The Liberal Initiative president on Sunday accused the government of taking a “questionable” and “sometimes complacent” stance with corruption and defended that the prime minister should clarify what he “wants to hide” by devaluing the Defense controversy.
“At the national level, we have a socialist government that has existed for many years […] in the leadership of the country and what we find is stagnation, difficulties in accessing the most basic forms of public services such as health care and education, the inability to restore confidence and hope in the Portuguese, it is a very questionable position and the times very complacent with corruption and lack of transparency,” Rui Rocha said in Funchal, presenting the party’s candidates for the parliamentary elections in Madeira, scheduled for September 24.
Referring to the controversy surrounding the defense sector, with the resignation of the Secretary of State for Defense, Marco Capitão Ferreira, the IL leader again criticized the position of the Prime Minister, António Costa, who said on Saturday that what “concerns people” are very different Affairs”.
For the IL president, “the Portuguese want to know whether or not the country’s defenses are being used in a non-serious, non-transparent manner, possibly if there are corruption schemes associated with them”.
“And therefore, if they tell us that suspicions of corruption in the defense issue are not a relevant issue, we completely disagree with the prime minister and even want to know more,” he reinforced.
“For example, we want to know what is going on with Minister Cravinho’s order, which we now know has been done, of the approval of a series of expenditures when it was already known that this was a sensitive subject and when an opinion was later appears asked Marco Capitão Ferreira, when the price and the political decision to make that purchase had already been made,” he added.
Correio da Manhã reported today that João Gomes Cravinho authorized the maintenance of EH-101 helicopters in 2019, when he was defense minister, which led to the resignation of Marco Capitao Ferreira as defense secretary last Friday.
Rui Rocha defended that it is necessary to clarify “what is happening in Defense” and it is necessary to clarify “what the Prime Minister currently wants to hide when he devalues these issues”.
“We will not admit this, neither in the continent nor in Madeira when there is evidence of a lack of transparency, that there is evidence of a lack of scrupulousness in public accounts,” he supposed.
“That’s why I want to say here to António Costa that yes, the Portuguese are interested, at least the liberals are interested in these issues and we don’t want a government that devalues these issues. And we also don’t want a government that stagnates the country, that doesn’t promote growth , which does not promote the hopes of the Portuguese,” he repeated.
Source: DN
