Attorney General denies “political timings” in yesterday’s swoop on alleged PS Socialist web of favours – Portugal Resident

Yesterday’s news about widespread ‘searches’ into a suspected web of cronyism and favours involving various PS Socialist municipal entities came just at the time when the PS party nationally is ‘bouncing back’ – bumping the popularity of Luís Montenegro’s AD government well into second place.

And this is why a number of figures within the party have queried the timing of this inquiry (particularly as its focus is something that many will not even see as ‘particularly censorious’: political parties have always favoured their own in business/ the hiring of services: this is the way things have worked in Portugal for decades, if not longer).

But it isn’t just PS Socialists suggesting there is a ‘cabal’ against the socialist party. Former leader of Iniciativa Liberal, Rui Rocha, has also joined dots in this process, and others (or certainly believes that he has). 

Yesterday, as the headlines were updating everyone on the number of people arrested in the PJ’s ‘Operação Imergente’, Rocha was seated in the parliamentary commission for Rights, Liberties and Guarantees, questioning the Attorney General, Amadeu Guerra, his second in command, Paulo Morgado do Carvalho, and the director of DCIAP (the department of criminal investigation and penal action), ostensibly to probe the conclusions of an audit that flagged “several problems and failings” at DCIAP, the department of the public prosecutor’s office dedicated to the most complex type of criminality. And Rocha asked, straight up, if agendas were being dictated “by other types of interests”, other than judicial ones.

“Absolutely not”, came Guerra’s answer. “I have never had timings.

“We are not tacticians. My experience tells me one thing: when, out of caution, we don’t issue the order, we don’t decide, it will be worse later. Other things can happen that we are not expecting, and then it’s worse (…) I don’t pay attention to polls. (…) Obviously, there will be people who say that ‘the director of the DCIAP said that there are no political timings, but there are, and we know what they are’. What I want to ask you, and the people, is to remain calm, we have absolutely no situation of political timings.” 

And as to a furious letter written to President Seguro by Judge Ivo Rosa, complaining of “criminal persecution” by the public prosecutor’s office (simply because he made decisions that went against contentions of public prosecutors), again Guerra was dismissive. “We treat all citizens equally,” he said, albeit, Judge Rosa’s letter is “being analysed”.

For now, it is unclear whether Amadeu Guerra’s explanations will have changed the views of those who believe the whole investigation bursting across the nation’s television sets yesterday was ‘manufactured’, for maximum effect.

The four people arrested – including the current PS leader’s communications advisor Duarte Moral, and his wife Rute Reimão – who has provided services for the Santa Maria Maior parish council since 2017) – are due to be presented before a magistrate later today, to hear whether or not they can be released, and if so, under what terms.

The so-called ‘epicentre’ of this investigation, former Santa Maria Maior parish council president Miguel Coelho, has already suspended his mandate on Lisbon’s Municipal Assembly.

Source material: Lusa/ Correio da Manhã