Starting from the end: no party has supported Chega in his attempt to take the president of the Republic of Portugal, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, to court, arguing that he had betrayed the country. In the eyes of the extreme right, his great crime had been to defend that the country has to make gestures and reparations for its colonial past, which included three wars to prevent the independence of Mozambique, Angola and Guinea-Bissau that cost the lives of 55,000 people. . Before the conflicts of the 20th century, Portugal settled in some parts of Africa starting in the 15th century and it is estimated that, between 1500 and 1860, it was responsible for the trafficking of 4.8 million Africans to America, 38% of the total. of people from that continent sold as slaves by colonial powers.
With the strength of his 50 deputies, André Ventura was able to force the legal action against the Portuguese head of state to be taken into consideration in the Assembly of the Republic where a special commission was created – the proposal was totally unprecedented in 50 years of democracy – to analyze whether the request was appropriate.
Isabel Moreira, socialist deputy and specialist in constitutional law, was in charge of preparing an opinion for the parliamentary commission. She did not see any crime in Rebelo de Sousa’s words, particularly treason. “He did not use his functions to usurp other sovereign powers or in any way favor any foreign State, nor did he practice any public or private act with the potential to harm the sovereignty of the Portuguese State,” the report maintains. In less than 15 minutes, the commission resolved the matter: all parties voted in favor of the opinion and refused to bring the President of the Republic to justice. Chega was the only one of the seven parties represented on the commission that voted against Isabel Moreira’s ruling. The issue will be debated again this Friday in the plenary session of the Assembly of the Republic.
And although Chega’s initiative has failed, it has served to show that the extreme right has Rebelo de Sousa in its sights, whom they consider reticent about the arrival of the ultras to the Government, despite the fact that his decision to bring forward the elections was very favorable for the growth of populism. The veto of André Ventura’s entry into the Executive has been a personal decision of the current Prime Minister, Luís Montenegro, who maintained his electoral campaign commitment of not making an agreement with Chega.
The controversy over the president’s position arose during a dinner with foreign correspondents. There, Rebelo de Sousa was in favor of making reparations to the countries that had suffered from Portuguese colonialism, which lasted until April 1974, when the Carnation Revolution put an end to the wars that began in 1961. Two days later, in his speech In the official session of April 25, André Ventura roared against his words: “The president betrayed the Portuguese when he says that we have to blame ourselves. Pay, what? Pay, why? “I am proud of our history.”
Neither the Government nor part of the opposition share the vision of the President of the Republic. In an interview with Morning Express, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Paulo Rangel, maintained that there were no “ghosts” regarding the colonial past. “Portugal has never had nor will it have any hesitation in apologizing for past massacres or cultural repressions that have left marks, but it has a policy of active reconciliation and reunion with history,” he maintained. Rangel recalled some examples to illustrate the path of “reconciliation” followed by the different Governments, such as the efforts to help East Timor achieve its independence or debt forgiveness for Cape Verde, converted into an environmental fund for renewable energies.
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The new center-right executive of Luís Montenegro has announced the creation of chairs in the Portuguese universities of Tetun and Creole, languages used in Timor, Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde, in addition to being available to study “case by case” the return of certain cultural assets. “Honestly there is no problem, I don’t like speeches of resentment. There is a lot to do, but not from resentment or hate speech, but rather from reconciliation with our former colonies, because they were colonies and that should not be forgotten,” says Rangel. No country has requested, at the moment, economic compensation for what happened in the past and it is an avenue that the Portuguese Government completely closes. “I don’t want to talk about a climate of peace and naive or naive love, but it makes no sense to turn this into a war. For us, the issue of reparations does not exist and has never been requested until today,” the minister stated a week ago.
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