To the surprise of the opposition, the PS allowed a new hearing this Wednesday in the Parliament of the Supervisory Board of the Information System of the Portuguese Republic (CF-SIRP), a body chaired by the former Socialist Minister of the Interior (and former representative of the PS), Constança Urbano de Sousa.
The hearing will take place in the parliamentary commission for constitutional affairs and the main theme will be the implementation of the SIS to recover on the night of April 26 the service computer of Frederico Pinheiro, a deputy who had been dismissed hours earlier by the Minister of Infrastructure, João Galamba .
The application for this new CF-SIRP hearing – the first took place on May 9 at TAP’s Parliamentary Committee of Inquiry (CPI) – was submitted by the Liberal Initiative and approved with votes in favor of both the proponents and the PSD and PS ( Chega, Bloco de Esquerda, PCP, PAN and Livre were not present at the time of the vote, according to Lusa).
“The Board of Trustees was not exactly a board of commissioners, rather it was an apology board for those who were the events and the government, and did not act independently.”
Before voting on the application, Patrícia Gilvaz explained that IL decided to submit this application because she believes that the SIRP Supervisory Board is not fulfilling “its functions and actions” assigned to it by law, criticizing in particular his position on the performance of the SIS in the case of incidents at the Ministry of Infrastructure.
“The supervisory board was not exactly a supervisory board, rather it was an apology board for those who were the events and the government, and did not act independently,” the deputy criticized. Gilvaz therefore challenged the PS to approve the hearing, as voting against the request would be “hasty conclusions”.
Responding to Patrícia Gilvaz, PS deputy Pedro Delgado Alves opined that “the only fallout may have come from the IL deputy, assuming how the PS would vote”. “We are going to approve the request in the sense that if there are questions that need to be clarified by the Supervisory Board, they can be clarified,” he said.
At the first hearing, on May 9, the president of the SIRP Supervisory Board, Constança Urbano de Sousa, reaffirmed that the role of the SIS in recovering the computer of the former assistant minister, João Galamba, has a “legal basis ” had. “We confirm what is in the statement, we refer it in full. The explanation was here, of course [no Parlamento] about the facts and about everything that led us to make that legal framework of the facts,” Constança Urbano de Sousa told journalists after the hearing (which took place behind closed doors, as always happens when it comes to intelligence services).
Mendonça Mendes heard it
Also this Wednesday, on June 6, at 4 p.m., the hearing was scheduled in the same Committee for Constitutional Affairs of the ex-Secretary of State, Assistant to the Prime Minister, António Mendonça Mendes, with mandatory character also requested by the Liberal. Fernando Negrão (PSD), president of the committee, noted that this schedule is pending approval by the President of the Assembly of the Republic, Augusto Santos Silva, as the hearing will take place at the same time as the plenary session.
Mendonça Mendes was the one who suggested the intervention of the SIS to João Galamba – but so far he has refused to clarify the matter.
Source: DN
