Liberal leader dubs move “an affront to the Portuguese people”
Prime Minister Luís Montenegro submitted a new declaration of interests to the Transparency Portal, less than 24-hours before he faces his ‘arch rival’, PS secretary general Pedro Nuno Santos on air this evening.
The news is reported by Expresso, which says that the declaration was submitted at almost midnight on Tuesday.
According to Expresso, the document includes seven new companies for which Montenegro provided services while representing the family firm that led to the fall of the government, Spinumviva. The companies are Rodáreas, Instituto Técnico de Alimentação Humana, Sogenave, Portugalenses Transportes, Beetsteel, INETUM Portugal and Grupel SA.
For these companies, Montenegro says he has provided consultancy services for company restructuring and strategic planning, says Expresso.
Rodáreas is part of the Joaquim Barros Rodrigues & Filhos Group – the Braga petrol company that became Spinumviva’s biggest client while it was managed by Luís Montenegro and which is on a list of the PSD party’s main financiers.
The Braga petrol station paid Spinumviva almost €200,000 for contracted services, which represented a peak in invoicing in 2022 (before Mr Montenegro signed over his shares in the company to his wife). It also donated €30,500 to the PSD, €27,000 of which were donated from 2021, when Montenegro was elected president of the PSD party.
News of this new declaration of interests (involving companies that receive considerable sums of money from the state) has infuriated the leader of Iniciativa Liberal, Rui Rocha, who accuses the prime minister of “playing with the country”.
Why otherwise has Luís Montenegro only released this information now, before the much-anticipated 70-minute debate with Pedro Nuno Santos?
Calling the whole sequence of events an “affront to the Portuguese people”, Rui Rocha queried what the sense has been behind dragging the country into new legislative elections if the data that every political opponent has been baying for has always been there, but not released until now. Why did the PM not provide it long before the crisis brought the government down?
“Why did you wait so long? Are you managing this matter tactically, depending on the day of the debates? I believe this is absolutely unacceptable and means that you are not up to your responsibilities,” he said.
Rui Rocha didn’t stop there. He also criticised PS secretary-general Pedro Nuno Santos suggesting he too has been performing tactically, expressing “advances and retreats on the need or not for a parliamentary commission of inquiry” into Spinumviva.
“I really ask: are Luís Montenegro and Pedro Nuno Santos playing with the country? Are they playing with the Portuguese people? (…) Don’t they realise that there are so many things, so many challenges, so many problems in Portugal, from health to housing, from security to economic growth, that they should behave like adults in this matter (…) I believe that they have not done so and they deserve all the political condemnation for this lack of sense of state, for this lack of respect for the Portuguese people”, he said, almost despairingly adding “what are these people doing to the country?”
Spinumviva controversy doesn’t seem to have affected PM
An ICS/ISCTE poll for SIC/Expresso, released last week, showed that a large proportion of those questioned recognised Luís Montenegro’s qualities more than those of Pedro Nuno Santos. Even after the controversies of Spinumviva, etc., more than half of those polled (55%) said that their opinion of Montenegro ‘stayed the same’. There are 40% who say they have a worse opinion of the prime minister – and only 3% who say they have a better opinion of the AD leader.
Everything could change of course, depending on the outcome/ performance of both men in tonight’s debate. ND
Source: LUSA
