Source: DN
