IL accuses PS of ‘lack of transparency’ for refusing to submit opinions on TAP’s justifications

This Wednesday, IL accused PS of “extreme lack of transparency” for refusing to forward legal opinions supporting the decision to acquit company presidents on good cause to TAP’s panel of inquiry.

“On the day of the 50th anniversary of the Socialist Party, we have another case of a huge lack of transparency on the part of the Socialist Party, which refuses to send legal opinions that allegedly justify the dismissal of the CEO. [presidente executiva] from TAP and “chairman” [presidente do Conselho de Administração]”, – said the deputy from the Liberal Initiative (IL) Bernardo Blanco in statements to journalists in the Assembly of the Republic.

This refers to a request by the PSD to forward to the TAP parliamentary commission of inquiry the legal grounds cited by Finance Minister Fernando Medina “during a press conference on March 6, at which he announced his resignation for a good reason.” Madam CEO of TAP.

This Wednesday, the SDP accused the government of refusing to send the requested documents, claiming that this is the situation that took place in 2023, beyond the scope of the commission of inquiry, that is, from 2020 to 2022.

Later, in a memo sent to the Lusa agency, the office of the Deputy Minister for Parliamentary Affairs, Ana Catarina Mendez, also said that “her disclosure is at risk to the legal defense of the state’s position.”

For IL, these arguments are “very easy to deconstruct”, primarily because “whoever announced these dismissals on television at a press conference was the Government itself, and therefore the ministers would certainly have had the legal security necessary to do it”, therefore “opinion must be disclosed”.

“Otherwise, there would be no opinion at all, it could be a hypothesis, and there could be a lie on the part of the government,” said Bernardo Blanco.

With regard to the scope of the commission of inquiry, the liberals stressed that the government has already sent documents for years that do not fall within the period of 2020-2022.

“We cannot have a duality of criteria here, so that when documents are useful, when they go beyond the scope of the CPI [comissão parlamentar de inquérito]if they are useful for the Socialist Party, they are sent, and when they are in the years beyond, if they are useless for the Socialist Party, they cannot be sent,” Bernardo Blanco defended, adding that the PS group of deputies in the commission of inquiry had already requested documents since 2015.

For IL, “all these documents will be useful to the Portuguese” and “will do the country a favor by showing the truth about what is happening in the TAR.

At this Wednesday’s committee meeting, which starts at 5:00 pm and has “documentation request status” as the first item on the agenda, IL will push for said documents to be requested from the government again.

“If the government decides to answer again that it does not send them, then, yes, we will have to think about what the commission itself should do. We, as a commission, have the right to ask and demand again that the people who are asked for documentation to send it,” said Bernardo Blanco.