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António Costa and Fernando Medina are part of the honor committee for Luís Filipe Vieira’s candidacy for the Benfica elections, Expresso reported this Saturday.
Both the prime minister and the president of the country’s largest city council stressed that the support for re-election was in a personal capacity, that is, as partners.
The PSD, the Bloco de Esquerda and the PAN have already reacted and criticized the closeness that can be created between the world of politics and football with the presence of the prime minister’s name in a list of candidates for the leadership of a club.
For the president of the PSD, it makes no sense that António Costa is on the honor committee of Luís Filipe Vieira.
“Football is above all emotion and politics above all has to be rational,” Rui Rio said, highlighting the legal problems surrounding the current Benfica president. Remember that Vieira is accused in Operation Lex and that this week he was accused by the hacker Rui Pinto of being involved in a scheme with Odebrecht.
Catarina Martins stressed that there should be no complicity between politics and business and criticized that António Costa considered it normal to be part of the list of support for the leader of those incarnated.
“Knowing today that the Prime Minister thinks that it is normal to be part of an honor committee of someone who is one of Novo Banco’s biggest debtors and who is involved in the BES (Banco Espírito Santo) problem is not right,” he said. the leader of the blockade.
André Silva, of the PAN, did not spare criticism and ethical problems either. All these situations of close link between politics and football are not ethically acceptable, because they open the door for the love of the club to overcome the commitment to the public interest, which should always guide any holder of a position. politician in office ”, reads the party’s statement, quoted by the Lusa agency.
João Noronha Lopes, candidate for Benfica’s elections and therefore Luís Filipe Vieira’s opponent, was more vague in his criticisms. “Each one will draw their conclusions about the presence of the Prime Minister in the honor committee of Luís Filipe Vieira, but we take the opportunity to ensure that this candidacy is always due to the scrupulous separation between politics and football,” he wrote on Twitter.
The president of the Transparency and Integrity Association, João Paulo Batalha, even considers that there is a violation of the code of conduct, which was ordered and approved by the António Costa government itself.
“We are talking about ethical rules in the first place, but these are rules that, in the case of António Costa, are codified in a Code of Conduct that he ordered, that he approved in his government and that explicitly says that the members of the government, where The prime minister is included, he should not accept invitations and get involved in issues that endanger his impartiality in the treatment of people or institutions or that can give direct or indirect benefits to people and institutions, ”he told Rádio Observador.
João Paulo Batalha goes further and said that he would advise that “these two politicians do not publicly interfere in the internal management of any football club, much less in the context of an election that is being contested by several candidates in support of one of those candidates.
The official also insisted on recalling that the candidate in question is “particularly involved in various investigations of corruption and other types of crimes and that he is publicly identified as the author of one of the biggest holes in the Novo Banco, worth hundreds of millions of euros. . , a bank that is being intervened with public money ”.
“All this is something perfectly incomprehensible and a regrettable portrait of the network of promiscuity between politics and football and dangerous relationships,” he concludes.
On the other hand, the former PSD deputy and former mayor of Sintra – who is also part of Vieira’s honor commission – came out in defense of Costa.
“Freedom of expression and membership are not restricted or frozen,” Fernando Seara said in a statement sent to Expresso.
“The pandemic is worrying,” he said, adding: “suddenly it is not possible to have an opinion, to support or to integrate support movements.”
