CHEGA threatens no confidence motion over government’s continuing support for Minister Luís Neves – Portugal Resident

The leader of right-wing populist party CHEGA has given the government until Tuesday to “resolve the situation of the Minister of Internal Affairs” – threatening a motion of no confidence if nothing changes.

Considering that media allegations and reports concerning the minister, a former national director of the PJ criminal police, have reached a “grotesque” and “unacceptable” level, André Ventura claims his party “does not want to cause any political crisis” (a no confidence motion could, arguably, prompt such a crisis).

“If this ethical standard ceases to exist, if we do not have this situation resolved, we will join the appeal made by the President of the Republic and will present a motion of no confidence on Tuesday, on the 1st (of September), in parliament”, André Ventura told reporters on the sidelines of a visit to a social centre in Coimbra yesterday. 

The CHEGA leader stressed that in his eyes the government is ‘compromising the credibility of the institutions’. 

“I repeat: CHEGA does not want to cause any political crisis. CHEGA wants there to be a minimum of ethics in the institutions and wants this situation of muck, of quagmire, of suspicions, of crime, of collusion, to be resolved”.

As reports have remarked, “for Ventura, the President of the Republic, António José Seguro, “did well” in the ultimatum he reportedly gave the government to resolve Luís’s situation before the start of the parliamentary committee of inquiry related to the case.

“This has reached such a grotesque and incomprehensible level, something never seen in our democracy: I think there will not be a single Portuguese person, whether more right-wing, more left-wing, more centrist, who does not say this: Luís Neves has absolutely no conditions to continue. He is dragging the institutions into the muck and we cannot be in the muck: the country has to have dignified and credible institutions”.

Ventura also accused prime minister, Luís Montenegro, of “appearing to have no authority over Luís Neves, to be afraid or to be constrained.

“All that’s left is for us to have a minister who is some kind of Al Capone or something like that and for them to say: he’s already killed three or four people, but that’s how it is, things go on…”

Anyone truly listening to Ventura’s remarks might sense an air of desperation here. Nothing in the gamut of press exposés this far has suggested that the current minister of Interior Administration has done anything near ‘killing three or four people…”

Reacting to Ventura’s remarks, PSD party spokesperson Sebastião Bugalho has played down the ‘threat’, and indeed the idea that this was an ‘ultimatum’, saying that it is time for André Ventura to “settle down”.

CHEGA’s position falls very much into the situation outlined only a few days ago by political grandee, Luís Marques Mendes, who stressed it is time for political parties to “act with humility, a sense of responsibility, and some political understanding”, instead of constantly being at each other’s throats.

For now, we will just have to ‘wait until Tuesday’, to see what happens next: the government has been at pains, ostensibly, to rally around Luís Neves, and reconfirm support for his continuing in his ministerial role; the president has not issued any ‘ultimata’, but has stressed the need for various situations to be properly clarified – and CHEGA may have played itself into a corner. The party could indeed present a motion of confidence, but finding support for it might not be so straightforward.

Source material: LUSA/ Correio da Manhã