The president of Chega announced today that he questioned the Minister of Infrastructure about why he “classified and declassified” more than a hundred documents, and doubted the legality of the procedure, admitting to file a complaint with the Public Prosecutor’s Office.
“We have sent a set of questions to the Minister of Infrastructure about news that João Galamba will have classified and declassified documents in the interval of approximately two months,” he said, noting that this “was the deadline of the parliamentary committee of inquiry”.
André Ventura considered that “everything seems” that the minister’s “sole objective” was to protect the documents from the parliamentary committee of inquiry and from “public discussion”.
Pointing out that this situation raises “a series of questions about the legality of these procedures, the Chega president said that, depending on the answers and “if there is a criminal matter”, the party will send a complaint to the Public Prosecutor’s Office to account for what “seems to have been an abusive use of this mechanism to condition access to documents”.
“We may be facing serious illegalities of abuse of state power,” he claimed.
According to Público newspaper, in April, the Minister of Infrastructure classified 105 Infraestruturas de Portugal documents as state secrets and, of these, 101 were reclassified as “reserved” in June.
“The minister has a lot to explain and we hope he can do it quickly,” he said, indicating that Chega questioned João Galamba “why he classified and declassified documents”, as well as “what documents are these, what is the time frame in which this classification process took place, if the process was initiated at his own will, as it seems, or if there was an initiative by another state agency and what was the participation of the National Security Office on this matter “.
Speaking to journalists at the end of a visit to the World Youth Day headquarters in Lisbon, the Chega leader also criticized the stance of PS and PSD towards the report of the parliamentary commission of inquiry (CPI) into TAP.
“It is absolutely unseemly, regrettable, how PS and PSD are so committed to this discrediting of the CPI, some because it seems that their only concern is to say that the privatization process was not as badly done as it seems, and others because they do not have the least modesty, in the face of a report that everyone who participated in this commission knows is false, that does not correspond to the truth, that does not reflect what was done there, and make two pages [of proposed amendments] of absolutely marginal topics “, he defended.
André Ventura criticized liberals and social democrats for not presenting proposals to amend the preliminary report prepared by a PS member and considered that “the only concern that the PSD seems to have is the protection of its government until 2015, without any concern for the truth”.
The Chega president also said he “vehemently repudiated” the amendments proposed by the PS, pointing out that it is “a document of foot washing” and constitutes “a contempt for the commission” and the work of the deputies.
