Former Secretary-General of PS considers that the mayor of Lisbon, Carlos Coins, “is a prisoner of his own statements in 2021”, when he required the resignation of Fernando Medina when the case was known as Russiagate.
Pedro Nuno Santos resorted this Friday to Instagram to comment on the accident of the Glory Elevator that provoked 16 mortal victims on Wednesday. The former Socialist General Secretary recalled the case ‘Russiagate’ noting that, at the time, coins defended the resignation of the then Mayor of Lisbon, Fernando Medina.
According to the socialist, “coins is a prisoner of his own statements in 2021, when he demanded the resignation of Fernando Medina.” At the time, he remembers, coins “said that a new kind of politicians was needed, those who assumed their responsibilities, even in the face of a ‘technical error’.” In question controversy surrounding the sending of personal data of protesters to foreign embassies, which became known as the ‘Russiagate’ case.
At the time, Carlos Coins was PSD candidate for the municipality and said that the situation showed that Lisbon did not have “a mayor,” as political responsibilities were assumed. Subsequently, he retreated in the resignation request that “at four months of municipalities, accepting a resignation and submitting a re -candidacy process is an inappropriate number of the confidence that the citizen need.”
For Pedro Nuno Santos, with regard to political responsibility to be attributed to the accident of the elevator of glory, “it is not necessary to wait for any investigation” to know who has it and is therefore “inevitable”, that the mayor has to take responsibility for what happened.
About criticism of FECRANS, the former secretary-general of the PS states that “this union, among the condolences to the victims of the victims, argued that the causes of the accident as soon as possible, without ‘pointing’ in advance to any company.” However, it underlines the irrational “requirement of the company.
“They ask, well, that, beyond the immediate causes, the effects of the externalization of maintenance. What is irrational on this requirement? Fecrans has always been against the externalization of maintenance. Maintenance is more effective when benefiting from accumulated knowledge, transmitted by successive generations of workers,” he says.
Pedro Nuno Santos also recalls the attempted privatization of the CP by Government of Passos Coelho: “Fortunately they failed. In late 2019 we reintegrated to EMEF at CP and reinforced the maintenance of the CP with the contraction of more technicians and the reopening of the Guifões workshops. We do not know if this accident would have been avoided if there had not been the externalization of maintenance, but, as FECTRANS asks, it takes a serious assessment as it is security.”
