Brilhante Dias accuses Aguiar-Branco of allowing "hate speech" in the AR

" We can say anything, but we cannot be the spokespeople for hate speech and discrimination. Now, this leads to enormous tension within the chamber, because it means that whoever wants to spread hate can say whatever they want and this leads to obvious confrontation," criticizes Eurico Brilhante Dias in an interview with Lusa.

From the socialist's perspective, "this evident confrontation" has had the president of the Assembly of the Republic, José Pedro Aguiar-Branco, "not necessarily a defender of freedom of expression, but a defender of the idea that hate speech can exist within Parliament" .

Eurico Brilhante Dias "deeply disagrees" with this stance he attributes to the President of Parliament because "this is not freedom of expression."

"This is authorizing MPs inside Parliament to do something that we, outside the doors of Parliament, know is a crime. It is a crime to have hate speech," he criticizes.

Beyond the personal appreciation he expresses for Aguiar-Branco and the contribution he believes he has made to Portugal in recent decades, the Socialist parliamentary leader states: "I must say that the path taken has also contributed to the degradation of debate within Parliament."

"And we will certainly not leave here with positions that converge with those of the President of the Assembly of the Republic, who, from this position, has (...) more flexibility in the face of the behavior, in particular, of the far-right bench, than in the face of the behavior of other benches on the left, not necessarily even the PS ", he condemns.

The parliamentary leader of the Socialist Party (PS) accused the Prime Minister of governing in coalition with Chega, considering André Ventura to be an "agent of transformation" for the PSD from the outside.

Lusa | 06:30 - 27/07/2025

Refusing to state that Aguiar-Branco is "co-responsible or complicit", Brilhante Dias points out that the President of Parliament " has managed the parliamentary debate in such a way that hate speech has had space within the plenary , with evident reactions from the more left-wing benches" and even from the PSD itself, recalling interventions by former deputy André Coelho Lima.

"We will not be able to return to the years in which parliamentary language and parliamentary debate, which always had its excesses, were conducted using parameters from, say, the 1980s or 1990s, but it is clear that we have to make this effort, this fight and this pedagogy," he urges.

For the socialist, "this democratic pedagogy needs a Board of the Assembly of the Republic that has a different presence" .

"And I think it's a good reflection on the President of the Assembly of the Republic's vacation," he advises.

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