Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa met with foreign journalists for four hours at a dinner party in a Lisbon hotel on Tuesday evening. During this meeting, he was not shy about commenting on any topic he was asked about. They asked him if they could ask him about everything, and he answered, “Everything.”
Four controversial issues emerged during the four hours, including comparisons made between former Prime Minister Antonio Costa and current Prime Minister Luis Montenegro. He mentioned that both are “slow”, but that's it Antonio Costa “Eastern”.
“he [Montenegro] He is a person who comes from a deeply urban rural country, with rural manners. It is very curious, and difficult to understand, precisely for this reason. “He is completely independent, uninfluenceable and improvisational,” he said of the Social Democratic Party leader. Marcelo added: “Montenegro is not oriental, but it is slow, and has the time of a rural country, despite its urbanization.”
The pain of cutting ties with his son
In the same interview, Marcelo revealed that he had severed his relationship with his son due to the condition of the Portuguese-Brazilian twins who are being treated at Santa Maria Hospital.
“I don't know if you said anything there to the twins' parents. You didn't say anything to me. This is unforgivable,” the President of the Republic reveals. He adds that he does not speak “in general” to his son, and for this reason he feels “very personally hurt.”
Lucilia Jago and the influential process
Regarding the operation of the influencer and Prosecutor General of the Republic, Lucilia Gago, the Head of State says that the PGR had a “Machiavelli act”, by appointing the former Prime Minister, António Costa, the Government and the Assembly of the Republic.
“If the Public Prosecutor, as quickly as she took the initiative to open an investigation also involving the Prime Minister a month before the Portuguese learned… she discovered, a few weeks later, that she had opened an investigation against the Prime Minister.” “Third parties and on what day? On November 7th, which I thought was a kind of balance, an evolving balance. It opened,” Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa said.
But he revealed on Wednesday afternoon, in statements to reporters, that he “never said that.”
He says: “I was very careful in what I said in this regard, and I did not talk about the personal qualities, and I should not talk, about the Attorney General of the Republic.”
Crimes committed in the colonial era
Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa pointed to Portugal as the country responsible for past mistakes, highlighting that crimes such as colonial massacres have “costs.” It also says the country “bears full responsibility for crimes committed during slavery in Africa and the colonial era.”
He added: “We have to pay the costs. Are there actions that we have not been punished for and those responsible for which have not been arrested? There are goods that have been stolen and not returned. Let's see how we can fix this.”
Antonio Costa in Europe
Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa also said he believes Antonio Costa could be the next president of the European Council. He also said that the Socialist Party would be the second most popular force in the European elections scheduled for June 9, “unless a tsunami occurs.”
