“very secretive” and “will become a politician of silence”

Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa outlined a profile of the new Portuguese prime minister, considering that “he will become a politician of silence”, who will “manage silence”.

Luís Montenegro “believes that it is a mistake to speak, he prefers silence. Therefore, he will become a politician of silence”, said the President of the Republic at a dinner with foreign correspondents on Tuesday in Lisbon. There is also the surprise effect. When they expect him to do something, he does something different, either with the team or with the idea.”

“It is very, very, very secretive”, he continued and gave the example of the appointment of the Government: “He formed a Government in an unthinkable way. He only started inviting ministers on the morning of the day he gave me the list, a risk. And it was so confidential, that neither of them knew about the other. They only met on the day of the inauguration.”

“He is a great speaker, but he is an old-fashioned politician, not a politician in the style of former Prime Minister António Costa, much less in the style of populist parties. Let’s see if he will be able to control the weather, make it compatible with the Government, amid polarization”, he stated, quoted by “Correio Braziliense”.

“He is a person who comes from a deep, urban-rural country, with rural behaviors. He is very curious, difficult to understand, precisely because of this. Now, he is completely independent, uninfluenced and an improviser,” he added.

In comparison with the previous prime minister, “António Costa was slow, because he was Eastern. Montenegro is not oriental, but it is slow, it has the time of a rural country, although urbanized. It reminds me of the old PSD, which was it. The PS was Lisbon, greater Lisbon, the metropolitan areas, and the PSD was the rest of the country, especially the North and Center-North”.

“Every day, I have surprises, because he is imaginative and has the logic of reasoning like someone from a traditional country. It’s stimulating, but, for me, it’s a lot of work,” he said, quoted by the Brazilian newspaper which has correspondent Vicente Nunes in Lisbon.

Regarding the choice of commentator Sebastião Bugalho, when everyone expected him to be the mayor of Porto Rui Moreira: “It was completely an improvisation, a secret until the end”, said the President.

At the same dinner, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa also announced that he had cut ties with his son Nuno, due to the controversy over the case of the Portuguese-Brazilian twins at Santa Maria hospital.