The end of the cycle of the socialist António Costa, who came to power in 2015 with a motion of no confidence from the left, will have a special highlight in the history books, as he was the first ruler of Portugal to resign during his term in office, when he was married by a Operation judicially against corruption. After the investigative judge reduced the case presented by the public prosecutor’s office to possible influence peddling and bribery in the approval of some energy projects and a gigantic data center in Sines, the question is circulating in the country whether the current criminal signs justify this triggered an enormous political crisis that overthrew the Prime Minister, his government and an absolute majority that had not yet reached the middle of the legislative period. With a resignation that, according to the mayor of Porto, the independent Rui Moreira, caused who knows what. “I couldn’t understand what the Prime Minister was being accused of,” he emphasized over the phone.
Sometimes what happens in Lisbon can be better explained from Porto. And Moreira, who clashed with the prime minister over the decentralization process, is now dismayed by his resignation and the calling of new elections. “On the first day I had the impression that there was a certain rush, it did not seem to me that the references to the Prime Minister justified a crisis of this kind. And even worse back then was the dissolution of Parliament, which can happen if it doesn’t work, but I don’t see that it hasn’t worked now. “The country that was in a situation of stability is now entering a situation of profound instability,” he lamented. His rejection of President Rebelo de Sousa’s decision is shared by Costa, who described this Saturday’s election call as “irresponsible”. “Everything indicated that it was common sense not to trigger this political crisis,” he said at the headquarters of the Socialist Party (PS).
Criticism of the actions of the Attorney General’s Office (Prosecution Office), which announced in the last paragraph of a statement that the Supreme Court is investigating the Prime Minister, has increased after Judge Nuno Dias Costa decided to apply soft precautions and reduce alleged crimes of the five detainees, including a friend of António Costa, the lawyer Diogo Lacerda Machado and his former chief of staff Vítor Escária. This, as well as errors such as confusing the Prime Minister with his Economy Minister António Costa Silva when transcribing a wiretap or leaking it to the press, undermine the work of the three prosecutors in this case. “The justice of the public square serves hidden interests and excites the ignorant,” criticized Cândida Almeida, former director of the Central Department of Investigations and Crime, in the Jornal de Notícias, the same one that led Operation Influencer.
No one questions the independence of the prosecutor’s office in investigations or equality before the law, but voices are becoming increasingly concerned about the mismatch between the judicial process and the political crisis. “The Ministry of State has my full solidarity with the investigation, but this should have been done discreetly and informed the President of the Republic. The way in which all this was made public forced the Prime Minister to resign. And now the most worrying thing is that the President of the Republic, despite asking the Public Prosecutor’s Office to hurry, has already said that the process will be slow,” complains the President of the Municipal Chamber of Porto, who then makes the million dollar question . “What will the country think if the prime minister is later acquitted?” he asks.
“If in a few months or years we come to the conclusion that in Portugal a stable absolute majority was interrupted and everything changed because something didn’t work out, then that deserves a thorough reflection of the justice system, both internally and among the legislators. says the former minister. Socialist Alexandra Leitão during an interview in Lisbon. Leitão, a lawyer by training and coordinator of the political presentation of Pedro Nuno Santos, one of the candidates for the leadership of the new stage of the PS, recalls that since 2015 her party considered judicial matters “a taboo” that she did not share. “It is also up to the legislature to think about equity, just as they think about all public services. This is not about addressing the State Ministry’s loss of autonomy, but rather about aspects that can be improved, such as investigation deadlines or the protection of judicial secrecy in order to prevent previously acquitted people from being publicly condemned.
Of course, searches can be carried out at the Prime Minister’s residence, but the evidence must be very convincing
Alexandra Leitão, former socialist minister
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Alexandra Leitão recalls some examples from the past, such as that of Miguel Macedo, interior minister in the conservative government of Pedro Passos Coelho, who resigned in 2014 after being implicated in a corruption case. Although he was acquitted in court, the fine he had already paid had affected his career and reputation. More serious things happened in 2003 with the former socialist minister Paulo Pedroso, who spent five months in preventive detention after he was accused by the public prosecutor of having committed sexual abuse against minors housed in the public institution Casa Pía, which the judge but rejected. The Portuguese state had to compensate him 68,000 euros after he was convicted by the European Court of Human Rights, which found the reasons for his detention to be “neither relevant nor sufficient”.
“In a state based on the rule of law, the independence of the judiciary and the autonomy of the public ministry cannot be questioned, which must be able to investigate all of us without borders,” defended the former minister. However, in his opinion, this does not prevent the judiciary from weighing the impact of its actions. “Of course, searches can be carried out at the Prime Minister’s residence, but it is necessary that the evidence is very convincing and that a political crisis of this magnitude is not brought about by seemingly weak evidence,” he stressed.
