Lisbon, Nov. 28, 2024 (Lusa) — The secretary-general of the Socialist Party (opposition) accused the prime minister on Thursday of showing a lack of sense of state by fuelling the perception of insecurity in Portugal and trying to appropriate the actions of the security forces for personal propaganda.
Pedro Nuno Santos made these accusations in parliament after Luís Montenegro, on Wednesday, on prime-time television from São Bento, announced that the cabinet would approve a spending authorisation of more than €20 million today for the purchase of more than 600 vehicles for the PSP and GNR.
In front of journalists, the Socialist leader considered the security issue ‘is too important to be dealt with in the way it was by the prime minister’ on Wednesday.
‘It was a statement by someone who wants to feed a perception of insecurity, trying to ride that wave. A prime minister doesn't feed perceptions. Rather, he must implement policies to solve people's problems. A prime minister is not the director of the PSP, Portugal's criminal investigation police agency, PJ or [commander] of the GNR,’ observed the PS secretary-general.
For Pedro Nuno Santos, on Wednesday, the country ‘witnessed an instrumentalisation of the image and results of the investigation and operations of the security forces’.
‘A prime minister has to ensure the means and conditions for the security forces to do their job well and not instrumentalise their actions for the benefit of personal propaganda. That's what we saw yesterday [Wednesday]. Still, at other more important moments, we haven't had the right to a statement from the prime minister, such as during the riots in the Lisbon Metropolitan area or when there were eleven deaths during the crisis at INEM (National Institute of Medical Emergency),’ he said.
On the other hand, according to the PS secretary-general, ‘just recently there were statements by the prime minister devaluing the perception of domestic violence - this is a serious crime, one of the crimes that kills the largest number of people in Portugal’.
‘There, we were not entitled to the weight and solemnity of a prime minister's intervention on the subject,’ he said.
In the PS secretary-general's view, ‘a prime minister has to show a sense of state at all times, especially when faced with an issue with the dimension of security’.
‘But that's not what we saw yesterday [Wednesday]. The only reason the statement didn't cause social alarm was because it was ridiculous from that point of view,’ he said.
In this context, Pedro Nuno Santos also warned that government leaders' interventions in the country should not be ‘trivialised’.
‘We were all left in suspense about the reason for the statement, and then we had a prime minister announcing a measure already decided in February of this year. But much more seriously, he wants to appropriate the actions and image of the security forces for his own personal propaganda.
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