The dismal story of how a government car, carrying a minister on official business, mowed down and killed a motorway roadworker simply refuses to go away.
Today, even after former interior minister Eduardo Cabrita announced his resignation (click here), there are new revelations which question his position in the drama.
According to reports, the only reason Mr Cabrita was in no way considered responsible for the car was because a PSP agent charged with his personal security was travelling with him.
As such, Mr Cabrita was not deemed to be âthe person in chargeâ.
However today it appears that the PSP agent was actually in a car travelling behind – on the orders of Mr Cabrita.
In other words, technically Mr Cabrita WAS the person in charge of the vehicle, albeit that he was not driving.
This has always been the crux of this story: why the car was travelling at such speed that it could not swerve to avoid road worker Nuno Santos.
As commentators have observed, there was no emergency, no ‘higher public interest’ to justify breaking the speed limit.
For months, the true speed was kept âsecretâ. But the accusation drawn up last Friday has at least been put out in the open: 163 km/h – 40kms/hour over the official maximum limit.
The new issues are âwho really was in charge of the vehicle – given that Marco Pontes was âjust the driverâ; and why was Mr Cabritaâs security detail ordered to travel in a separate car?
Jornal i has answers to these questions: âIf we are to believe the accusation, the car looked more like a bus for transporting large numbers of people. It confirms that there were five people in the car, when in fact there were only four: the driver Marco Pontes, beside him Paulo Machado, the GNR official for the ministry, behind Eduardo Cabrita and one of his assistants David Rodriguesâ.Â
According to what the paper has established from PSP sources, âthe fifth witnessâ referred to in the accusation – RogĂ©rio Meleiro, an element of the security detail – was travelling âby decision and order of the minister in a car behind, accompanied by two other colleagues”.
âThe same source affirmed that he did not understand this change as, according to the rules, the minister’s personal security must always travel in the car with him âbecause it is he who controls everything that goes on, analyses whatever danger may transpireâ. More specifically, âhe is the only person who has legitimacy to demand going faster, or slower, whether or not emergency lights should be used; whether or not sirens should be sounded, changes in direction – in other words, he is responsible for facing any bulletsâ.
The «source suggests that putting agent Meleiro in the same car as the minister (as the Public Ministry accusation has) âlooks like someone wanted to remove responsibilities (from Mr Cabrita).
“The problem is that you cannot alter his (the ministerâs) statement, nor those of the others with whom he was travellingâ – meaning all these prove agent Meleiro was travelling in a different car.
And if agent Meleiro was travelling in a different car, âhe couldnât have given any instructions to the driver. He also could not have affirmed that the minister didnâtâ (which is what Eduardo Cabrita has said. He told investigators that he âgave no orientation to the driver on this matterâ.
Another interesting point established by Jornal i is that âafter the date of the accident the Minister for Internal Administration never again dispensed with the presence of an element of his security detail in his (official) vehicleâ.
For now, this new twist in the story is simply âout thereâ, like the speed of the BMW series 7 – which itself, bizarrely, used to be the car of a drug-dealer (click here).
The trial of Marco Pontes is still a long way off. His lawyer has intimated that she may well request the opening of what is called âthe instruction phaseâ because of the âincongruenciesâ in the Public Ministry inquiry, while the lawyer for the family of Nuno Santos has said he too is pondering the same thing, in order to try and get Eduardo Cabrita to “assume criminal responsibility”.
