The chairman of the PS defended this Friday that the functions of parliamentary advisers are more important than the workplace and believed that what happened to the PSD “partly could not have happened”.
At the end of a visit to the World Youth Day headquarters in Lisbon, Carlos César was asked if the PS has parliament-funded advisers who work for the party, for example at its headquarters, and stated that “the workplace doesn’t matter, it’s the job people do that matters”.
“I am chairman of the Socialist Party, a non-executive position and nature, and therefore I do not follow current management issues, but intuitively it seems to me that political parties in general use these funds for party activities in general, sometimes in the parliamentary component, sometimes in components related to the parliamentary component,” he defended.
The PS chairman also pointed out that the socialists want to run the party “in obedience to what they understand to be the legal norms that apply”.
“This is certainly our situation, as I assumed with other political parties,” he stated.
Carlos César also refused that the PS has cause for concern in case the judiciary decides to investigate other parties. the funding it has meets its understanding of the law in force, I see no cause for concern”.
With regard to the searches of the PSD – conducted by the Public Prosecutor’s Office, which is investigating alleged misappropriation of the party from funds earmarked for parliamentary advisers – the PS chairman defended that “it seemed clear that in part what happened should not have been to happen”.
“But the point is that we learn lessons from these things. We could have learned lessons from similar processes before, but as it is now, let those lessons be learned,” he stressed.
When asked whether the Public Prosecution Service owes any clarification on how the operation went, César points out that “these matters are of a more specific and sensitive nature that it is not for political parties to boast with great insistence of subpoenas and factors in which interfere with the independent exercise of the judicial authorities”.
“What should of course happen, in my opinion, is a distant reflection of these facts, allowing the institutions responsible for the investigation to investigate and the rights of those under investigation, whether people or institutions, to be properly protected” , he said. .
Carlos César also indicated that the PS announced “it will endeavor to present at the beginning of the next legislature a clarifying standard of the existing legal system”, although the socialists’ understanding does not raise “major interpretative doubts”. “.
“But, just so that everything is clear, it is our intention to do this,” he said, pointing out that “if the prosecution has the understanding that has been verified, if other people also have doubts”, it is “good to clarify what there is to clarify”.
When asked whether Lucília Gago should be reappointed as Prosecutor General of the Republic, the socialist leader refused to answer, noting “it is not a matter on which the PS has completed a reflection”.
“The state of the nation is much better than the state of the opposition”
The president of the PS also believed this Friday that the parliamentary debate on the state of the nation showed that the situation in Portugal is “much better” than that in which the opposition finds itself, highlighting “social and economic recovery”.
“All I can say about the situation we are experiencing is that, regardless of the polls and despite the social difficulties that still exist among families in our country, the debate that took place yesterday in parliament essentially showed that the state of the nation is much better than the state of the opposition”.
Carlos César pointed out that during that debate that took place on Thursday in the Assembly of the Republic, “the Prime Minister spoke of the right bills, as he spoke of the whole situation that are also good results to present in terms of reducing the poverty rate and social exclusion, the reduction of inequalities, the increase in average household disposable income, etc.’
“What is needed is to be aware of the situation we live in, that is, there are many good indicators, there is a growing and there is a social and economic recovery of our country that is still living with problems, uncertainties and injustice and hardship of many families,” he stressed, arguing that “what matters is that the government successfully continues to achieve better and better results and that there are fewer cases and accidents.”
Asked about this afternoon’s meeting of the Council of State (a body of which he is a member) to take stock of the country’s economic, social and political situation, the PS president remarked that he would not be able to speak “about what is going to happen”. nor afterwards about what happened, in the Council of State”.
Source: DN
