The parliamentary leader of Chega, Pedro Pinto, has 48 hours to clarify whether he supports the complaint filed by his fellow party member Filipe Melo against Socialist deputy Eva Cruzeiro, according to a dispatch from the president of the parliament.
On Friday, Filipe Melo lodged a formal complaint with the president of the Assembly of the Republic, José Pedro Aguiar-Branco, accusing Eva Cruzeiro of labeling Chega’s parliamentary group as “racists,” “xenophobes,” and part of a party that “should not even exist” under the Constitution.
José Pedro Aguiar-Branco stated that “to adequately assess the substantive legitimacy of the participation, it must first be clarified whether the initiative is a personal manifestation” of Filipe Melo “or an institutional manifestation of the Chega Parliamentary Group.”
“In these terms, and without prejudice to the possible referral to the Commission on Transparency and Statute of Deputies for evaluation of the facts allegedly targeting Mr. Deputy Filipe Melo, the Chega Parliamentary Group, represented by its parliamentary leader, Pedro Pinto, is notified to clarify within two days whether he joins the participation presented by Filipe Melo,” reads the dispatch from the president of the Assembly of the Republic, which agency Lusa accessed.
Meanwhile, Filipe Melo is currently the subject of two ongoing processes in the Transparency Commission: The first was filed by Socialist Isabel Moreira, accusing him of making “disrespectful gestures” from the Assembly table; the second, more recent, by Eva Cruzeiro, also of PS, whom the Chega deputy shouted at, “go back to your country.”
Now, Filipe Melo strikes back, complaining that the Socialist Eva Cruzeiro, during the same hearing with the Minister of the Presidency, Leitão Amaro, on October 29, classified Chega as a racist and xenophobic party and reproduced these accusations on social media.
The Chega deputy, therefore, considers that there is a “repeated pattern of hostility against the Chega Parliamentary Group members,” which is “incompatible with the institutional and democratic values to which deputies are bound.”
For the president of the Assembly of the Republic, “when political confrontation shifts from the realm of ideas to the domain of personal or institutional discrediting, the parliament ceases to fulfill its role as a privileged space for democratic construction and transforms into a stage for sterile conflicts.”
These episodes, according to José Pedro Aguiar-Branco, “regardless of their origin, are censurable because they break with the duties of civility and institutional respect that underlie the healthy functioning of the parliament.”
“Just as concluded in a similar context — namely when deputy Eva Cruzeiro claimed that deputy Filipe Melo directed the expression ‘go back to your country’ at her — the qualification of legitimately elected deputies as racists or xenophobes can also fall under the concept of insulting or offensive speech, referred to in (…) the Rules of Procedure of the Assembly of the Republic,” warns the dispatch from José Pedro Aguiar-Branco.
