José Dias, founder and former vice president of Chega, challenged his expulsion from the party by decision of the National Jurisdiction Council before the Constitutional Court (TC).
Since August, the party’s former leader and militant number 14 has been suspended by decision of the ethics committee. Last week he was expelled from the party by decision of the National Jurisdiction Council, published on the Chega website.
José Dias appealed against the decision to the TC, requesting that “the disciplinary penalty imposed be annulled and thereby revoked the contested decision”.
The document, which was sent by mail on Monday and which Lusa had access to today, is signed by Fernanda Marques Lopes, Chega’s lawyer and number three militant, and asks the judges of Palácio Ratton to “nullify the disciplinary proceedings” and that the deliberation is “unconstitutional, contrary to the principles of proportionality, fairness, necessity and adequacy”.
This appeal states that the former leader, who has been critical of the leader, André Ventura, “is accused of making publications that question the honor and reputation” of the president, leaders, deputies and the national organs. of the party, namely in “the social network Facebook and in a WhatsApp group”.
According to him, these are criticisms of party delegates in a closed group that supports Nuno Afonso (who says it was someone else who wrote, despite his name appearing) and a publication on his Facebook page in which he criticized the templates of the return of the party.
In the appeal, José Dias argues that it was about “giving personal opinions about the actions of the above people”, noting that freedom of expression is “constitutionally enshrined”, and believes that the idea remains, according to this decision , that “in the Chega the crime of opinion reigns”.
Considering that “the decision cannot be based on behavior that it does not describe, as it should, and above all that it does not prove or even substantiate a disciplinary violation, in an almost Kafkaesque process”, it is stated that “the combatant has not been proven to have committed violations of the Disciplinary Rules or the Bylaws, so this trial is based on a huge house of cards, that it is enough to remove the first one to make everything fall apart”.
The text also claims that “the application of the expulsion penalty is disproportionate and unfair” and “contrary to the Constitution of the Portuguese Republic”.
The appeal argues that the Ethics Committee, the body that proposed his expulsion and ceases to exist under the guidance of the most recent party statutes by the TC, “with its existence, its assignment of functions and its manner of functioning” and ” more like the censorship commission of the time of the Estado Novo”.
Talking to Lusa, the former vice president (a position he held for two years until impeached by the leader) said he had not been heard by the National Jurisdiction Council and that it was “impossible for him to exercise the contrary”. “Phone reports are not accepted, they had to notify me by registered letter or by email, setting a time and day when I would appear at the trial to be heard,” he insisted.
“My expulsion took place because I wrote several articles in which I disagree with the way André Ventura is leading the party,” he said, accusing the Chega president of “controlling everything” and “putting himself in power want to keep in Chega, and therefore he allows no internal opposition”.
“He is a dictator zeco, it is the Constitutional Court that says that there must be more democracy within the party”, he also criticized José Dias, in a reference to the “heading” of the party statutes by the judges of Ratton Palace.
Source: DN
