Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa’s trip to Qatar to watch the team play is officially approved, but the debate was far from peaceful. After a small part of the deputies gave the green light, in a meeting of the Foreign Relations Committee, this Tuesday the matter reached the plenary session and once again deserved the approval of the deputies —but divided the standseven internally.
The final result was as expected: the trip approved, with votes in favor of the PS, PSD and PCP, abstention from Chega and votes against from IL, BE, PAN and Livre. Even so, the matter stirred up the stands and even ended up causing a shower of declarations of vote, downvotes in PS (Isabel Moreira, Alexandra Leitão, Carla Miranda and Pedro Delgado Alves) and abstentions center (Hugo Carneiro, António Topa Gomes and Fátima Ramos from PSD also; Maria João Castro, Miguel Rodrigues and Eduardo Alves from PS).
Although the approval had a large majority, or did not have the votes of the PS and PSD in weight, even among those who voted in favor there were explanations. From the beginning the PS, whose parliamentary leader, Eurico Brilhante Dias, insisted on distancing himself from Marcelo’s decision and handing over responsibility for it to the President of the Republic. Thus, he recalled that the approval of the trip is only a procedure to guarantee the normal functioning of the institutions in his absence and not to guarantee “legitimate political options”, which are the responsibility of “sole responsibility Marcelo’s politics.
PS, PSD and PCP approve Marcelo’s trip to Qatar. BE and IL condemn going to the “World of Shame”
The PCP, for its part, once again assured that it condemns the “unacceptable exploitation” of workers who are in “inhumane conditions” in Qatar, but refused “boycott actions” the participation of athletes or their “institutional follow-up”.
Chega explained his abstention by accusing those who voted against, and “discovered today that human rights in Qatar are not being met”, of being guided by “cheap hypocrisy and demagogy”, asking: “So, when four years ago was the World Cup in Russia?” He also took advantage, through the voice of the parliamentary leader, Pedro Pinto, to accuse Marcelo of “already having tripled his trips compared to Mário Soares and Ramalho Eanes.”
Even so, the voices against multiplied. From the outset, in Iniciativa Liberal, with the parliamentary leader, Rodrigo Saraiva, defending that the World Cup will serve as a “geopolitical tool” to validate the Qatari regime and that Portugal will be complicit in it: “Our president cannot do this validation and the international community cannot close its eyes”. And the Bloco de Esquerda agreed, considering the trip more than a formality, a form of “political representation, a impeachment how the Portuguese State is positioned in the face of what is happening in Qatar”
On the PAN side, Inês Sousa Real emphasized recalling the violations of the rights of women and LGBT people in Qatar, and also asked that neither António Costa nor Augusto Santos Silva travel to watch the team’s matches.
Rui Tavares, from Livre, added another argument: in addition to the lack of respect for human rights, it is also necessary to condemn the suspicions of fifa corruption and in granting host country status to Qatar. “We are being accomplices”, he shot, provoking the applause of two socialists -Isabel Moreira and Alexandra Leitão- but not enough to stop the authorization.
Source: Observadora
