Before they have even closed, the Socialists are promising to reopen them. The pledge came last week from party leader António José Seguro when he was visited by a delegation from the national association of Portuguese municipalities (ANMP).
“I want to be very clear and very direct in response to the question of what would happen to the courts which this government is going to shut if the PS was in government: we would make justice – and making justice is reopening the courts,” he told his audience.
It was just what the ANMP wanted to hear, and its president Manuel Machado told Correio da Manhã newspaper that the association is already working on injunctions to stop many of the unpopular closures going ahead.
As things stand, 47 courts up and down the country should be closing their doors for good on September 1 this year.
Machado told CM that the plan is riven with uncertainty and will almost certainly lead to chaos as there are “almost three million cases ongoing” in the courts in question.
Meantime, Justice Minister Paula Teixeira da Cruz has come out fighting.
She has told CM that the September closure date is not, in fact, written in stone and that the Socialists are using the government’s new ‘judicial map’ purely to win favours.
Speaking out on Friday, Teixeira da Cruz revealed that the PS party actually proposed closing 49 courts when it began talks with the troika in 2011 – and she waved documents she claims prove all this for the benefit of a well-orchestrated news photo.
Needless to say, Socialist MP Jorge Lacão accused Teixeira da Cruz of “lacking truth” and affirmed that far from planning to close any courts his party had actually wanted to create nine more.
Thus, as temperatures soar, the country’s courts remain under the sword of Damocles.
