Bad weather? Aguiar-White says “preventive dimension was advisable”

O president of the Assembly of the Republic, José Pedro Aguiar-White, today considered that “it was advisable” to adopt preventive measures on Wednesday in the face of bad weather forecast.

“ What I saw was a preventive dimension that was technically advisable”, he said.

In statements to journalists on the margins of CNN Summit, which takes place at the Estoril Congress Centre (Lisbon District), the President of Parliament said that he welcomed the recommendations of the Government and that “it went as it should” in the face of “a matter that was technically high risk”.

“ That is what I have learned from the information we have all been collecting, in which this preventive dimension cautions and demonstrates a practice of care also on the part of the citizens in relation to a situation that, unfortunately, will be increasingly recurrent, as all those who understand climate change say,” he said.

The President of the Assembly of the Republic considered that it was preferable to adopt measures “than not having done this preventive dimension”.

Regarding the criticisms of some sectors, which considered excessive measures, Aguiar-White stated that “in these situations it is impossible for everyone to be pleased” and “there is always the sacrifice of some activities or of some people when the whole overlaps”.

“ Whoever has the technical domain has made the risk assessment, as you can imagine it is not the political body that does this, it is the technicians who, in this case in particular, transmitted a very serious, very serious situation, and who created that the political decision was to prevent something from happening that then we would all become dependent”, he said.

At the time, the President of the Assembly of the Republic was also asked about the indication that Parliament should be open only to essential services, the rule being the teleworking regime. According to the public, this determination was contradicted by the parliamentary leader of the PSD, who asked the party officials to work in a face-to-face manner, which implied the presence of more officials in São Bento, such as the canteen.

José Pedro Aguiar-Branco considered that it was a “oversizing of what happened” and said that the issue should be seen “with much naturalness”.

“There is no reason here to interpret these things as a dimension of conflict,” he said.

The President of the Assembly of the Republic said that his intention was to follow the national guidelines, but stressed that “Parliament never closes, in the sense that an organ of sovereignty meets at any time, in any circumstances that requires it, in the various ways that it can do it” and “is always in readiness to act”.

“ I think that in the end it has translated into five more people that is necessary to ensure the service of a cafeteria, let us face it that it is not the extent of the situation to extract something from the point of view of the conflict. Any little thing serves to appear that there is some dimension of conflict, some dimension of oversizing, which we will often later see to detail, does not justify ", sustained.

The depression Charles, which motivated the activation of the alert situation throughout the territory of mainland Portugal from 00:00 to 23:59 Wednesday, lost strength and divided into two cores of low pressure, one towards Lisbon and the other towards the Algarve.

In addition to closing schools and non-essential public services, bad weather motivated the cancellation of a few hundred flights and the cutting of roads.