The PSD leader defended this Wednesday that ministers who refuse to send documents requested by the investigative committee to TAP are guilty of qualified disobedience and challenged the Speaker of Parliament to act if the government does not back down.
Speaking at a press conference at the national headquarters of the PSD, Luís Montenegro believed that it means “a complete disruption of the constitutional balance of power” that the government refuses to send the opinions that gave “legal support” to the Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry (CPI) to dismiss the resignation for just cause from the former CEO of TAP, Christine Ourmières-Widener, requested by the Social Democrats and approved unanimously.
The PSD chairman called on the government to “withdraw now” from this refusal and announced what the social democrats’ strategy would be if this did not happen.
“The deputies of the CPI will request that the law be applied and the law is very clear: it is for the President of the CPI to take note of this legal violation to the President of the Assembly of the Republic and for him to report to issue.” to the Public Prosecution Service for committing the crime of disobedience of the Ministers of Finance, Infrastructure and the Presidency of the Council of Ministers,” he defended.
Montenegro considered that if socialists Jorge Seguro Sanches and Augusto Santos Silva do not take these steps “it means they both defend the interests of the PS and the government”.
“This is the moment for the president of the assembly to say whether he is a representative of the deputies and the Portuguese people or of the PS and the government,” challenged.
Enough will file a complaint with the Public Prosecution Service if the government does not send advice
Earlier, the president of Chega said that he will file a complaint with the Public Prosecutor’s Office if the finance minister continues to refuse to give the advice on the dismissal of TAP CEO to the Commission of Inquiry for cause.
André Ventura spoke in parliament on the day the PSD accused the government of “acting outside the law” for refusing to send the opinions to the TAP Commission of Inquiry that gave “legal support” to the CEO’s resignation for just cause , because asked for an urgent meeting for today.
“Chega filed a request a few minutes ago to expose the chairman of the investigative committee to the inadmissibility of the decision not to hand over the documents requested by an investigative committee, the shameful attempt to shield the finance minister from decisions he may has taken wrongly or at least without support,” he announced.
However, Chega president Fernando Medina warned that “if he does not submit requests from the Commission of Inquiry to TAP”, his party will “file a complaint with the prosecution, as the crime of disobedience is at stake”. request “is within the scope of the committee and the committee has the right to request such documents as it deems necessary to carry out its investigative work”.
“If the government insists on not handing over these documents in an effort to protect the finance minister, Chega will present this situation to the prosecution so that it can proceed with the crime of disobeying the finance minister for refusing to hand over documents. of a governmental, public nature to a commission of inquiry,” he stressed.
Another subject that André Ventura dealt with – and which he had already announced would lead to the audience he requested from the President of the Republic, which will take place this afternoon – concerned the trial regarding the position of the European public order. Prosecutor, whose candidacy Ivo Rosa has withdrawn today, a decision that would have been taken shortly before his hearing in the Assembly of the Republic this morning.
“The scandalous thing about this case was that Ivo Rosa was nominated or proposed by the government. That’s how all the deputies received the proposal for a hearing this morning in the European Affairs Committee and that’s how it was presented,” he said. , whereas “this proposal from the government to a magistrate who had so much interference in trials involving socialists and ex-socialists casts an anathema of disgrace on many serious magistrates”.
For the Chega president, “this promiscuity really resembles the payment of a bounty or the payment of a fee to a magistrate.”
“Whether or not, I think this government proposal creates a climate of suspicion about these decisions of magistrate Ivo Rosa and there are certainly hundreds of magistrates today who are outraged by this government proposal,” he said.
The nomination process for the position of European Prosecutor provides that the Supreme Council of the Judiciary (CSM) and the Supreme Council of the Public Prosecution Service (CSMP) select and nominate candidates for the government. The names chosen are then heard in parliament and are then sent to the Council of the European Union to be heard again.
