Pedro Nunes / Lusa
Basílio Horta, president of the Chamber of Sintra
Basílio Horta, criticized for the controversial gesture, says he has been filmed every day for nine years by the “bad man who is at the door and who bites the police officers”.
The Mayor of Sintra, Basilio Hortawas recently filmed simulating “horns” with his right hand, while driving away from the municipality. But who were these “horns” directed at?
The images published on social media have already been addressed in the City Council by deputy Eunice Baeta, from the Liberal Initiative, who condemned the behavior and suggested that the mayor “retract”.
In response, the mayor accused the liberal of being “accomplice in an absolutely reprehensible and unworthy attitude”, cited by , and highlighted that the gesture It wasn’t “offensive to anyone”.
In the same newspaper, Basílio Horta says that the gesture was directed at a friend, but reveals that a mysterious “bad man”, responsible for capturing the controversial gesture on video, is chasing him “every day for nine years”.
According to the socialist, the man responsible for the recordings has a history of problematic behavior, including disrespect for authorities and refusing housing offered by the municipality.
“It’s a video made without my knowledge every day that I leave the camera, every day that I enter the camera, for a bad man who is at the door, who bites the policewho was sentenced to a suspended sentence, who bothers everyone with very loud music”, he told the morning newspaper.
At 81 years old and at the end of his third term, Basílio Horta also accused Marco Almeida — from the PSD, and defeated by Horta in the last two municipal elections — of politically exploiting the case by releasing the video.
Basílio Horta made the controversial gesture when leaving the city hall he presides over.
Manuel Pinho’s “horns”
The episode is reminiscent of a somewhat similar incident from 2009, when the then Minister of Economy, meanwhile, was sentenced to 10 years in prison for corruption in a process derived from the EDP case.
A former ruler also made the “horns” gesture in Parliament — although he put his fingers directly to his head to simulate the so-called horns —, which at one point led to his resignation and the issuance of an apology from the government of José Sócrates.
