“These declarations of interests are not political playthings; they are serious matters. If the Prime Minister had this information, he should have disclosed it already to avoid the situation that is currently unfolding in the country,” stated André Ventura to journalists this afternoon, following his visit to the Mira Volunteer Firefighters in the district of Coimbra.
It was reported today that Luís Montenegro updated his declaration of interests on Monday just before midnight, listing seven more companies as clients of his family business, Spinumviva.
The president of Chega questioned the leader of the PSD and candidate for Prime Minister through the Democratic Alliance (AD) about whether he is “playing games” with the Portuguese, highlighting that the country has been left without explanations regarding Montenegro’s family business for over a month.
“The Prime Minister refused to answer a series of questions challenging his integrity and transparency, and now, just days before the elections, submits a new declaration to the Constitutional Court,” he emphasized.
To André Ventura, “this would be laughable if it weren’t tragic, a lack of integrity and transparency,” questioning why the Prime Minister “didn’t do it sooner.”
On the subject of Monday’s electrical blackout, the Chega leader challenged the Prime Minister to hold political figures accountable, particularly those in charge of Civil Protection and the Integrated System of Emergency and Security Networks of Portugal (SIRESP).
“We had the president of the association of emergency and civil protection technicians stating that a message should have been sent [to the Portuguese people] and wasn’t because someone ordered it not to be sent. But who gave that order? We need to know because this can’t be a country where everyone does as they please,” he argued.
Underlining the need for accountability, André Ventura asserted that if the government does not act on the failures of Monday, it “allows impunity to spread.”
The president of Chega expressed contentment that the government will proceed with an audit of SIRESP, as he had advocated, stressing that it should address not only the reasons for the failures during the electrical blackout but also why, despite “hundreds of millions of euros,” it continues to malfunction.
