“It’s unforgivable.” Marcelo confirms that he cut ties with his son after the Brazilian twins’ case

After the controversy with the Brazilian twins, President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa cut ties with his son Nuno Rebelo de Sousa, 50 years old. “This is unforgivable, because he knows that I have a public and political position and I pay for it”, said the head of state. The statement was made on Tuesday night, at a dinner with foreign journalists living in Portugal, in which DN participated.

It was Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa who anticipated the topic, before being asked about the subject of the twins. The president is being investigated by the Public Ministry for the case, where there are suspicions of alleged help from the Portuguese President in receiving medical treatment for two Brazilian children with Portuguese nationality. The treatment cost the National Health System (SNS) four million euros.

At the same time, the PR highlighted that the relationship between the two was already going through problems and the distance already existed months before the case became public. One of the episodes was a trip to Brazil, in which Nuno arranged a dinner with political figures. “His goal was to get to me,” he said. Marcelo declined the invitation.

The Head of State admitted that cutting ties with his son is “costly”, but there are “worse things in life”. Regarding his son’s responsibility, he said that the decision does not interest him. “That’s one of the advantages of cutting yourself. He’s 51 years old, if he were my oldest and favorite grandson, at 20 years old, I would feel co-responsible. But, at 51 years old, he’s older and vaccinated”, he reflected. “If it were with one of my favorite grandchildren, aged 20, 21, I would feel more responsible and suffer more,” he added. The President said that, at Christmas, he had already cut off relations with his son, but it was not a problem. “It was a very peaceful and pleasant Christmas,” he confessed.

What costs, according to the Head of State, is the distance from grandchildren. Another episode that PR highlighted was learning that Nuno landed in Lisbon “in disguise”. Regarding the way the Portuguese population saw the case, Marcelo said that the situation affected him personally, but that among the public it was not shaken. “The twins were an additional phenomenon, but they didn’t wear me out politically, they wore me out personally”, he analyzes.

Regarding a possible Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry (CPI) in Parliament, he said “we will see after June 9th”. Regarding the case itself, Marcelo repeated what he had already said publicly, that he does not know the twins, but that he hopes to meet them one day, “when they are older”.

The dinner with journalists was an invitation from the head of state himself, in this edition, in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the 25th of April. Traditionally, Marcelo meets once a year with professionals who are members of the Portuguese Foreign Press Association (AIEP). The current president of the entity is journalist Vicente Nunes, correspondent for the newspaper Correio Braziliense, based in Brasília.