Almost 48-hours on from the worst human tragedy to visit Lisbon this century, knives are beginning to ‘come out’ – and they are all pointing at Lisbon City Council.
Early this morning, we had the statement from CIL, the Lisbon committee of Workers, which dropped some very larded comments about the “deallocation of four million euros from the mobility budget (last year) and the allocation of funding of the same amount to the Lisbon Web Summit”, demanding rigorous analysis of the decisions and policies adopted by Lisbon City Council and the management of Carris, the company in charge of public transports in the capital.
Now, CHEGA councillor Bruno Mascarenhas has presented a ‘motion of censure’ against the municipality’s executive, “demanding accountability for the accident” that claimed 16 lives on Wednesday evening.
“We have drafted a document that constitutes a motion of censure against this executive, to be discussed precisely next Tuesday”, Mascarenhas told a press conference at the party’s headquarters in Lisbon.
“(Mayor) Moedas, if he so wishes, and if he is not absent, will be in a position to discuss this issue with us,” the councillor added.
The Lisbon Municipal Assembly, in which Chega is represented by a group of three councillors, can vote on motions of censure against the City Council “in evaluation of the action taken by the same or any of its members”, as provided for in the rules of procedure of that body, explains Lusa.
Party leader André Ventura has already suggested that Lisbon City Council is ultimately responsible for the funicular disaster, as Carris is a public company under municipal management.
“I find it difficult that in these circumstances, as has already happened in other cases in Portugal, which resulted in fatalities, the head of the department will not take responsibility,” he has said, recalling that in 2021, Carlos Moedas was calling for the resignation of the then Mayor of Lisbon, Fernando Medina, following the scandal in which the personal data of anti-Putin protestors was passed to the Russian embassy.
“What would Carlos Moedas, who requested the resignation of Fernando Medina for transmitting data to the Russian embassy, even if it was a technical error, say to Moedas in 2025, after 16 deaths occurred in the centre of the capital and several injuries. Were they not also technical errors?
“This question never stops echoing in my head, about politicians who constantly demand accountability, but when their time to assume that responsibility comes, they try to blame it on everyone except themselves and their administration,” Ventura went on, not directly calling for Moedas’ resignation. Indeed, up to this point, no political figure has.
“This is the time to care for the victims and also to support the families of those who died”, said Ventura. “But looking the other way, pretending that no one should be held accountable or that no responsibility should be assigned is a tremendous mistake from a political point of view (…) demanding accountability is not political gain.”
Also creeping into the headlines is the ‘drip-drip’ of information suggesting Carris workers were aware that ‘something’ was not right in the workings of the Glória funicular – but as daily inspections did not flag anything, there was little that they could do.
Público today is running with the possibility that a ‘working part’ of the mechanism that was not visible may have been the cause of Wednesday’s tragedy… “a failure in the fastening”, for example, of the cable, not in the cable itself.
All this will be painstakingly investigated by the technical inspections that are now ongoing, but stories are increasingly emerging of people riding the funicular before the crash (people who rode it regularly), and sensing ‘a difference’.
“Among Carris employees who worked with the Glória lift, there was a feeling that the system was not working perfectly”, says Público.
Small signs, “only noticeable to those familiar with the equipment”, indicated that there were overload problems.
As the paper explains, there was a feeling that the cabins swayed more than they used to. In addition, there was a ‘rattling’ noise when the lift was in operation.
Interestingly, in a report made to RTP on Thursday, Abel Esteves, who lives in Bairro Alto and said he had been using this lift almost daily for many years, strangely reported feeling unsafe when descending the lift about an hour before the accident.
Público also refers to the funicular’s wheels, which showed “a serious maintenance failure because they were smooth and without flanges”
Perhaps most startling of all the points raised by Público was the reduction in the number of maintenance crew when the funicular (and other lifts and cable-trams like it) were taken out of Carris’ care, and passed to privatehands.
“The outsourcing of maintenance activity, attributed by public tender, had as a sole criterion the lowest price, reducing from 24 to six the number of people making up part of the maintenance team for the funiculars/ lifts in the city.
As well as this, permanent (round-the-clock) maintenance was “substituted by daily checks” (as took place on Wednesday morning).
Source material: LUSA/ Público/ ZAP
