Ventura accused the speaker of parliament of “discretion of power”

Chega leader Andre Ventura on Tuesday accused Republic Assembly President Augusto Santos Silva of treating various parliamentary benches unequally and believes he is “using power as he pleases.”

“If we were to take stock of Augusto Santos Silva’s almost two years at the head of Parliament, the balance would be discretionary use of power, arbitrariness, unequal treatment between benches and a sense of belonging to the Assembly of the Republic that we do not understand and cannot accept,” he said.

At a press conference at the party’s headquarters in Lisbon, André Ventura pointed out that “Chega does not need anyone’s complacency” and has parliamentary representation “by itself and by the vote of the Portuguese”.

“Chega does not insist on being integrated into the travels of Augusto Santos Silva, nor on having, apart from institutional, a different type of relationship with the President of the Assembly of the Republic, and he does not need his complacency or his tolerance,” he stressed.

Chega’s leader also accused Augusta Santos Silva of displaying “complacency, false paternalism and political arrogance” and of being “a man who considers the Assembly of the Republic his home and not the home of democracy and the home of the Portuguese”.

André Ventura also argued that a socialist “should never have been elected” as President of Parliament and that the parties should have supported Chega’s proposal to censor his actions.

The President of the Assembly of the Republic today presented to journalists the balance of parliamentary activities in the first legislative session, which began on March 29, 2022 and will last for about 18 months.

At this press conference, Santos Silva stated that he acted in a unifying and deterrent manner, devalued the Chega incidents, and emphasized from an institutional point of view that the government was politically accountable to parliament.

The former minister of state and foreign minister believed that hate speech should be removed from democracy and denied that Chega’s performance was his biggest problem as president of the Assembly of the Republic.

Augusto Santos Silva was keen to emphasize that he coordinates his reactions not with parliamentary groups, but rather with his regimental duties, refusing, for example, the permissibility of unconstitutional bills or bills, or ending deputies’ interventions related to serious offenses or injuries.

But “I have not exercised all the powers that the Regulations give me in the circumstances,” he warned.

When asked how long he would defend his decision not to invite Chega deputies to his entourage on official visits to foreign countries, Augusto Santos Silva replied: “Personally, I do not believe in life sentences.”

The President of the Assembly of the Republic subsequently stated that his option to exclude the deputies from Chega from their official entourage was the result of the behavior of this parliamentary group at the ceremonial meeting of the President of Brazil, Lula da Silva, on April 25 – behavior that outraged him and which took place in the presence of the President of the Republic, the Prime Minister, the diplomatic corps and other national authorities.