Chega’s president on Thursday asked the prime minister to assess whether Fernando Medina is able to stay on as finance minister after what he described as the “repeated lie” about the reasons for the former TAP’s chief executive’s resignation.
“We ask the Prime Minister to consider very carefully, for the umpteenth time, whether Fernando Medina can remain Finance Minister after the repeated lie to the country”said André Ventura in parliament.
It is the opinion that allegedly served as the basis for the dismissal of the CEO of TAP for cause, which Fernando Medina said on Thursday does not exist, after the government admitted its existence, through the ministers of the Presidency and Parliamentary Affairs.
Chega’s leader believed that António Costa should “speak to the country about the chaos that reigns in his government in relation to the TAP case”.
“The prime minister can walk away from this scenario, but he will not be able to walk away for long because it is his close ministers who are systematically lying and caught lying in this matter”he argued, after concluding that the opinion that Fernando Medina initially said existed “simply doesn’t exist”.
Ventura believed that “the government today assumed it was lying” and that “the Treasury Secretary has lied to the country and should be held accountable for it”.
A “third grotesque situation” pointed out by Chega’s deputy was the fact that “the government assumes a public dismissal of two senior state managers, without having any legal protection other than the report that was supposed to determine how another person was fired”i.e. the resignation and compensation paid to former Secretary of State Alexandra Reis to leave TAP.
“As Minister Fernando Medina knows very well, an inspection report is never a legal ground for a dismissal. It can be the first step for someone else to document and frame this dismissal”but there must be a justification for dismissal from a high position in the state, he insisted.
André Ventura said he directed the lawyers who filed a popular action against the state on behalf of TAP to make an amendment “to demand the personal responsibility of Fernando Medina in this matter.”
“If the state has to pay damages” to the previous president and CEO of TAP, “that means it was very negligent, grossly negligent” and “it has to be financially justified because it’s not the Portuguese who have to pay,” he concluded .
Source: DN
