Cases that, according to judges setting bail, show scant sign of crime …
Pressure is intensifying on Portugal’s Attorney General Lucília Gago to ‘explain herself’, and the actions of her prosecutors, over cases that have toppled two governments (one in a situation of absolute majority), and then been found ‘lacking’.
It is no longer a situation of various political figures demanding Ms Gago’s resignation. The subject has now been taken up by parliamentary president José Pedro Aguiar-Branco who believes she must speak “to avoid creating a climate of suspicion”.
“None of us want to believe in premeditated behaviour on the left, or the right, to provoke a certain political fact through a criminal investigation, but the truth is that no-one lives alone in this world, and this needs to be explained”, he told Antena 1’s Geometria Variável programme.
“If it is explained – and if the situation when explained makes it clear that suspicion does not exist, I think we are contributing to these two worlds living together in a healthier way for democracy”.
It was a roundabout way of saying: “these investigations appear to have worked in the way of political coups – what were the compelling reasons for them?”
When his interviewer asked the parliamentary president if he thought justice was ‘trampling on democracy’, the former minister of Justice (in the short-lived PSD government of Santana Lopes, 2004-2005) said he “could not make a conclusion of that nature”. But – perhaps in the event that other people have – he stressed: “I think that parliament is the space of excellence” for the kind of clarification that “the Portuguese can understand”.
The two specific cases looming over Lucília Gago are Operation Influencer, in which judges considering the evidence have (twice) concluded it doesn’t stack up, and the corruption investigation in Madeira, which saw a judge setting bail terms suggest very much the same.
In the Azores at the beginning of last month, the Attorney General hit back at critics in the public space, suggesting the Public Prosecutor’s Office was facing attacks from ‘multiple forces’.
natasha.donn@portugalresident.com
