After the Minister of Defense revealed attempts to contact the mayor of Leiria on January 29th, ensuring that he remained unanswered, the mayor, who refuses to discuss phone calls, explains what could have happened.
The mayor of Leiria has been one of the most critical mayors of the Government’s actions in responding to the consequences of Storm Kristin, but there is one statement in particular that has remained in the memory, at least, of the Minister of Defense.
On January 31, Mayor Gonçalo Lopes said he did not know if the military was already in the field.
“On January 29th. So that there is no doubt, it is here: the president had sent me a message, I was in airplane mode. As soon as I landed, I saw the message and the first phone call I made was to the president of the Chamber, he did not answer, and the first message I sent declaring all the collaboration of the Armed Forces in everything necessary and asking him to contact me was to the president of the Chamber of Leiria”, said minister Nuno Melo.
But, according to the minister, he received no response.
It turns out that the mayor of Leiria, who does not want to discuss phone calls when there are still people from Leiria without communications, explains in statements to SIC Notícias that: “I received thousands of calls at that time, I made the calls when possible and I was not always able to receive them.”.
“We are in an operation room, at a time when we have to be very active and operational on the ground, only then can we respond. The first contact I made was with this objective, to try to understand to what extent the military could enter earlier”, reports Gonçalo Lopes.
The mayor also assures, in these statements, that the “institutional relationship between Leiria City Hall and the Armed Forces was exemplary”.
