The trip of Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, Augusto Santos Silva and António Costa to the World Cup in Qatar was the subject of program The Uncertainty Principle of TSF and CNN Portugal🇧🇷 Deputy Alexandra Leitão says that the Assembly of the Republic will not be responsible if it rejects the visit of the head of state. For the former minister, the Portuguese rulers should not go.
“First, they should not go, whether or not they have authorization from the Assembly, because the Prime Minister and the President of the Assembly of the Republic do not have to have authorization from the Assembly, but they should not go, because it is not business diplomacy, it is not a representation of the State, is going to see a football game, no matter how important the national team is”, defends Alexandra Leitão.
The deputy refers that the authorization of the Assembly “has always been considered a mere procedure.” “In any case, whatever the result of what happens in the Assembly, it is my opinion that this does not have the effect of holding the Assembly jointly and severally responsible, whether or not for the departure of the President of the Republic.”
Historian Pacheco Pereira questions the reverence that politics gives to soccer.
“Right now there is a clear guarantee to go to Qatar. This guarantee of going to Qatar is a guarantee for the regime, for the violence, which then poisons from within, ”he says, recalling the case of the Amnesty International T-shirts. “Preventive measures are already being taken that, in practice, violate the freedom of people, including those people who will go to Qatar.”
The former centrist leader António Lobo Xavier does not understand the controversy surrounding the celebration of the World Cup in Qatar, but stresses that soccer does not justify traveling.
“I do not like to see the President of the Republic, the Prime Minister and the President of the Assembly of the Republic, all running to Cuba for soccer, in a World Cup in Cuba, I did not like that they went to that type of country for soccer issues,” he says.
Lobo Xavier recalls that António Costa was in Qatar in 2017 on a “mission aimed at finding interest in buying public debt and also talking to local investors to invest in Portugal”. “We can put all this in doubt, but we have to understand each other.”
Source: TSF
