This Thursday, the PS rejected a number of requests asking for documentation of the incidents that took place at the Ministry of Infrastructure on April 26 and recordings from the computer of Frederico Pinheiro, considering that they were not within the remit of the commission of inquiry.
The only request approved by the PS this Thursday at the TAP inquiry panel, out of the seven voted on, was a request for documents submitted by the PSD regarding the “purchase and sale of a stake” in former TAP shareholder David Nieleman and the “transfer of 55 million euros.”
Not taken into account, for example, is a PSD request to send “notes about TAP” to the office computer of Frederico Pinheiro, a former assistant minister of infrastructure.
Also rejected was Chega’s request, in which the Minister of Infrastructure requested that “all communications exchanged between him, the Prime Minister, Dr. António Costa, and between both of them and Secretary of State António Mendonça Méndez” be recorded.
Ahead of this vote, PS’s coordinator on the TAP inquiry committee, Bruno Aragao, stressed that the PS would not approve the requests as it understood they were “out of scope” for the committee.
This justification was criticized by opposition parties, with SDP MP Paulo Moniz deeming it “a demonstrative and repetitive exercise of the PS steamroller in terms of requests to this commission”.
Paulo Moniz pointed out that the computer owned by Frederico Pineiro had been under the protection of information services for 24 hours prior to being handed over to the Judicial Police, and stressed that it was important to find out whether during those 24 hours “the integrity of the computer information” was not “in in particular, records of the meetings he attended and led.
“The question and methodological doubts about what PS intends to hide in regards to valuations are legitimately growing,” he said.
Chega MP Filipe Melo believes that the conduct of these requests is “symptomatic of the PS parliamentary group wishing to protect members of the government” and “withholding relevant information” from the commission, accusing the socialists of “controversy”. democratic position.
The parliamentary leader of the Block de Esquerda, Pedro Filipe Soares, has criticized the idea that the PS is trying to “pierce”, according to which the commission of inquiry of the TAP “deviates from the essence”.
“A barrier is being created so that this commission of inquiry cannot conduct an audit, because the auditees are not up to having at least one word or behavior that could be recognized as impeccable, and, in fact, this restriction becomes the inability of the commission to evaluate its object, which is the political responsibility of TAP,” he said.
In response to these criticisms, PS MP Bruno Aragao dismissed the claim that his party was taking an “anti-democratic stance”, emphasizing that “everyone will take up their responsibilities and that is what characterizes democracy”.
During this initial period, prior to the hearing of former TAP CFO João Weber Gameiro, the parties also welcomed the conclusions of the TAP Inquiry Commission’s leak report, thanking Deputy PS Alexandra Leitao for preparing it.
Referring to statements by PS parliamentary leader Eurico Brillante Diaz, PSD MP Hugo Carneiro said that “given some of the findings that have come to light”, the fact that the report does not hold any deputy, adviser or technician responsible for this information leak is “very important”.
Filipe Melo of Chega also welcomed the fact that “the justice and truth of the facts have been restored” and expressed his hope that Eurico Brillante Díaz “draws his conclusions and, ultimately, the consequences”.
Pedro Filipe Soares said that he hoped that just as Brillante Dias was “very quick to criticize in public”, now he “will also quickly apologize to the deputies of this commission of inquiry and, as a result, as well as to the Assembly of the Republic for ridiculing the name of this institution.”
PS Coordinator Bruno Aragao believes that the findings of the report reflect the “normal functioning of the institutions”.
“There were doubts, everything was cleared up, and now we can move forward or continue the main thing, as we always said,” he said.
Author: Portuguese
Source: CM Jornal
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