No-one who has just announced a massive financial and impetus boost to tackle Portugal’s housing crisis would want to be on the front pages again today, for bending the truth. But this is what has happened to prime minister Luís Montenegro.
Tackled by reporters after his uplifting news at the close of the PSD Summer University in Castelo de Vide yesterday, he insisted that the nation’s best selling tabloid is peddling “nonsense”.
A subsequent statement issued by the PM’s office stated that: “Contrary to what was reported, the (PM’s) opposition (to public access) did not focus on 55 properties. It refers only to six urban properties that constitute his habitual residence and the residential addresses of his closest family. This opposition request is directly based on the law and, therefore, was granted by the Transparency Entity.
“The request submitted to the Transparency Entity was exclusively aimed at ensuring the protection of sensitive personal data that allows the identification of the Prime Minister’s own home and family addresses, as is the case with other political office holders,” the statement continued.
“Public disclosure of the addresses of these residences, through documents that identify them, constitutes an increased risk to the security of the Prime Minister and his family, implying the mobilisation of public security resources that prove impractical and costly to the public purse,” it went on.
The note highlights that “all property records for the respective urban and rural properties owned by the Prime Minister are archived at the Transparency Entity” for the purposes of controlling assets and income.
Luís Montenegro further argues that the protection requested for the six urban properties “does not in the least harm the scrutiny and access to documents demonstrating the conditions of acquisition, such as public deeds.”
“Claiming otherwise implies bad faith and perversion of facts,” he says.
All of which would be perfectly understandable if it were true.
CM’s deputy editorial director Eduardo Dâmaso suggests that it isn’t. In a column this morning headlined “nonsense and truth”, he claims that “the prime minister has a bad relationship with the freedom of the press, but with the truth it is no better. He issued a statement correcting himself after describing CM’s report (to reporters) as “nonsense”. In the end, he confirmed his opposition (to public access), citing security reasons due to the addresses. He says he only did so in relation to six properties, and not the 55. False: the matrix (registration details/ location) is missing for all 55 properties.
“He also said that the deeds (of all the properties) were archived with the Transparency entity. More sand in people’s eyes. They are there for the PJ (police) and Public Prosecutors, as part of an eventual inquiry – not for the scrutiny of journalists.
“There is something strange in this discomfort with transparency, but we will not give up trying to find out what it is”, says the paper, whose ‘exclusives’, such as this one are always widely reported, and have a habit of prising open the locks of many Pandora’s Boxes.
Source: Correio da Manhã
