Lawyers’ chairman: “Discourse that Portugal is a corrupt country must end” | Justice

The lawyer’s president, Fernanda Almeida Pinheiro, considers the speech that Portugal is a corrupt country to be unacceptable.

“It is a speech that is frightening and does not correspond to reality”, guarantees the president, who was speaking at a conference at the Bar Association dedicated precisely to the phenomenon of corruption. When it is said that all politicians put money in their pockets, good people who fear seeing their name muddied are moving away from these places, she warned.

For the lawyers’ top leader, the main problems in justice are rooted in the lack of investment in the sector: “We don’t have staff, we don’t have IT resources and then people say that justice doesn’t work. We need more technical and human resources.” Fernanda Pinheiro defends the introduction of this subject in school civic education curricula.

He also regrets that the current Government is thinking about presenting measures against corruption when the strategic plan aimed at combating the phenomenon that has been in force since 2021 has not even been evaluated. “We are changing laws just because, without seeing if the ones that already exist work. Before making this type of advertisement, you have to look at what already exists, however much it could be improved. But the anti-corruption speech is something that always goes down very well.”

Asked about the manifesto that 50 personalities launched last week, calling for a reform of the sector and demanding greater scrutiny of the Public Ministry’s activity, the president expressed distrust of the initiative: “It raises a lot of distrust in me. If there were excesses in some processes [por parte do Ministério Público ou dos juízes], the law has mechanisms” to identify and punish them. Furthermore, adds Fernanda Almeida Pinheiro, several of the signatories who now come to regret the state that justice has reached have exercised government functions in the past, for several years, without having attempted to change this state of affairs.

Among the figures signing the protest are three former presidents of the Assembly of the Republic: Augusto Santos Silva, Ferro Rodrigues (both from PS) and Mota Amaral (PSD). The former president of the Constitutional Court João Caupers is another personality included in the manifesto, as are the lawyer Daniel Proença de Carvalho, the constitutionalist Vital Moreira, the former Minister of Education David Justino and the researcher and columnist José Pacheco Pereira.

There are still signatories who, in one way or another, have already found themselves in trouble with justice. The rector of the Lisbon University Institute – Iscte, the socialist Maria de Lurdes Rodrigues, was convicted of malfeasance for having directly hired the brother of the former minister Paulo Pedroso to make a legislative compilation when she was Minister of Education, having ended for being cleared in the second instance; Last year, former PSD leader Rui Rio saw his residence being searched due to suspected crimes during the party’s management; the former judge and former social-democratic deputy Fernando Negrão was accused in a case of violation of judicial secrecy, the Modern University process, having seen the judge who has now become Minister of Internal Administration, Margarida Blasco, shelve the suspicions for not unable to reach any conclusion; Leonor Beleza, who did not answer in court in the case of the death of hemophiliacs because the crimes were time-barred; and finally Ferro Rodrigues, who, although he never had the status of defendant in the Casa Pia case, became involved in it.

Everyone understands that investigations such as those that recently led to the fall of the Government led by António Costa and the Regional Government of Madeira “constitute undue interference in political power” on the part of the judiciary. Therefore, they want the actions of the Public Ministry to be more scrutinized, particularly by the Assembly of the Republic.

“Without any constitutional mandate, the Public Prosecutor’s Office has, in practice, uncontrolled power, primarily due to the Attorney General’s assumed lack of responsibility for investigations”, they criticize. “Despite this dangerous reality, neither any sovereign body nor any relevant political party has shown the necessary political will and courage to embark on a true reform” of the sector.

This Thursday, fifty more subscribers are announced, including Richard Zimler, Manuela de Melo, Pedro Marques Lopes, Miguel Cadilhe, Teresa Caeiro and Valente de Oliveira.

The group will request an audience with the President of the Republic.