This Friday, Parliament overwhelmingly rejected the initiation of proceedings against the President of the Republic on charges of high treason following claims of possible reparations to the former colonies, with only Chega voting in favor.
All parties, with the exception of Chega, voted against, finally putting an end to Andre Ventura’s proposal to initiate proceedings against Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa for treason.
The initiative received only 50 votes in favor, exactly the same number of deputies from Andre Ventura’s party.
All other parties (PS, PSD, CDS-PP, IL, BE, PCP, Livre and PAN) rejected the proposal with 164 votes against.
The votes of at least two-thirds of the MPs currently in power, i.e. 154, will be needed to move forward.
On Monday, Chega presented a draft asking parliament to initiate proceedings against the president of the republic for the crimes of treason, coercion of constitutional bodies and usurpation.
In the debate held this Friday in plenary session, which was interrupted several times by remarks and forced the intervention of the President of the Assembly of the Republic, who threatened to interrupt the session, Chega heard criticism from all sides who refused to do so. any crime could be attributed to the President of the Republic.
Socialist Isabel Moreira of the Socialist Party, who prepared a report on the initiative, accused Chega of “subterfuge and false, slanderous and insulting accusations” against the President of the Republic.
“This is a parliamentary group of brave people. This is tiny, small and withered courage, this soft and timid cowardice that does not allow you to see the truth or follow it,” he criticized.
MP Pedro Neves de Souza of the PSD accused Chega of “political dishonesty and deep legal ignorance” and considered that the party contributed to “the degradation of political life in order to get more airtime and carry out an unfounded attack” on the head of state.
The Social Democrat also called on the party led by Andre Ventura to reveal the legal opinions he said he had that supported the initiative, and said that “they can be called unidentified flying opinions” because “they do not exist.”
For his part, President Chegi stated that “the vast majority of Portuguese people felt insulted, betrayed and denigrated by the words of Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa” and insisted that “the President of the Republic has betrayed his homeland.”
Rui Rocha of Illinois felt that Chega had suffered a “legal snafu” and left “disgraced in terms of common sense” and accused the party of a “cowardly attitude” for not publishing its opinions. The Liberal leader also called the initiative a “legal aberration.”
The parliamentary leader of the BU considered that Chegi’s accusations against Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa were “ridiculous on all fronts” and accused Chegi’s deputies of wanting to “send the President of the Republic to prison for having an opinion different from his own”, in that “create a theater of bad taste” and try to “discredit democracy.”
Communist António Filipe described Cega’s initiative as a “puppet”, saying that “there is not a single Portuguese in his right mind who would believe that there are grounds for ordering the arrest of the President of the Republic.”
Rui Tavares of Livre said that the President of the Republic “does everything possible for his country and is not a traitor to the country” and accused Chega of “disloyalty to the country” for “abusing its institutions, abusing power for the purposes of processes.” it makes no sense to seek to divide the Portuguese” and also to try to “poison relations between Portugal and other countries.”
In a speech that lasted only 45 seconds, the parliamentary leader of the SDS-PP considered that the President of the Republic had made a mistake, but emphasized that “a mistake and a crime are not the same thing” and stated that “even the worst student in the first year law faculty would present such an absurd project.”
From PAN, the only deputy Ines de Souza Real said that “if anyone puts institutions at risk, it is Chega with his media number” and refused to follow his example, pointing out that if the proposal is approved, deputies risk committing a crime “aggravated slander.”
The Assembly of the Republic created a special parliamentary committee to analyze the proposal and prepared a report that concluded that there was no evidence that Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa committed any of these crimes.
The report, prepared by PS MP Isabel Moreira, was approved and all parties voted for it, with the exception of Chega.