The PS rejected this Friday the existence of contradictions between members of the Government on a legal opinion that justifies the exonerations of the executive presidents and of the Board of Directors of TAP, reducing everything to a semantic question.
This position was conveyed by the deputy general secretary of the socialists, João Torres, at a press conference at the national headquarters of the PS, during which he considered that the controversy surrounding the existence or not of this legal opinion is not of interest to the Portuguese .
João Torres also defended that the Prime Minister has a sense of State and respects the institutions, namely the functioning of the parliamentary committee on TAP, which is why it is not his responsibility, with each document that is presented or requested, with each development what happens in this parliamentary committee, make a comment on a very important monitoring instrument.
Now on the issue of contradictions between the ministers of Parliamentary Affairs, Ana Catarina Mendes, and of the Presidency, Mariana Vieira da Silva, on the one hand, and the Minister of Finance, Fernando Medina, regarding the existence or not of an opinion legal in the possession of the executive that justifies the exonerations of the executive presidents and of the Board of Directors of TAP, the number two of the direction of the PS replied: Let’s not make a simplification of language a contradiction that does not exist.
One of the characteristics of populism is to pursue attitudes, vocabulary and semantic issues that are of no interest to the lives of the Portuguese and that only harm democratic institutions. We’re not going that way, he said.
In view of the insistence on this point regarding a disarticulation in the socialist executive, João Torres emphasized: The first version even pointed out that there were different ministers who united in a response to the Assembly of the Republic.
Let’s not make a question of semantics a contradiction that doesn’t exist. We are not talking about a question of semantics, a matter that does not interest people. This is the weapon of the weak, of the populists, he insisted.
We are talking about a language issue, a vocabulary issue, he added after being confronted with the fact that the statements by ministers Ana Catarina Mendes and Mariana Vieira da Silva, who mentioned the existence of a legal opinion, are different from those of Fernando Medina, who said he did not have that opinion.
Let’s not turn this issue of language into a contradiction that doesn’t exist. From the outset, the Government made all information available to the parliamentary inquiry commission on the management of TAP.