“The world and our Europe do not orient towards the Left, the world and our Europe orient towards the Right and we will lead Europe to rise as the wall of the Right of the world. It is to the Right that we orient ourselves,” stated André Ventura.
Ventura spoke in Lisbon at a conference organized by Patriots for Europe, the far-right European political family which includes Chega.
The leader of Chega described this political group as “truly the alternative for Europe” and the parties within it as the “bastions of the defense of freedom.”
“We must be the bastions of the defense of the new civilization and the bastions of the defense of dignity. This means a cultural war, not a cultural war against our own culture, but the opposite, a defense of our own culture,” he argued, asserting that the “culture of freedom, pluralism, the culture of identity is currently at stake.”
André Ventura, also a candidate for the presidential elections at the beginning of next year, stated that his candidacy is for “freedom and the defense of Portuguese identity.”
“I am truly saddened when I see the other three main candidates say that no, Portugal should not control its immigration, that the foreigner laws are not being well-crafted, that we must be careful with these laws we approve, like today’s burqa ban, or that we must be careful with health issues and those of foreigners. Europe is not going to solve the world’s entire problems, we cannot open our doors to the whole world to solve its health, economic, employment, and happiness issues,” he emphasized.
In his speech, the Chega president also referred to the parliament’s approval of his party’s bill to ban the use of burqa in public spaces.
“It is a victory that is not partisan, it is a victory for the country,” he defended, stating that “it is not any persecution against any religion, it is not any persecution against any minority.”
Ventura claimed that “there is no woman who wears a burqa because she wants to” and that “they are oppressed” by culture and religion.
The leader also rejected the idea that women should be treated as “a commodity or an object to be hidden” and pointed out that “this should not even be a debate between the left and the right, it should be a debate between decency and indecency, between the right values and the wrong values.”
“And what I notice with much curiosity is that those left-wing feminist women who spent years beating their chests and talking about equality between men and women, today have been the first to rise against a law that aimed primarily to defend women,” he criticized.
Earlier, speaking to journalists before entering the Cultural Center of Belém, the Chega president said that the bill was approved in general “in good faith” and has “the guarantee of the PSD” that “the essential will remain.”
“We may have technical aspects of the law that will be improved or refined, or clarified, but the essential will remain, in Portugal burqas are not allowed, in Portugal we cannot allow practices or customs that diminish women, nor that touch on the essential which is, in Portugal, men and women are equal and any religion, culture, sect, or values that challenge this equality for us should not be allowed,” he defended.
Asked if he fears that the law could be halted by the Constitutional Court, André Ventura said he hopes that does not happen, but if it does, it is proof that the Constitution needs to be changed.
