The Chega demonstration, called at 3:30 pm as a siege of the national headquarters of the PS, in Largo do Rato, in Lisbon, gathered a few hundred people, but the atmosphere was only brightened by the arrival of André Ventura, around 4:00 PM, with the initiative ending shortly after 5:00 PM.
Speaking to journalists, upon arrival, the Chega leader began to respond to criticism from some socialist leaders, who viewed the protest as undemocratic.
“Today I heard that it was an unspeakable and undemocratic action that Chega besieged the PS headquarters. It is a different action precisely because the PS has surrounded democracy and kidnapped our institutions”suspects, who point as examples to the conduct of the investigative committee at TAP, the “misuse of institutions” such as the information services and in particular the judicial sector.
Ventura again criticized the government for taking a year and a half to regulate the Electronic Dissemination of Cases Ordinance and linking this fact to the delay in the trial of former Prime Minister José Sócrates.
When asked if the PS should interfere with justice to ‘speed up’ the Marquês operation, Ventura replied: “No, I think the PS should allow its government to do justice and regulate what it needs to regulate.
Chega’s president also accused Judge Ivo Rosa of “keeping the Marquês trial in a drawer for years” and therefore being appointed to a European position.
“That’s why Chega is here today, not to provoke a confrontation. We came to say that the PS does not rule our democracy,” he said, lamenting that the other right-wing parties do not join this kind of action.
Two blow-up dolls were displayed at the protest, one wearing a mask belonging to António Costa and the other belonging to José Sócrates, who were later placed in a cage.
Asked if he understood that the prime minister should be arrested and for what crime, Ventura said “the idea was that the two dolls would be outside” the cage, but the police did not allow their location, in front of the protesters .
“The two dolls were together to show that António Costa is now José Sócrates’s best friend,” he said.
During part of the media’s time questioning Ventura — a moment hosted by the party’s consulting firm — several militants criticized the content of the questions and the journalists who asked them.
Despite the insistence of the ‘speaker’ to create a human cordon around the PS headquarters, the effect turned out to be only a semicircle near the police bays, closing the street in front of Largo do Rato and creating a perimeter of security between the demonstrators and PS headquarters, only allow people to stand in front and to the side of the wall.
Source: DN
