“We are tired of this comedy. It hasn’t stopped since May. It’s scandal after scandal. » Silvia lives in Murtal, near Lisbon, and the “bad Costa” affair doesn’t really amuse her. “It’s something improbable but true,” comments 20 minutes the 36-year-old Portuguese woman. ”They just got the name wrong, it’s so stupid. To that, you add instability, the extreme right which is rising… it’s killing us. »
In power since the end of 2015, António Costa won an absolute majority for the first time during the early legislative elections in January 2022. But on November 7, there was a twist: the Prime Minister resigned. That day Operation “Influence” led to the fall of the Portuguese government. These are revelations on a corruption scandal linked to the awarding of lithium mining licenses in northern Portugal and the construction of a mega data center in Sines, about a hundred kilometers south of Lisbon.
“Shame both for our politicians and for our justice”
The scandal involving António Costa concerns, according to the General Prosecutor’s Office of the Republic, suspicions of “embezzlement, active and passive corruption of political office holders and influence peddling.” The Prime Minister is suspected of having himself intervened “to unblock procedures”, specifies the prosecution. And Costa’s closest collaborators are affected, according to Observador, notably his chief of staff and his Minister of Infrastructure, Joao Galamba. End of cycle”, “November 7 earthquake”, political “bomb”, will headline the newspapers to describe this chaotic day for those in power.
The local media did not imagine for a second that the day of November 14 could eclipse that of “the 7th”. A week after the resignation of António Costa, the prosecution announced that it had confused António Costa with António Costa e Silva, Minister of the Economy. According to account Nova Portugal which resumes France Info, the “surreal” error would come from a telephone tapping transcription. “We’re diving so deep into big nonsense at the moment that this blunder doesn’t even surprise me,” reacts the young Portuguese woman, contacted by telephone. It makes you laugh because there are 100,000 Costas in our country, but it annoys us and it plunges us back into an endless crisis. And, frankly, it is a shame both for our politicians and for our justice system. »
“For Portugal, it’s over. »
The Portuguese public prosecutor recognized a “big bug” in this case. “Justice, after having said: ”yes, we have telephone tapping which implicates him”, declared a week later: ‘in fact, we got the name wrong, it wasn’t him, it was ‘was the Minister of the Economy, who is also called Costa'”, summarizes on France info Ana Navarro-Pedro, Portuguese journalist correspondent in Paris. This was all it took to discredit the public prosecutor’s office. And this, especially since it was a lawyer placed in pre-trial detention in this case who noticed the transcription error. It was he who uttered the famous sentence at the origin of this scandal. Diving back into the case, he warned the judges that he was talking about the Minister of the Economy and not the Prime Minister.
According to information published by the local press, this “Costa error” does not, however, clear the Prime Minister and does not call into question his resignation. The name of the head of government is actually mentioned in dozens of wiretaps of conversations held between the various suspects. “António Costa was to succeed Charles Michel at the head of the European Council but now his future is in the hands of Portuguese justice, concludes Ana Navarro-Pedro. For Portugal, it’s over. »
In the meantime, the race to succeed António Costa is on. Within the Socialist Party, the former Minister of Infrastructure Pedro Nuno Santos will be opposed to the current Minister of the Interior, José Luis Carneiro. The winner will be chosen by the activists in mid-December. And until March 10, the date of the early legislative elections, António Costa and António Costa Silva will remain in charge.