“We can say everything, but we cannot be spokespersons for hate speech and discrimination. This leads to enormous tension within the chamber because it means those who wish to propagate hate can say anything they want, leading to evident confrontation,” criticizes Eurico Brilhante Dias in an interview.
From the socialist’s perspective, “this evident confrontation” has found in José Pedro Aguiar-Branco, the president of the Assembly of the Republic, not necessarily a defender of freedom of expression, but a defender that hate speech can exist within Parliament.
Eurico Brilhante Dias “profoundly disagrees” with this stance, which he attributes to the president of Parliament, because “this is not freedom of expression.”
“This is permitting deputies within Parliament to do something that outside the Parliament doors, we know to be a crime. It is a crime to have hate speech,” he criticizes.
Beyond the personal appreciation he expresses for Aguiar-Branco and the contributions he believes the president has given to Portugal over the past decades, the socialist parliamentary leader states, “I don’t refrain from saying that the path taken has also contributed to the degradation of debate within Parliament.”
“And from here, we will certainly not emerge with convergent positions with the president of the Assembly of the Republic, who, from this position, has (…) more flexibility towards the behavior, in particular, of the far-right bench than towards the behavior of other left-wing benches, not necessarily even the PS,” he condemns.
While refraining from saying that Aguiar-Branco is “co-responsible or complicit,” Brilhante Dias points out that the president of Parliament “has managed the parliamentary debate in such a way that hate speech has found space within the plenary, with evident reactions from the more left-wing benches” and even from the PSD itself, recalling interventions from former deputy André Coelho Lima.
“We will not be able to return to the years when parliamentary language and debate, which always had its excesses, was conducted within the parameters, let’s say, of the 80s or 90s, but it’s evident we need to make this effort, this combat, and this pedagogy,” he appeals.
For the socialist, “this democratic pedagogy requires a differently present Assembly of the Republic Bureau.”
“And I think it’s a good holiday reflection for the president of the Assembly of the Republic,” he advises.
