Socialists accuse PM of “actively contributing to degradation of institutions”
The government’s attempts to wriggle out of political crisis are being thwarted at every turn today: PS Socialists are calling for a parliamentary commission of inquiry into the prime minister’s family business, while other parties in opposition are equally unflinching in their criticism. LIVRE describing the executive of Luís Montenegro as a ‘government that is neither alive, nor dead’.
Political commentators have explained that a parliamentary commission of inquiry, while long-winded, is a way of ‘slow cooking’ the prime minister and forcing him to answer the questions he has been avoiding.
Speaking to journalists last night, PS secretary general Pedro Nuno Santos showed that Socialists have taken care to follow all the necessary protocols. Unlike the PM (who eschewed the president’s suggestion of discussing his strategy before addressing the nation on Saturday), Pedro Nuno Santos said he had spoken with President Marcelo already, and has asked him for an audience. “Institutional relations between a government, a prime minister, and even a leader of the opposition and the country’s president are crucial for the proper functioning of our democracy”, he pointed out.
“Our duty is to do everything we can to protect the regime and that means doing everything we can to find out the truth”, he said, adding that he doesn’t make this request “with any pleasure” and that he knows “how tough a parliamentary commission of inquiry is”.
“Unfortunately the prime minister gives us no other alternative.”
A commission of inquiry is the last regimental option that the PS has at its disposal to “ensure the right to know the truth”.
A motion of censure tabled by the PS could follow, but for now parliament will be debating a second motion of censure, tabled by PCP communists, tomorrow.
As to the commission of inquiry, Pedro Nuno Santos’ intention is that it will be “potestative, without a vote, and chaired by the PS”.
“The prime minister makes a statement to the country and doesn’t make himself available to answer questions, but then he sends five ministers to five television stations. The prime minister has closed off any chance of further clarification and at the moment there is no political mechanism available to us to find out the truth,” the PS leader explained.
“The worst thing that can happen to our democracy is for us to go through this process without finding out everything that happened,” he argued, questioning how it has been possible for a prime minister “not to have been in an exclusive position and to have continued to receive payments from companies” throughout his current tenure.
In Pedro Nuno Santos’ eyes, the PS “did not create this political crisis. We are not a factor of instability,” but seeking to “protect the regime, the institutions”, can only happen if we can “find out the truth”.
In the meantime, the increasingly fragilised prime minister has stressed that he will be asking the Entity for Transparency to audit compliance of all his declarative obligations as prime minister to prove it.
