This is how generations of good men are lost…
Portugal is currently “governed” by a prime minister, who, among others:
- Has a track record that started in the 90s when he was Justice Minister of a government lead by the current UN Sec. General — essentially he bought 2 apartments in Lisbon, and “forgot” to declare/pay the 2 due taxes… when he got caught on the newspapers, he blamed his Ministry’s officials who filed the paper on his behalf.
- Later in the beginning of this century (2003), he was caught in phone taps with the current President of the Portuguese Parliament, influencing the Public Prosecution officers to not arrest the brother of the PPP, who was being accused on the major pedophilia case ever trialed (badly) in Portugal. This while he was the leader of the opposition in the Parliament at that time… And they were not arrested or trialed…
- Fast forward to 2007, he ran for President of the Municipality of Lisbon, getting on the election day some supporters “lended” by another municipality’s boss some 200 kms away (I was from there, so I got to know the fakap) — on this mandate he was able to cause a mess with half the city because he wanted to expand the sea port’s containers’ terminal to almost 4 times or so bigger, which would cause a “wall of containers” to be raised between the city and the Tagus River. Even non-residents were pissed.. among other scandals like a controlled costs home programe having huge corruption…
- In 2013, his previous boss — former prime minister Jose Socrates gets arrested on the biggest scandal so far in terms of corruption, in a nutshell, it involves allegedly 31 million Euros moved to a scapegoat’s account, this scapegoat buying an apartment in Paris and the former PM deciding what the renovation should be, etc… So our current prime minister was visiting the former boss in jail and saying he was fighting for what he considered his own truth… then…
- Finally he gets to Prime Minister on 2015 when he got a deal with the Communists (yes, sadly we still have that disease… and worse) and the far-left. Then he started to move the pawns. First he gets rid of the General Public Prosecution officer, the woman responsible for the investigation to his previous “boss”. Then he got rid of the Head of the “Public Accounting” Court, and added one “friend”, a move he has done in several organizations, including what should be the privately held Portuguese airline company…
Finally, after a blazing forest fires’ season in 2017 that killed over 100 Portuguese people, one of the main military camps getting robbed of guns, ammunition and explosives — remember, we’re a NATO country… — the “recovery” of these materials having been done like an “Hamlet” play, so f*ed up that the Defense Minister resigned and is now on trial… finally:
- His government overrun the competition for the New European Prosecution Office (YES, you read that right) and appointed the 2nd classified prosecutor on the national part of the competition… how they did it? They pumped his CV, under orders of the current Justice Minister while the 1st classified, was a woman that had already lead an investigation on his government… get the feel?
All this while EU is preparing a blockbuster mega fund foe economic recovery post-pandemic and the EU Prosecution Office main role will be to check the application of these funds… so you see how the corruption is working here… Oh, and did I mentioned that the appointed prosecutor is brother of the same one he was pressing on the pedophilia case above, and both have another brother who also authorized a major construction on reservation grounds when Socrates was Guterres’ Environmental Secretary?
This is one reason why so many Portuguese lose trust in their country and flight to more democratic/functional countries…
