Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, elected president of the republic seven years ago, has handed out more than a thousand awards since the start of his first term and has made 123 trips abroad to date. He also used the political veto 25 times and vetoed three diplomas for unconstitutionality.
The now-retired political commentator and university law professor, who was 74 years old on Monday and chaired the PSD between 1996 and 1999, was elected in the presidential election on January 24, 2016 with 52% of the votes cast and re-elected on January 24 2021 by 60.67%.
With a continuously intense agenda since the beginning of his functions, but especially in the first year, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa follows the option of not officially disclosing it in its entirety, which prevents a rigorous reconstruction of the history of his activity, especially in national area.
Externally, your trips abroad are compulsorily communicated to the Assembly of the Republic, which is how they generally become widely known. So far he has been to 48 different countries and made a total of 123 trips, 18 of which were state visits.
This count includes, in addition to official visits, trips for various reasons, broken down by country, to visit prominent national armed forces, Portugal Day commemorations, summits and other international gatherings, sporting and cultural events, inaugurations and funeral ceremonies.
From his second term onwards, several of these visits were approved by delegates without the usual unanimity, with abstentions and even votes against, and generally contested by the Chega party because of their numbers.
The one that caused the most controversy in the Assembly of the Republic was the trip to the World Cup in Qatar last November, voted against by Liberal Initiative, Left Block, PAN, Livre and four deputies from the PS and abstentions from Chega, three representatives from the PS and three from the PSD.
There were also disagreements over his travels to Angola for the funeral of former President José Eduardo dos Santos, with votes against from Iniciativa Liberal and Bloco de Esquerda and abstention from the PAN, and for the inauguration of President João Lourenço, with votes against from Chega and abstentions van Bloco and PAN – both voted a posteriori in September 2022 in plenary.
The most visited countries
Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa’s most visited countries were Spain, where he has already been 17 times, France, where he has been 12 times, and the United States of America, a country he has traveled to nine times, six of which to United Nations Headquarters in Nova York.
The President of the Republic traveled eight times to Brazil, six times to Angola and Cape Verde, five times to Italy, four times to the United Kingdom, three times to Mozambique and Sao Tome and Principe, not counting stopovers.
He also visited the Vatican three times – the first country he visited at the start of each semester, followed by Spain on the same day – as well as Belgium, Greece and Andorra, and Germany, Russia, Bulgaria and Malta twice.
He was also in Morocco, Switzerland, Cuba, Colombia, Senegal, Croatia, Luxembourg, Mexico, Lithuania, Central African Republic, Egypt, Austria, Latvia, Guatemala, Panama, China, Ivory Coast, Tunisia, Afghanistan, Israel, India, Guinea -Bissau, Slovenia, Hungary, Netherlands, East Timor, Cyprus, Ireland, Qatar and Romania.
He made state visits to Mozambique, Switzerland and Cuba, in 2016, Cape Verde, Senegal, Croatia, Luxembourg and Mexico, in 2017, Sao Tome and Principe, Greece, Egypt and Spain, in 2018, Angola, China, Ivory Coast and Italy, in 2019 , India, in 2020 – the year the covid-19 pandemic forced him to postpone practically all of his international agenda – and Ireland, in 2022.
Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa visited the National Armed Forces deployed on military missions in Kaunas, Lithuania, and in Malaga, Spain, in 2017, in the Central African Republic, in 2018, in Afghanistan, in 2019, and in Romania, in 2022 .
He attended 10 games of the Portuguese football team and participated in about 20 multilateral meetings, from meetings of the United Nations General Assembly in New York to Ibero-American Summits and of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries (CPLP). , and minutes of meetings of Heads of State of the Arraiolos Group and of the Cotec Europe business association.
To celebrate Portugal Day with emigrant communities, in an original model he launched with the Prime Minister, António Costa, the head of state was in Paris in 2016, in Rio de Janeiro and in 2017 in São Paulo, on the east coast of the United States of America, in 2018, in Praia and Mindelo, in Cape Verde, in 2019, and in London, in 2022.
the decorations
As for the awards, according to the entry on the honorary order portal on the Internet, he has already awarded more than a thousand awards to national citizens or entities, about 750 in the five years of the first term and 275 in this second term, until the end of October 2022 .
