Em Braga, during a visit to the Start Point Summit Employment Fair organized by the Academic Association of the University of Minho, Gouveia e Melo announced to journalists that due to Pinto Balsemão’s death, his campaign will adjust and reduce ground activities between today and Thursday.
“We will stop promoting and publicizing our actions during these two days,” he mentioned.
After emphasizing the “extraordinary influence” of Pinto Balsemão in print media, television, society, and politics, Gouveia e Melo highlighted that a President of the Republic has “a basic responsibility” to defend democracy, democratic institutions, and the regular functioning of these institutions, including the press.
“There is no democracy in the world without a genuinely free press. And the President of the Republic should have this as a concern, should have this in their mind and in their influence and any power they may use, should strive and try to ensure that this pillar of democracy, that is a free press, plays its role with complete freedom and impartiality,” he stated.
For the presidential candidate, a democracy without press freedom “does not exist, has no viability.”
“We must preserve press freedom. Dr. Pinto Balsemão was always a defender of this freedom, and we must also preserve it in terms of our collective memory,” he added.
The former Prime Minister Francisco Pinto Balsemão, founder and member number one of the PSD, of which he was also president, died on Tuesday at the age of 88.
Balsemão founded the weekly newspaper Expresso in 1973, still during the dictatorship, SIC, Portugal’s first private television in 1992, and the media group Impresa.
In 1974, after April 25, he founded, alongside Francisco Sá Carneiro and Magalhães Mota, the Popular Democratic Party (PPD), later the Social Democratic Party (PSD).
He led two governments after Sá Carneiro’s death, between 1981 and 1983, and was a member of the Council of State, the advisory body to the President of the Republic, until his death.
“A good Portuguese has passed away, my condolences to the family, friends, and the PSD, because he was also a founder of the PSD and had an extraordinary influence in print media, later in television, in society itself, and as a politician (…). Today, upon his death, I have to say that I esteemed him as a person, as a politician, as a Portuguese and essentially as someone who greatly developed a free press, a quality press and later also television,” Gouveia e Melo reacted.
