A conference of parliamentary leaders will meet out of turn on Wednesday to discuss a draft SDP resolution proposing a referendum on the decriminalization of euthanasia.
A parliamentary source told Lusa news agency that this extraordinary meeting was scheduled for Wednesday at 2:30 pm.
On Monday, SDP chairman Luis Montenegro announced that the Social Democratic parliamentary group would present a draft referendum on the decriminalization of euthanasia, and on the same day the diploma was submitted to Parliament.
On that day, the PS accused the SDP of being on the far right agenda by proposing this referendum, and felt that Luis Montenegro had repudiated the social democratic bench on the issue.
On Tuesday, Chega leader Andre Ventura said the proposal was unconstitutional, saying the basic law forbids the resubmission of a finally rejected referendum draft in the same legislative session.
Chega presented a draft resolution on holding a referendum on euthanasia, which was rejected on June 9, that is, still in the current legislative session.
In the afternoon, the party led by André Ventura published a request addressed to the President of the Assembly of the Republic, in which he asks Augusto Santos Silva that “in strict accordance with the Constitution of the Portuguese Republic and the Rules of Procedure of the Assembly of Portugal, the republic, the draft resolution of the PSD should not be accepted.
Chairman of the parliamentary group Chegi, who signed the initiative, defends that “there seems to be no doubt” that the draft resolution presented by the PSD “should not be adopted under pain of serious violation of the constitutional and legal prescriptions in this matter, opening if there were given the green light for its discussion in the Assembly of the Republic, a precedent for the absolute invalidity of paragraph 4 of Article 167 of the Constitution.”
This clause of the Basic Law states that “drafts and proposals for laws and referendums which have been finally rejected may not be renewed in the same legislative session, except for new elections to the Assembly of the Republic.”
Pedro Pinto argues that “there has been no change in the circumstances that would justify a new assessment of the issue, and finally, as already mentioned, the subjective identity of the initiatives does not matter, so the proposal for a referendum in this legislative session has already been completely rejected, except better understanding, the PSD initiative cannot be accepted.”
“One can also raise the question of whether this is a different formulation or presentation of a differentiated formal structure that does not work,” defends the deputy in a statement circulated by Chega, arguing that “the object of both projects [Chega e PSD] exactly the same, the question is exactly in the same direction, the end is the same.”
Author: Portuguese
Source: CM Jornal
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