Finance Minister Fernando Medina this Friday defended that universities should be a space for debate, freedom and tolerance towards different types of demonstrations, after a climate activist threw green paint on them.
At the end of a public session on the draft State Budget 2024 (OE2024) at the Faculty of Law of the University of Lisbon, the Governor expressed the opinion that universities should be a space for “free and open debate on all issues” and “freedom and tolerance in relation to the most diverse types of manifestations” .
At the start of the open session, Fernando Medina was hit with green paint by a climate activist who shouted: “There is no peace without a future.”
“I tell you this not only as the Minister of Finance of the country on this day, October 20, 2023, but also as a student who, above all, takes from the university not only the most useful technical and theoretical teachings, but above all the great civil teaching that participated in the life of my university,” he said.
The minister explained that he played an active role in student life, whether as a leader or member of various bodies or as “the instigator and leader of several strikes.”
“The main target of the first strike I organized in my life was the former finance minister Fernando Teixeira dos Santos, at that time president of the academic council of the Faculty of Economics,” he recalled.
The young woman who struck Fernando Medina at the start of class was promptly escorted out of the classroom with police assistance, and after the incident, the Treasury Secretary continued his presentation by saying he had at least one supporter of raising the single rate. Road tax (IUC).
“At least I know I have an advocate for increasing the IUC,” he joked.
A group of five young climate activists demonstrating outside the hall were surrounded by several PSP members demanding, among other things, that this winter be the last with gas and asking the government to take concrete action to combat the climate crisis, resulting in being removed by the police.
When asked about Friday’s incident at the end of the event, the minister declined to make a statement.
This is not the first time that a government official has been sprayed with green paint, as activists from the group Climáximo also attacked the Minister of Environment and Climate Action.
On Wednesday, environmental activists were stranded on a plane that was supposed to connect Lisbon and Porto at Lisbon’s Humberto Delgado airport.
Author: Lusa
Source: CM Jornal
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