Right wingers accused of ‘exploiting’ Marcelo’s comments for media exposure
CHEGA, Portugal’s third political force, found itself completely isolated in parliament today, after forcing an emergency debate on the comments by President Marcelo on colonial reparations.
Not one political voice outside of CHEGA ‘played ball’ in the debate.
Indeed, the party has been accused of shamelessly exploiting the president’s comments to receive media exposure.
Certainly, CHEGA leader André Ventura was on customary form in parliament, describing how the statements stood as a “betrayal without parallel” in Portuguese history.
Ostensibly speaking for former combatants and returnees (citizens who fled from former colonies, to live in Portugal), he suggested that if there is ‘anything to pay’ anyone, it would be for the outside world to pay Portugal…
Ventura asked the government – represented by foreign affairs minister Paulo Rangel – if it would “ever make a move” to make reparations to the former colonies – glossing over the fact that the government has already made its position perfectly clear.
Regina Bastos, for PSD social democrats, pointed out that even in a free society, where people are able to exercise opinions, there are “forbidden topics and legitimised censorship”. It is a statement that cuts both ways (critics have said, Marcelo should not have stepped into this political minefield, particularly during a four-hour dinner date with foreign journalists…)
For the PSD, Portugal has a smooth relationship with its former colonies, and “exemplary institutional relations”, she went on.
It is only with “respect and reconciliation with the common past that we can cooperate and grow” – with cooperation “being a cornerstone of bilateral relations”.
In short, according to Bastos, it was not the president’s statements that created a media uproar: “it was the political exploitation of his statements that created it, and continues to fule it”.
How did the urgent debate end? According to Diário de Notícias, “CHEGA was accused of fomenting hate, using false juridical arguments, having its leader negatively compared with Miguel de Vasconcelos, who governed Portugal in the final phase of the dynastic union with Spain and was assassinated during the Restoration of National Independence”.
Source material: LUSA
