On Tuesday, Chega asked the prime minister and his deputy secretary of state, Mendonço Mendez, to hand over to the TAP commission of inquiry the correspondence with the infrastructure minister on the night Sosna’s computer was stolen from former deputy Frederico.
“Today, Chega submitted a request to the Prime Minister to pass on all communications with Minister Joao Galamba on the night of events, as well as all communications between the Assistant Secretary of State and the Minister of Infrastructure,” Chega’s president said at a press conference. press conference at the party’s headquarters in Lisbon.
The request was not released to the media, but André Ventura indicated that the aim is for António Costa and António Mendonza Mendez to “voluntarily” hand over the messages they had with Joao Galamba on the night of April 26, “in which the computer disappeared, in which there was a beating at the Ministry of Infrastructure and in which a number of organizations such as PSP, PJ and SIS were resorted to.
The Chega leader said he had “strong suspicions that the Prime Minister is lying” and that it was António Costa who “instructed Minister João Galamba to enlist the assistance of SIS” regarding the recovery of a computer taken by former deputy Frederico Pinheiro.
Ventura accused the prime minister of being “afraid of being investigated, afraid of scrutiny, and afraid of being accused of abuse of power for mistreating public services on matters of a highly partisan nature”, urging Costa to appear before the commission of inquiry.
“Recourse to the state apparatus for purely party purposes or to protect Minister João Galamba goes beyond all limits,” he criticized, saying that the government “is taking, if not final, then at least even more humiliating steps.”
President Chegi also asked for the intervention of the President of the Republic, arguing that “there are times in history when it is important to make a decision, regardless of the electoral consequences that flow from it.”
“The country is sinking every day, institutions are degrading every day. The President of the Republic cannot remain indifferent to this degradation,” he stressed.
André Ventura also insisted that an appeal to a parliamentary commission of inquiry to investigate the operation of the information system would be “inevitable” in this case, and welcomed PSD’s “openness on the viability of Chega’s proposal”.
Anticipating that the PS would “try to obstruct” the creation of this commission of inquiry, the leader of Chegi appealed to the SDP to set up a mandatory commission if the proposals of Chega and the Liberal Initiative to this end were accepted. ‘unsuccessful’.
On Monday, the SDP parliamentary leader indicated that the party would vote on the requests already submitted by Chega and IL to set up a parliamentary commission to investigate the disclosure of the “secret” and was considering its own initiative.
A minimum of 46 MPs is needed to move forward a parliamentary commission of inquiry, and the SDP is the only party with enough MPs to be able to impose a parliamentary inquiry, even against the will of the PS, which has an absolute majority.