CHEGA calls for PM to resign, or present motion of confidence
The constant drip-drip of damaging soundbites in the media over business connections of the prime minister (and other members of the executive) has prompted CHEGA leader André Ventura today to call for Luís Montenegro to resign, or present a motion of confidence.
The populist approach of ‘attack from every direction’ to keep up distraction has been helped along by revelations in Expresso today that the PM’s family business Spinumviva (already in the public eye for possible conflicts of interest) receives a €4,500 monthly retainer from the Solverde casino and hotels/ spa franchise.
Several political figures, and pundits, have stressed the best way forwards is for the Montenegro family to give up on Spinumviva completely: just walk away from it, taking nothing – but up until now, this has not happened.
Rui Rocha, leader of Iniciativa Liberal, has said again today: “ The Prime Minister has to decide whether he wants to remain Prime Minister of Portugal or whether he wants to have a business activity. We have realised that the two things cannot be combined – and the prime minister should have realised that by now (…) What the country cannot do, at a time when we are going through so much national uncertainty, is be permanently in this kind of situation,” he said, stressing the prime minister cannot be seen to accumulate income from a business activity while he is a prime minister. “People have to make choices in life: they have a mission, they were elected, they have every right to be prime ministers, but that implies choices…” As for the PM’s insistence that he “will ask to be excused from any proceedings in which there is a conflict of interest”, Rocha refuses to buy it: it’s not even possible, he says.
But it is the CHEGA leader who has really thrown down the gauntlet – saying ‘resign’ or present a motion of confidence (which in some ways Montenegro should be able to survive, as none of the parties really want elections at this point, possibly not even CHEGA which has been through the mill with scandals over the last few weeks).
Ventura’s challenge is thus much more ‘for publicity’, and he is making the most of it: “Unless the Prime Minister is comfortable with being the new José Sócrates of Portuguese politics, there is only one way for Montenegro to get out of this with a minimum of credibility and integrity. He must present his resignation to the President of the Republic today or submit a motion of confidence in parliament,” he has written over social network X.
