Marcelo says that Costa and Montenegro are both “slow”, but one is “oriental” and the other “has rural behaviors”

The surprises in the statements made by the President of the Republic, announced this Wednesday, support Cristiano Ronaldo’s theory of goals and ketchup. When Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa opened his mouth, everything came out at once.

After the news of Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa breaking off relations with his son following the case of the Portuguese-Brazilian twins, and the thoughtless and blasé way in which he spoke about family estrangement, the head of State’s descriptions arrive, without any filter, about the leader of the country’s Government.

“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, uninfluenceable and improviser”, said the President of the Republic about Luís Montenegro, before an audience of, certainly, surprised foreign journalists living in Portugal, one of them a reporter at Correio Braziliense who shared the statements.

But Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa didn’t stop there, not shying away from saying that he would have preferred to stay with António Costa as Prime Minister until 2026, perhaps forgetting that it was his decision to accept the resignation of the then leader of the Socialist Government and the calling early elections.

“If I were the citizen Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, if I had to choose, I would live happily with that prime minister until 2026”, he said, not shying away from presenting his comparison between the current prime minister and his predecessor, who “ because he was oriental, he was slow, he liked to inform, accompany and deliver”.

“António Costa was slow, because he was oriental. 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”, he added.

Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa insisted on Montenegro’s improvisational character. “Every day, I have surprises, because he is imaginative and has the logic of reasoning like someone from a traditional country,” he said. “It IS stimulating, but for me it is a lot of work,” he added.

And he didn’t even spare any examples: “He (Montenegro) 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.”

Later, faced with his words, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa maintained everything he said, without any regret and rejected that his assessments had been derogatory.

“No, no, on the contrary, they were very explanatory for foreign journalists”.

Regarding Montenegro, he reiterated: “It’s a style that is surprising, will surprise. And that’s why I said that there is an unpredictable side to him that has to do with this imagination, it’s true”, he added.