Prime Minister António Costa has backed himself into a corner by continuing to give his full support to his ‘dead man walking’ Finance Minister, Mário Centeno who it seems certain has lied to parliament over the Caixa Geral directors' statements affair.
The prime minister spent much of today highlighting the excellent work of his finance minister in ‘handling the deficit and stabilising the financial sector,’ referring to his colleague as a 'reference point for trust' while accusing his parliamentary opposition of dedicating themselves to trickery.
Costa once again has been placed in the awkward position of having to defend his right hand man over the Caixa Geral de Depósitos president António Domingues who said he had been exempted by Centeno from having to lodge income and asset statements when he took over running the State-owned bank last August.
The terms and conditions of the hiring of Domingues, who resigned in disgust last November when Centeno finally denied all knowledge of a deal over these statements, have now been reproduced in a national newspaper, yet the prime minister continues to defend the indefensible, unless the correspondence can be proved to have been faked - indeed the PM has said that "this is not proof."
Costa continued to miss the point all day and wimbled on about "the best democracy ever, the behavior of exports last year which increased by 0.9% and measures taken to stabilise the financial sector," while skillfully sidestepping the evidence reproduced in the newspaper that his finance minister indeed had agreed with Domingues that the latter should be exempt from lodging the statements and then lied about this in parliament.
Costa’s feeble attempts to turn this into a party political matter -"The PSD and the CDS are dedicated to the tricks and we dedicate ourselves to solving the problems of the country," won’t be enough to reflect sufficient heat surrounding Centeno’s job.
Comments from the PM that he "trusts the Minister of Finance, who has the admiration of the whole country for the work he has done," will not be enough to counter the very real allegations of lying, now backed up by documentary evidence, and threats from the CDS to make a criminal complaint.
So, the "vile attempt to assassinate the character of the Finance Minister" have been proved true by those reading today’s Eco newspaper which printed an exchange of correspondence between Domingues and Centeno, proof enough that the Government exempted Domingues and other new directors of Caixa Gera from presenting their declarations of assets to the Constitutional Court.
Domingues writes to Centeno that the non-presentation of his declaration of assets to the Constitutional Court "was one of the conditions agreed for accepting the challenge of leading Caixa Geral’s management...”
The finance minister now should resign: as for the PM, he will wriggle out of this in his inimitable manner by blaming others, while no doubt claiming that he was 'shocked, shocked to discover that a minister has misled parliament.'