The awards with the highest degree of honorary awards – the large necklace – went to former heads of state Aníbal Cavaco Silva, António Ramalho Eanes and Jorge Sampaio, to the former governor of Banco de Portugal and former vice president of the European Central Bank. Bank (ECB) Vítor Constâncio and, posthumously, for the writers José Saramago and Sophia de Mello Breyner and the painter Paula Rego.
In comparison, the number of badges handed out by his predecessors elected in democracy, in the range of their two mandates, was as follows: Aníbal Cavaco Silva had the lowest number, about 1,500, Jorge Sampaio about 2,400, Mário Soares almost 2,500 and António Ramalho Eanes around 1900.
Only awards awarded at national level are taken into account. Until December last year, there were 270 foreigners who were decorated by the current president of the republic.
In both cases, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa chose to perform several ceremonies without advertising.
As President of the Republic, he arranged regular audiences with political parties and employers’ and trade union confederations, as well as meetings of the Council of State and the Supreme Council of National Defence.
It held more than 30 hearings for parties with parliamentary seats, convened the Council of State 27 times and convened the Supreme Council of National Defense 29 times.
5 requests for preventive inspection at the TC
Marcelo has so far made five requests for preventive inspection, the last of which – pending a decision from the judges – on January 4 this year, based on the third decree approved in parliament to provide medical assistance in the event of death. decriminalize.
A year after his election, he defined himself as a president of the republic who does not resort to the Constitutional Court as “a kind of defense”, but who exercises the political veto “without any complexes”, despite strong disagreements.
It used its political veto 25 times: three times in 2016, twice in 2017, six in 2018, five in 2019, six in 2020 and three in 2021. Four of these vetoes related to government decisions and 21 to legislation passed by the Assembly of the Republic.
Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa’s latest political veto, announced on November 29, 2021, was the second version of the decriminalization of medically assisted death, with the justification that the decree contained contradictory expressions.
As for the requests to the Constitutional Court, the first was filed on August 26, 2019, for preventive inspection of amendments made in parliament to the Medically Assisted Reproduction (PMA) and Surrogacy Act.
This request took into account that there had already been a ruling on this case in May 2018, following a request for supervision by a group of 30 deputies from the PSD and CDS-PP, who had reviewed the rules of the PMA regime. declared unconstitutional.
On 19 September 2019, the Constitutional Court again declared unconstitutional the provisions of the decree in question and the Head of State subsequently vetoed it.
A year and a half later, on February 18, 2021, the President of the Republic made a new request for preventive inspection, according to the standards of the Parliament’s first diploma for the decriminalization of medically assisted death, claiming that he resorted to drafts they were too vague.
The Constitutional Court declared the decree unconstitutional due to insufficient prescriptive density and on 15 March the head of state announced the right of veto, as required by the Constitution.
In the presidential election on January 24, 2021, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa was re-elected with 60.67% of the votes cast.
It was already in his second term, on August 4, 2021, that he sent the parliamentary decree with amendments to the Cybercrime Act to the Constitutional Court, which would also be declared unconstitutional. In view of the ruling, he vetoed it as unconstitutional on September 1.
On November 17, 2022, the fourth request for preventive inspection was submitted regarding the restructuring of the Single Point of Contact for International Police Cooperation. The Constitutional Court ruled that the parliamentary decree was not unconstitutional and on 12 December the head of state issued it.
The President of the Republic has also submitted a request for successive inspection to the Constitutional Court, announced on July 29, 2021, on Article 6 of the Portuguese Charter of Human Rights in the Digital Age in force. However, parliament amended this diploma through another decree, which came into effect on August 3, 2022.
In March 2021, regarding a controversy over the so-called braking law, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa set out his determination and veto decision criteria in a written post, explaining that he uses a so-called “corrective veto”.
According to the head of state, when in doubt about the constitutionality, he strives for “an interpretation of the diplomas that is in accordance with the Constitution” and when this is possible, he opts for promulgation.
“When this interpretation is impossible and the parliamentary initiative deserves substantive acceptance, it has resorted to the use of a corrective veto, inviting the Assembly of the Republic to use its initiative, making it in accordance with the Constitutionhe claimed.
The head of state added that “in case of a clear legal conviction, of unconstitutionality and no substantial justification legitimizing the use of a veto, an appeal to the Constitutional Court is reserved”.
Source: DN
