Court wants to try José Sócrates; Tutti Frutti gathering steam; Influencer probe separated
Expresso today carries the headline that judicial cases threaten to “ride roughshod” through the looming election campaign. And if the paper’s various texts are anything to go by, it is not just PS Socialists that might be feeling a chill under their collars: PSD MPs are also said to be implicated in the long-running corruption probe known bizarrely as Tutti-Frutti.
But the lion’s share of investigations do seem to centre on the PS party: Expresso suggests it is ‘make or break’ in the decade-long ‘case’ against former prime minister José Sócrates. If events play one way, the courts are described as wanting to have Mr Sócrates on trial in March (just as the country chooses its next government); if they play another, the whole list of accusations could collapse (as most people predicted they would back in 2014).
Operation Influencer meantime has been ‘separated’ (in the interest of speed) into three separate probes (one into suspicions of influence trafficking in the creation of the Sines Data Center; one into the green-lighting of plans for green hydrogen (also in Sines) and another over the extraction of lithium in Montalegre and Boticas (this latter already the subject of bitter dispute locally).
Tutti Frutti, says the paper, has gone from “almost six years into the doldrums” to a case that is moving “at great speed; a case giving great priority to achieving rapid and concrete results”. And in Tutti Frutti there are suspicions hanging over some of the leading members of the current government, namely Finance Minister Fernando Medina, and environment minister Duarte Cordeiro.
All told, the next few months of political campaigning promise to be anything but ‘plain sailing’.
Expresso adds that the results of a new poll show “only 28% of those questioned believe in the government” and 72% consider that corruption (in public office) continues to increase, or worse, has increased a lot in the last year. This latter perception is, says Expresso, playing into the hands of CHEGA, albeit the party so far is getting no hint that it will be welcomed into any kind of future centre-right alliance.
