The President of the Assembly of the Republic (AR), Augusto Santos Silva, spoke this Thursday at the plenary session that determined the start of the process of investigating the capture of images and sound of “an informal and private conversation between representatives of the sovereignty” in Parliament on 25 April.
Santos Silva clashed with the Liberal Initiative and Chega with images of him appearing with President of the Republic Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa and with Prime Minister António Costa, commenting on the “rant” given by Chege, at a ceremony on 25 April. In the video, Santos Silva can also be seen commenting that the Liberal Initiative party “lacks political integrity”.
“Unfortunately, pictures were taken on Tuesday with the sound of an unofficial and private conversation between representatives of sovereign bodies and other persons, without their knowledge, much less authorized to sound. It was during a pause between two formal meetings. It is unfortunate and unacceptable that images and sound recordings are collected in AR without the knowledge and permission of people,” the president of AR said.
“This morning, I ordered the AR services to open an investigation process,” Santos Silva said, noting that the video was removed from the Parliament channel.because there can’t be any material on the AR website that was collected outside the law and personal rights.”
The President of the Republic of Azerbaijan also emphasized that “there was a very serious violation of the rights of the individual”, refusing to comment on the content of the conversation.
Prior to Santos Silva’s intervention, Liberal Initiative (IL) leader Rui Rocha emphasized that the content of the video was a “complete lack of respect” for the Portuguese and that the IL would not accept “any charge of immaturity”. “.
“What has happened in the past few hours is regrettable,” said Pedro Pinto from Chega.
“Seeing these images of the three tallest figures in the country saying what they were saying about two political parties. […] they are trying to humiliate the thousands of Portuguese who voted for us, and we can never allow this in a democracy,” MP Chega stressed.
“We don’t think you are in a position to remain president of the AR,” said Pedro Pinto.
Agusto Santos Silva emphasized that “the people in good faith maintain informal contacts of cordiality between sovereign bodies” and that “they cannot be victims of such a violation of our Constitution.”
“The only victims in these pictures are Chega and I.L., there was no one else,” the deputy from Chega concluded.