“I don’t care if he’s held responsible…” Marcelo tells reporters
Very possibly true, and certainly widely reported, is the fact that Portugal’s head of State is thoroughly disillusioned by his son, Nuno – whose pressure to ‘help’ contacts with sick twin babies in Brazil ended up costing the Portuguese health system ‘millions of euros’, jeopardising his father’s and many other people’s careers and credibility.
“It’s unforgivable”, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa is quoted as having said at an event “with journalists from around the world”.
A businessman based in Brazil, Nuno Rebelo de Sousa, 51, knew exactly what he was doing – and appears to have done it anyway.
“I don’t know if he’ll be held responsible, I don’t care. That’s one of the advantages of cutting (ties)”, the disappointed head of State told his audience.
The story was first published by Correio Braziliense, in Brazil. Picked up by Público, it is now being aired over national television.
According to Correio Braziliense, the relationship between the two “had not been good for months” before the case of the twins blasted onto the headlines. When it did, it “was the final straw (…) The rift was so serious that last Christmas there was a split in the family. The president spent the night of the 24th to the 25th at home, away from several of his grandchildren”, says the paper.
If one recalls the initial furore about how Brazilian twins came to be treated in Portugal with what was certainly then the most expensive drug in the world (Zolgensma, costing €2 million per round of treatment, for spinal muscular atrophy), Marcelo referred to his son as being ‘like any other citizen’. He has since described him as ‘grown up and vaccinated’, suggesting little sign of fatherly affection.
All the while, the controversy has continued to grind on fairly miserably – implicating the former Secretary of State for Health, António Lacerda Sales, among others – with IGAS, the general inspectorate of health activities, concluding ‘strings were indeed pulled’, and the whole case essentially ‘stinks’ – it is up to public prosecutors now to decide by how much, and who will be blamed.
A curious aside, published by Correio Braziliense, refers to a recent trip to Portugal by Nuno Rebelo de Sousa “disguised with a baseball cap and dark glasses”.