The appointment of a successor to the current post of Prosecutor José Guerra has been shrouded in controversy between the government and the two agencies that appoint magistrates, after they refused to accept the option offered by an opinion of the Attorney General’s Advisory Council Office Republic (PGR), which admitted that these two bodies could send invitations to magistrates to run for office.
Both senior councils refused to issue invitations, with the CSM limiting its push to find more candidates to only announcing the competition and extending the deadline for applications to succeed José Guerra at the European Public Prosecutor’s Office , while the CSMP opened a new contest for the post.
IL accuses PS of lack of transparency
The Liberal Initiative (IL) accused the PS of “a massive lack of transparency” for refusing to send legal opinions supporting the decision to exonerate the company’s presidents for just cause to TAP’s committee of inquiry.
“On the day of the 50th anniversary of the Socialist Party, today we have another case of massive lack of transparency by the Socialist Party, which today refuses to send the legal opinions allegedly justifying the CEO’s resignation. [presidente executiva] from TAP and the ‘Chairman’ [presidente do Conselho de Administração]”, said the representative of the Liberal Initiative (IL) Bernardo Blanco, speaking to journalists, at the Assembly of the Republic.
It is a request from the PSD to send the parliamentary inquiry committee TAP the legal grounds to which the Minister of Finance, Fernando Medina, referred “during the March 6 press conference announcing the resignation for cause”. the Ms. CEO of TAP”.
The PSD today accused the government of refusing to send the requested documents, claiming that this is a situation that took place in 2023 and is beyond the scope of the Commission of Inquiry, which runs from 2020 to 2022.
Later, in a note to Lusa, the office of Deputy Minister of Parliamentary Affairs, Ana Catarina Mendes, also claimed that “its disclosure poses risks to the legal defense of the state’s position.”
For IL, these arguments are “very easy to deconstruct”, first of all because “whoever announced these layoffs in a televised press conference was the government itself and therefore the ministers would certainly have the necessary legal certainty to do so”, and therefore “the opinion must be made public”.
“Otherwise there would be no opinion at all, it could be a hypothesis and there could be a lie on the part of the government,” Bernardo Blanco noted.
Regarding the scope of the Commission of Inquiry, the Liberals underlined that the government has already sent documents from years that do not fall within the 2020-2022 period.
“We can’t have a duality of criteria here that, when the documents come in handy, when they’re out of the scope of the CPI, [comissão parlamentar de inquérito]if they are useful to the Socialist Party, they will be sent, and if they are out of reach in years, if they are not useful to the Socialist Party, they cannot be sent,” defended Bernardo Blanco, adding that the PS Chamber faction in the investigative committee had been asking for documents since 2015.
For IL, “all these documents are useful for the Portuguese” and “are doing the country a service by showing the truth of what is happening at TAP.
At today’s committee meeting, which begins at 5:00 p.m. and has the “status of the documentation requests” as the first item on the agenda, IL will insist that the above documents be requested from the government again.
“If the government again decides to reply that it is not sending them, then indeed we will have to consider what the committee should do itself. We, as the committee, have the power to ask again and demand that the people who are asked for documentation , have to send them,” said Bernardo Blanco.
The PSD request reported today by Lusa quotes the response that came from the ministries of Fernando Medina and João Galamba.
“Resolution of the General Assembly of the Republic No. 7/2023 of February 14 was approved on February 3, 2023 to establish a Commission of Inquiry to conduct political oversight of the management of TAP SGPS and TAP SA. delimited (cf. subparagraphs a) to g) of said resolution) and, as well as the time horizon (period between 2020 and 2022)”, they refer.
According to the same government response, “the required information does not fall within the scope” of the legal regime of parliamentary investigations, “by extending the above-mentioned purpose of the parliamentary inquiry commission and/or referring to facts after the respective constitution.
Already during this morning the government – via a note to Lusa van de cabinet of the assistant minister and parliamentary affairs, Ana Catarina Mendes – justified the refusal to send TAP’s investigative committee the legal opinions that supported the resignation of the company’s former executive president with the need to “protect the public interest” .
Source: DN
