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The former attorney general of the Republic, Joana Marques Vidal, defended, this Wednesday, that the directive on hierarchical powers that her successor, Lucília Gago, just issued, does not respect current legislation.
“The Statute of the Public Ministry establishes that hierarchical relations, in the criminal process, are given in the terms of the Criminal Procedure Code. And it does not seem to me that this formulation allows the superior to intervene to say what the prosecutor should or should not do. in a concrete process ”, defended Joana Marques Vidal, in a conference of the Lisbon School of the Faculty of Law of the Catholic University, on the National Strategy to Fight Corruption 2020-2024, presented in September by the Government.
The controversial directive No. 4/2020, issued by the current Attorney General’s Office on November 11 of this year, authorizes hierarchs to give subordinates “orders and instructions that are intended to be effective in a certain process.” But, for Joana Marques Vidal, “this direct intervention goes beyond what (…) is in the law and in the criminal process.”
“What is different”, distinguished the former Attorney General of the Republic, “is the possibility and duty of superiors to follow up complex cases”, to the exact extent that they have the “right to action”, in light of the Code of Conduct. Criminal Procedure, if they do not agree with the prosecutor’s action, he argued.
However, when questioned by another speaker, Joana Marques Vidal always refused to comment on her successor’s directive in terms of “good or bad.” “I interpret the law differently,” he assumed earlier.
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