The President of the Assembly of the Republic, José Pedro Aguiar-Branco, said on Tuesday that the Attorney General of the Republic, Lucilia Gago, should have spoken out earlier and in Parliament, and not in an interview with RTP.
Speaking to reporters as part of the presentation of the State of the Nation and Public Policy 2024 annual report at ISCTE, Aguiar-Branco said that if this public intervention by Lucilia Gago “had happened much earlier,” there would have been “less reason to issue decisions that were disproportionate or unreasonable in relation to the actions of the prosecutor’s office.”
“The more of this that happens there, the more confidence we would have in the justice sector,” he added.
The Speaker of Parliament also stressed that “it would have been better” if his speech had taken place in Parliament, since it is “the place of greatest dignity in the organs of sovereignty” and “the place where the representatives of the people are.”
“Like other prosecutors in the past, they answered questions, answered what they thought they could answer, and what they thought they couldn’t answer, they didn’t answer. And I would have preferred that the first intervention had been in parliament,” he said.
Aguiar-Branco also said he did not want to comment on the content of the RTP interview, but stressed that the interview allowed him to understand that it was “possible” to give explanations on matters of justice “without violating any judicial secrecy or to talk about specific cases in a way that I could not do.”
When asked what the profile of Lucilia Gago’s successor should be, the President of Parliament did not answer directly and limited himself to defending the existence of hearings that would allow one to understand the vision and “communication skills” of the figure who heads the Attorney General’s Office.
“It’s useful and I think it’s allowed the Portuguese to look closely, it’s allowed them to understand the profile of the person in question. I think it’s a situation that, if not done now, at least in the future, should be included in such a justice reform agreement,” he said.
As for whether the recent court cases that led to the fall of the Madeira government and regional government have undermined Portuguese confidence in the justice system, Aguiar-Branco acknowledged that the cases may have had some impact on citizens’ perception of the judicial system.
The President of the Assembly of the Republic, in his closing speech at the ISCTE ceremony, once again defended the need for political consensus for justice reform and reaffirmed the importance of these changes, which are under the high patronage of the President of the Republic.
This position was complemented by statements on the sidelines of the event, where he added that Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa had paid attention to the issue of justice and stressed the importance of not having “simply surgical interventions” that “end up leaving everything as it was”, but rather a “dimension of reform” that includes all the bailiffs, the President of the Republic and the political parties.