In a blow that will see anti-oil protest groups crying 'foul,' the ebullient mayor of Aljezur, José Amarelinho, has suffered possibly a fatal blow in his struggle to stay out of prison and hang onto his job.
The outspoken Aljezur mayor has long been a thorn in the side of the government as his spirited defence of his coastline, under threat from a still-active offshore oil drilling licence awarded to the Galp-ENI consortium, has been instrumental in the wider fight to call a halt to the government’s plans to turn parts of the country into oil and gas production zones.
Amarelinho again was returned as mayor in the October 2017 local elections and represents the Socialist Party whose national executive is pushing hard to satisfy its pro-oil and gas agenda, despite being in accord with international CO2 reduction targets and over-arching environmental protection agreements.
The removal of this mayor will be seen by government in Lisbon as a positive move, removing a locally powerful party member who has refused to toe the ‘pro-oil’ line.
In 2012, Lagos court fined Amarelinho €5,000 and sentenced him to 30 months in jail if he did not pay the fine. Either way, he must leave his his job as mayor due to a case involving illegally licensed work at the Vale da Telha housing development dating back to 1990.
Also sentenced was Manuel Marreiros, who received a 51 month sentence and the loss of his job or a €5,000 fine in the same Vale de Telha case involving cronyism and deliberately ignoring zoning regluations in the Municipal Developemt Plan.
The inevitable appeals followed and the latest one, to the Constitutional Court, has been rejected.
Earlier, Amarelinho lodged a request for review at the appeal court in Évora but last summer, the sentence was upheld.
The two politicians appealed and the Évora court overturned the Lagos court’s judgment as the evidence was not well presented. The pair went back Lagos court and lost, then went to appeal in Évora, and lost, then went to the Constitutional Court, and lost, which concluded that their appeal was inadmissible and had nothing to do with ‘constitutionality.’
In comments today to local news service, Sul Informacão, Amarelinho said he has got his lawyer back on the case, claims the legal door is still open for further action and that, until the ruling and sentence are final, he has legal rights and intends fully to use them.
