“I didn’t like it.” Gouveia e Melo says he is the target of attempted character assassination

Presidential candidate Henrique Gouveia e Melo considered this Tuesday to be the target of an “attempted character assassination”, without specifying who, and welcomed the clarification from the Attorney General’s Office that he is not accused.

In response to journalists, at the end of a visit to the Luiz Pereira da Mota Association, in Loures, in the Lisbon district, Henrique Gouveia e Melo stated that it is “good news” that the PGR has clarified that he is not a defendant, saying that he had no doubts “that was not the target of the investigation” about .

According to Gouveia and Melo, this being “a case that had been resolved in the Court of Auditors, with a recommendation on the way purchases were managed in the Navy”, it is “very strange moment in which it reappeared”, about three weeks before the January 18 presidential elections.

“It makes me think that there is an attempt at interference here in the democratic and political process that It doesn’t seem positive to me for democracy”, commented the former Chief of Staff of the Navy.

Interrogated about to whom do you attribute this attempt?the presidential candidate responded: “Who did this? You guys know, you know how to read as well as I do, so I won’t have to say anything more. And the population understood perfectly well what was at stake here: an attempt to character assassination, that’s what happened“.

On Monday, Sábado magazine reported that “the Public Ministry of Almada is investigating several direct adjustments approved by Gouveia e Melo as naval commander of the Navy, between 2017 and 2020″.

This Tuesday, an official source from the PGR confirmed “the existence of an investigation related to the matter mentioned”, in response to the Lusa agency, adding that Gouveia e Melo is not accused and that the investigation is “in the final phase of investigation at DIAP in Almada”.

Gouveia e Melo highlighted that, upon returning from the Azores, on Monday, he was prepared to “show your face” on a television channel from the social communications group that owns Sábado magazine: “I went to the magazine’s channel, with an open face, ready to collaborate and respond to whatever was necessary. I don’t hide“.

“I am fully available to explain whatever is necessary, and I don’t like to see anyone running away from the transparency that is necessary in a process like this”, he declared.

The admiral argued, however, that “the opacity” is a question that does not only arise at the level of presidential candidacies: “Opacity is often the system, how the system acts and reacts to certain things”.

“The thing that bothers me the mostif you will allow me to rant, it is that it had been calls my integrity into question“, he lamented. “When these things are called into question, they are truly attacking me at my core, as a human being and as a person. So I didn’t like it“, he reinforced.

Without naming anyonewelcomed the reaction of some of his opponents “due to the elevation they had”, and considered that others were below the “minimum policy standard“.

Regarding purchasing management in the Navy, Gouveia e Melo said that “it is a system very complex“, with “daily operational activity” and contested the understanding that it is the manager’s responsibility to “check all purchases one by one”.

For this reason, he reported having taken the initiative to “change the entire structure purchasing and financing of the Navy, precisely to avoid that any admiral or someone in charge would fall into a situation like that.”