At the headquarters of the party in Lisbon, Rui Tavares, co-spokesperson for Livre, addressed journalists, accusing Prime Minister Luís Montenegro of pandering to right-wing voters by canceling participation in April 25th celebration events. Tavares called this decision a “sneaky” attempt to cater to a party that, in his words, reduces democracy to “50 years of corruption.”
“For a government in Portugal, I regret to say, April 25 is the most important day of all, because without April 25, governments would not have the democratic legitimacy they have,” he stated.
Rui Tavares argued that, similar to other countries, the Portuguese government could have initiated national mourning on April 26, the day of Pope Francis’s funeral rites. He accused the administration of lacking political will and imagination to “resolve matters differently.”
“This means they did not think of this, and maybe if they didn’t, it was because they didn’t consider it important. These things are, after all, easy to avoid,” he asserted.
Responding to the decision to postpone the Government’s celebrations of the Carnation Revolution to May 1, Tavares insisted that “April 25 is the day to celebrate April 25,” suggesting that using Pope Francis’s figure to justify the postponement was “disrespectful.”
“It marks 50 years since the first free, fair, and universal vote, including all women in Portugal. A government that doesn’t realize it only exists because of the vote, and on the very day we commemorate 50 years since the first vote in our country’s history, which was free and fair, is a government ungrateful towards the vote and democracy,” he added.
Tavares also recalled that many Catholics fought for April 25 in Portugal, some even imprisoned by PIDE, and expressed belief that these believers “see no contradiction between this sadness [over the Pope’s death] and their joy.”
When asked if this issue would be addressed in Livre’s speech during the parliamentary session, Tavares refrained from revealing the party’s speech topics, noting that the discourse would be delivered by parliamentary leader Isabel Mendes Lopes.
The official residence gardens of the Prime Minister in São Bento (Lisbon) will be open for public visits on April 25 from 10:00 am to 5:00 pm, with carnations distributed but without a festive event and without the presence of Luís Montenegro, who will travel to Rome that day to attend Pope Francis’s funeral ceremonies.
The festive celebrations of the 1974 Revolution were postponed to May 1 due to national mourning and “out of respect for Pope Francis’s death,” according to a source from Luís Montenegro’s office.
