At a rally at the Paredes Secondary School in the Porto district, Nuno Melo, the Minister of Defense and coalition partner of the PSD, stated in the final days of the election pre-campaign that “the new thing is that Luís Montenegro worked,” alluding to the controversy involving the company Spinumviva, which prompted the early elections on May 18.
“My dear Luís Montenegro, I’d like to start by saying that you worked, and it’s a good thing you did. Portugal should indeed be wary of those who haven’t worked or have never worked outside of politics,” he stated.
Nuno Melo expressed that he anticipated the campaign for the early legislative elections to be “tough,” but admitted he did not expect it “to sink so low.”
“For 40 days, we witnessed a descent into abasement, defamations, and miserable posters spread across the country. The situation worsened during the debate between Luís Montenegro and Pedro Nuno Santos, which Montenegro won decisively through his example and leadership,” he declared.
After a microphone failure, the CDS-PP leader specifically addressed the controversy involving a new declaration of interests submitted by the Prime Minister to the Entity for Transparency, revealing his work with seven new companies at Spinumviva, reported by the Expresso newspaper.
On this issue, Nuno Melo criticized that, 50 years after the April 25 revolution, “members of a founding party of the regime” would “snoop through the personal data of a political opponent,” an apparent reference to the PS, following confirmation by deputy Pedro Delgado Alves of accessing the information but denying sharing it outside the Group on Interest Registration.
“50 years after April 25, we must say that our fight in these elections continues to be for freedom and decency,” declared Nuno Melo.
In response to the release of the new data, PSD deputy Hugo Carneiro requested the Parliament’s Group on Interest Registration ask the Entity for Transparency for the records of those who accessed the Prime Minister’s data to identify who leaked the information to the press. This request has drawn strong criticism from the opposition and even from the Journalists’ Union.
