It’s another bend in the road for battling Aljezur mayor José Amarelinho, but sources suggest it is “no way the end” of the fight.
News coming in late last night was that the Constitutional Court has “rejected” the complaint lodged by Amarelinho against a six-year legal process that has found him ‘guilty’ of planning infractions at least three times (click here).
The inference is that there is now no way of avoiding the sentence confirmed by Évora’s appeal court last year which boils down to a loss of public mandate and hefty fine (to avoid the alternative: a three-year-two-month stint in jail).
But sources in the town that has become synonymous with the fight against gas and oil prospection along the Algarve/Alentejo coast confirm their three-term mayor is “holding on to the back of his chair”.
“He is not ready to go. He is determined to press his case”, we have been told.
Talk centres on a “complaint to Europe” though the specifics have not been further explained.
National media reports that Amarelinho “reserves a reaction until next week” – so there is no clarification there, either.
Observador explains that the Constitutional Court ruling – purportedly dated February 22 – considers that the mayor’s complaint – along with the complaint lodged by Manuel Marreiros, who was mayor during the years in question – “in no way undermined the foundations of the contested (judicial) decision”.
Indeed, the Public Ministry is understood to have considered that both complaints lacked “legitimacy” because neither “enunciated with the minimum clarity, rigor or autonomy any question of unconstitutionality”.
On the face of it today the situation is looking bleak. But it has looked bleak before, and Amarelinho and Marreiros have soldiered on – admittedly the latter now ‘retired’ from public life and practising law.
Thus it remains to be seen what kind of “reaction” will come from the man who led his party to another resounding victory in the local elections less than six months ago.
Certainly, in the town itself no one is taking the ‘news’ very seriously. As one businessman explained: “This does not affect his position now. The loss of mandate referred to a different time. Not this mandate…”
natasha.donn@algarveresident.com
Photo: From the ASMAA archives, Amarelinho speaking at an anti-oil rally in Aljezur last summer
