Chega’s president today ruled that the ministers involved in controversial matters in recent weeks “have broken the law” and asked the PS, which has an absolute majority, whether it is prepared to change the incompatibility regime.
Opening an interpellation to the government, in parliament, on “the successive cases of alleged incompatibilities and conflicts of interest involving various ministers of the executive branch”, André Ventura stated that these rulers “broke the current law” and urged insisted that “they should be removed from office”.
The Chega leader justified the planning of this debate with the “need to draw attention and accountability to a government that wanted to evade responsibility on several occasions”.
In his speech, the deputy made a “summary” of the situations known in recent weeks involving, for example, the Minister of Infrastructure, the Minister of Territorial Cohesion and the Minister of Health, pointing out that it is a “role situations which do not make the Republic worthy, but which, above all, violate the law in a clear and expressive way”.
Speaking specifically of the Minister of Health, André Ventura stated that Manuel Pizarro “had a more modest approach” because “he came to say that he was well aware of the situation of incompatibility” as opposed to “unlike others who tried to resort to to seek in good faith, in opinions that are curiously older than the law that exists today”.
And he wanted to know “what the government is going to do to rectify these cases”.
“This is no longer a government, this is a boat that falls a little more every day, from which a door opens and more cases emerge that embarrass us, it is a boat that has sunk and, unfortunately, Portugal is sinking. We have still time to rectify this disgrace,” the president of Chega defended.
“We are faced with a legislative tangle,” said André Ventura, taking into account, however, that “the law is clear in these cases, neither the governors nor their relatives who own more than 10% [de uma empresa] to do business with the state”.
And he believed that “anything that involves getting around this, anything that involves looking to the side, anything that involves arranging a minimum of interpretive doubt here” constitutes “fraud of the law.”
Recalling that Chega has already proposed changes to the regime for the exercise of functions of holders of political positions and high public positions, following the appeal of the President of the Republic to parliament, the party leader asked the PS directly whether he ” is willing to change this “law”. “and “available to clarify what embarrasses the Portuguese in terms of public affairs and transparency of the state”.
“The PS has an absolute majority in this chamber, but that absolute majority cannot be absolute arrogance,” he pleaded, when asked whether the other parties “are willing to amend a law that apparently no longer serves the transparency of the State.” to ensure”.
Ventura also criticized PSD and Iniciativa Liberal (IL), whom he accused of “running from this issue like the devil flees from the cross”.
“The situation is incomprehensible, especially on the right. The IL said nothing about the incompatibilities in the government, we were even surprised to see an IL deputy standing next to Pedro Nuno Santos about his situation,” he criticized, considering “very strange to see a so-called right-wing party covering the government”.
And he pointed out that the PSD leader “says that now is not the right time to have this debate and that the debate should not take place in parliament, but should be done by the judicial authorities”, but “the strange is that the President of the Republic, former leader of the PSD, has come to say that the parliament should clarify the legislation”.
Enough criticism also extended to the president of the republic who, he said, “came back into the game, unfortunately not to call the government to account, but to provide cover for the government”.
Government Rejects Violation of Incompatibility Act, Rejects Chega .’s Behavior
The Deputy Minister of Parliamentary Affairs, for her part, defended that “there is no violation of law” of incompatibilities by members of the government and rejected Chega’s conduct, whom she accused of “creating widespread mistrust” of the settings.
“The government rejects Chega’s behavior that throws the usual, everyday cloak of suspicion on democratic institutions to generate ‘soundbytes’,” criticized Ana Catarina Mendesat the opening of the parliamentary interpellation highlighted by Chega on the situations of alleged incompatibilities and conflicts of interest involving several members of the government.
The minister began by stating that “there is no violation of the law in the matters that bring us here today” and defended that politicians “under the current legislation are subject to a tight network of registers of impediments and conflicts of interest”.
“This is how democracy is built” and “more transparency”, he underlined.
Ana Catarina Mendes referred to the fact that, when doubts arose about the law regulating these barriers, the government presented an opinion to the Consultative Council of the Prosecutor General’s Office, which was of the opinion “to keep everything current despite being issued before the validity of the current legislation, from 2019, and being related to the 1993 diploma.
“The law in force maintains the legal solutions in light of which the advice has been issued. The government complies with the law, and complies with it with ease, supported by the advice of the PGR,” he said.
Ana Catarina Mendes believed that the government would have little to do to clarify the deputies in this matter and focused part of her intervention on criticizing the party led by André Ventura.
“Their fight is not for transparency or democracy, it is a fight for disinformation, for noise and that is trying to affect democratic institutions,” he noted, saying that what this party wants is “a new regime”.
The minister defended that the debate on the incompatibilities law – which she says was passed “by an overwhelming majority” in 2019, with only the CDS-PP voting against – only exists because all the declarations of income, assets, interests, incompatibilities, impediments and registration of interests of politicians “are handed over to the Constitutional Court and are published on the Internet and available to everyone”.
“Contrary to what Chega’s delegates want to do here, the institutions really work,” the organization said.
Ana Catarina Mendes appealed that today’s parliamentary debate serves to “strengthen the principles of the democratic rule of law” and ensure that the government will not renounce principles such as those of “separation of powers, democratic legality and transparency”.
The minister said she trusts parliament “as the guardian of democracy and its institutions”, as there is no democracy “without a strong, controlling and democratic parliament”.
“There is no democracy without politicians,” he emphasized.
News updated at 11:10
Source: DN
