August Santos Silva adds to indignation over operation mounted against PSD
Parliamentary speaker Augusto Santos Silva has challenged Public Prosecutors to address the country over motivations for last week’s bizarre searches against members of the PSD party.
In his opinion, there was a “clear violation of secrecy of justice” in that house searches were conducted in front of television cameras.
What went ahead was “a live crime”, he told reporters – and that’s before one can begin to understand why authorities searched the PSD party headquarters for 19 hours “on an issue, whose factuality seems evident”.
Mr Santos Silva’s is just the latest voice of indignation to the perceived circus of last Wednesday which almost every pundit and political commentator has agreed showed “excessive disproportionality” on the part of judicial authorities.
PS Socialist Francisco Assis has already queried whether the justice system could have been infiltrated by segments of the extreme right”.
Thus Augusto Santos Silva believes public prosecutors must address the nation. “The principles of necessity and the principles of proportionality come to anyone’s mind”.
In the past tipped as a potential future presidential candidate, Santos Silva concluded: “What I have to say about this, placing myself in the background, is that the freedom of political action of the parties, the freedom of organisation of parliamentary groups is absolutely essential for political democracy and, therefore, it is essential for the work of Parliament and, for this very reason, I will take this issue to the leaders’ conference”.
As of today, no official suspects, no arrests, no information has transpired as a result of the searches last Wednesday which involved around 100 inspectors and IT and financial experts in 20 separate searches, including the home of former PSD leader Rui Rio.
Source material: LUSA
