In statements to journalists in the Assembly of the Republic, Eurico Brilhante Dias stressed that the PS has drawn “three fundamental conclusions” from Tuesday’s hearing with the Prime Minister’s Deputy Secretary of State, António Mendonça Mendescontrary to the opposition’s “hasty conclusions”.
The first, according to the party chairman of the PS, is that “it is confirmed that it was the government protocol, initiated by the chief of staff [do ministro das Infraestruturas, João Galamba] which prompted the intelligence agency to act.”
The second conclusion of the PS has to do with the statements of Mendonça Mendes according to which “it was not due to any intervention of any member of the government that the intelligence service acted”, adding that it was clear that the prime minister was by João Galamba only informed about the incidents at the Ministry of Infrastructure “quite late, after the fact”.
“These three conclusions, which we already knew, were never contradicted,” he stressed.
Brilhante Dias opined that it was also clear that “there was a phone call” between Galamba and Mendonça Mendes, but that “this phone call yielded nothing for the intervention of the information services”.
Referring to Mendonça Mendes’ statements, Brilhante Dias said that during the call there was a “list of entities” including the information services, but it was clear who should make “the concrete assessment” about whom. turn to it was the Ministry of Infrastructure, because it was the one who knew “the secret material”.
“The Secretary of State said even today that, in concrete terms, he could not provide any information because he did not actually know what the documents were and even less is within his competence,” he referred.
In this context, the PS party chairman believed that given these four points it is not clear how the opposition wants to continue feeding this soap, this series instead of focusing on matters that are essential to the Portuguese.
“Frankly, after a day like today, when we realized, in the words of Minister Pedro Nuno Santos, that the privatization of TAP in 2015 is a privatization that hides that the state was in danger, we continue to talk about a case that is more than clarified,” he underlined.
Brilhante Dias regretted that the main opposition party, referring to the PSD, had not commented “just once” on the data of the Portuguese economy, referring to the data for the first quarter of this year released last week by the National Institute of Statistics (INE).
“We are running a soap opera and this soap opera, today we already knew how it ended. Enough and IL.
Asked if, since Mendonça Mendes stated that he had no elements to propose a report to the SIS, this does not imply that João Galamba had lied to the TAP Commission of Inquiry when he said that it was the Secretary of State who had told him the “secret”, Bright Days denied.
“The conclusion that he lied seems rash, I think that makes no sense,” he replied, reiterating that the telephone conversation with Mendonça Mendes listed “entities” in an abstract table, including “certainly the information services”.
“Specifically, the decision belongs to the Chief of Cabinet and in this case, because he had those powers, the information system was activated by the Chief of Cabinet” of João Galamba, he said.
Source: DN