Everything that has happened will fuel “left-wing and right-wing extremism,” according to the mayor of Porto, as Operation Influencer will dominate the debate until the March 10 elections. “We will launch a campaign that will draw attention to this case. People will not evaluate the parties’ proposals, but will make judgments in the public sphere about what may or may not have happened. And this is a trial by Torquemada and the Inquisition. “Inquisitions cannot occur in a democracy; that is dangerous,” he emphasizes.
“Democracy must not seethe with inquisitions, that is dangerous.”
Rui Moreira, Mayor of Porto
António Costa admitted a week ago that he was saying goodbye to his ambitions, which everyone took for granted that they passed through Brussels. “It is very likely that I will never hold public office again,” he said in a speech intended both to defend his commitment to attracting foreign investment and to distance himself from the operation’s key players, Vítor Escária and Diogo Lacerda Machado. He apologized for naming the first and assured that the second had not worked with the cabinet for years and had not received “an order” from it to “do what he did”. Costa even revoked his “best friend” status, even though the relationship between the two had not broken off. In April, they dined together and talked about family, politics and housing needs in Sines to host employees of Start Campus, the company at the epicenter of the investigation, Lacerda told the judge.
His speech that day was interpreted as a form of pressure by Adão Carvalho, president of the Union of Magistrates of the Public Ministry. “For 20 years, whenever an investigation concerns certain people who perform a certain function, some actors have tried to discredit in a certain way in public the actions of the judicial system,” he explained in an interview with Público and Radio Renascença. In his opinion, Costa should have remained prime minister. “This is cynicism,” criticized the president of the assembly, the socialist Augusto Santos Silva, in an interview with RTP, where he considered the precedent set to be “dangerous”. “In the future, part of the State Ministry will be able to determine the timing of political mandates and the topic of the political agenda,” he accused.
The legal proceedings that go down in Portuguese history usually progress slowly. The paradigm is Operation Marquis, which began in 2014 with the arrest of former socialist prime minister José Sócrates on charges of corruption, tax fraud and money laundering. The public prosecutor would accuse him of 31 crimes, which the investigating judge limited to six. The process has taken so long that some crimes are about to expire. It would be a false conclusion to a case that has shocked public opinion just as much as the current one. Sócrates, who spent almost 10 months in preventive detention and left the PS in 2018, attacked the prosecutor’s office in the Diário de Notícias on Thursday: “The investigation has been going on for four years and no one has protested against it. It is about the reasons for arrests, the ordering of searches and the expression of public suspicions, which justify the decision to investigate but do not justify violence against people.”
Economics professor and founder of the Bloco de Esquerda, Francisco Louça, believes that the detention of an arguido (suspect) while waiting to testify before the judge should be limited to cases where there is a risk of escape. “The almost year-long imprisonment of José Sócrates seemed to me to be an abuse of freedom. The court will decide whether he is guilty or not, but there was no reason to believe that there was a risk of absconding.” It was an arbitrary public demonstration, and this also happened with mayors who do not belong to the Socialist Party. “There is no biased interpretation in this procedural error,” says the economist on the phone. As part of Operation Influencer, the five prisoners spent six nights in the cell and in the end the judge only found Escária and Lacerda to be a flight risk, whose passports he confiscated, and even released the mayor of Sines, Nuno Mascarenhas, without charging him. Crime. “The normalization of detention, which has a strong media impact, an informal condemnation of a person in order to listen to his testimony, seems to me a mistake,” adds Louça, who also criticizes leaks of information in summaries that should remain secret. Nowadays it has expanded from the content of the wiretaps to private issues unrelated to the investigation, such as the possession of hashish for personal consumption by some Arguido.
The normalization of incarceration, which has a strong media impact to hear their testimony, seems to me to be a mistake
Francisco Louça, economist and founder of the Left Bloc
Louça believes that the Attorney General of the Republic, Lucília Gago, should make some statements and that the Supreme Court should speed up the investigation against the Prime Minister, although he also believes that after the arrest he would have had no choice but to resign his chief of staff. . “The political effect of this process is to create a fog over society on the eve of the elections of great importance, since Portugal has suffered a lot in the last two years,” he emphasizes, referring to the crises in health, education and Housing . , in addition to the political ups and downs caused by 14 resignations of ministers and foreign ministers in less than two years. Paradoxically, Costa’s absolute majority became more unstable than his minority governments.
“It is better that prosecutors and judges act and make mistakes rather than feeling blocked by fear of investigations,” defended former state director Manuel Carvalho in an article. The journalist warned of something else: “From what we know or what the investigating judge confirms, there are seeds of moralism in the Ministry of State that contaminate its interpretation of the criminal laws.” Perhaps the most devastating comment came from José Pacheco Pereira, historian and former MP the Social Democratic Party (PSD, center-right): “If what is found in the listening devices deserves prison, then all rulers and mayors since the consolidation of democracy must be imprisoned.” They would end up in prison.”
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