Daniela Martins’ testimony adds further confusion to story that has gripped nation’s media
Yesterday, Portugal’s media focused on the spectacle in parliament of a tearful mother being ‘grilled’ over how her chronically ill children came to be treated with ‘the most expensive medication in the world’ on the State SNS health service.
There was not one question in the gruelling five hours on the health of her children, or how the girls have been developing since their €4 million euro treatment. It was all about who emailed whom; who knew whom; how deeply the President of the Republic might be involved, etc etc.
This is all this inquiry is really about – trying to disprove President Marcelo’s mantra that he stopped having anything to do with any of it in the very early days; that he did not ‘pull strings’ as the original TVI report suggested.
Commentators assessing the afternoon yesterday said they had never seen anything more humiliating: MPs acting as if they were a court of law, firing questions at a mother whose life has clearly been a living hell since TVI’s story broke, even costing her her marriage. “This is not what parliamentary inquiries should be about”, said one, on SIC Notícias.
CHEGA, the right-wing party whose MP Rui Paulo Sousa is actually chairing the inquiry, came under the most criticism for displaying a distinct ‘lack of compassion’.
Political commentator Maria João Avillez said the twins’ mother was “treated as if she had murdered her daughters. She is not a defendant, she is not guilty: she did what any decent mother would do, which is knock on every single door” for an answer to save the lives of her very sick babies, she said.
As it was, the intense questioning threw up ‘even more inconsistencies’ to a story that has been inconsistent from the start.
There is a saying in Portugal that when something “is born crooked, it never straightens out”. That is this story in a nutshell: it was ‘born crooked’.
Yesterday, Luso-Brazilian Daniela Martins (her grandparents were born in Portugal) accused the original television exposé that set off this endless ‘drama’ of having “laid a trap” for her, pretending to be interested in her children’s state of health following their treatment, instead of in producing an exposé to suggest Portugal’s head of State was responsible for them getting preferential treatment.
She admitted that footage filmed without her knowledge, in her own home, did indeed show her ‘boasting’ of having had a network of influences, but she said: “I made a mistake… I said something that wasn’t true out of vanity at the time”.
With media reports minutely following the whole five hours, the bottom line is that this is also a case that is under investigation by public prosecutors – and if there are any charges to be made, they will come from this investigation, not the parliamentary commission.
For now, there are three ‘official suspects’ in the frame for possible crimes of prevarication, abuse of power, influence trafficking and even qualified fraud: the son of President Marcelo, Dr Nuno Rebelo de Sousa, former assistant secretary of State António Lacerda Sales and former clinical director at Santa Maria Hospital (where the twins were treated with ‘Zolgensma’ at a purported €2 million each) Luís Pinheiro. According to reports, there are already inconsistencies in the accounts of Dr Nuno and Lacerda Sales, adding to the inconsistencies from almost every single other source.
Next ‘up’ before the commission could be any of the following – journalist Sandra Felgueiras (whose reporting team initially broke the story), president of the Institute of Registries and Notaries Filomena Rosa, former Justice Minister Catarina Sarmento e Castro and former Secretary of State for the Portuguese Communities Berta Nunes, as well as current health minister Ana Paula Martins (who at the time of TVI’s exposé was president of the board of directors at the Lisbon North hospital centre which includes Santa Maria Hospital).
As of yesterday, that list has seen former Socialist prime minister António Costa added to it, albeit he will be able to address the commission in writing.
PS Socialists have registered their outrage at the decision to call Mr Costa, suggesting it is simply CHEGA (who proposed the call) trying to blacken his name at a point where he is being considered for a top job in Brussels.
natasha.donn@portugalresident.com
