"I believe that the president of the Assembly of the Republic has not assumed his position and, therefore, thinks that the Assembly of the Republic is a mere arena where anything can be said", accused Rui Tavares, in statements to journalists in the Autonomous Region of Madeira, where he is this weekend to participate in the campaign for the regional elections of 26 May.

Tavares was questioned about the fact that on Friday, during a parliamentary debate, José Pedro Aguiar-Branco refused to censor and limit the freedom of expression of the deputies, after the leader of Chega, André Ventura, questioned the ten years planned for the construction of the new airport, having stated: "We can be much better than the Turks, than the Chinese, than the Albanians, we will have an airport in five years".

For Rui Tavares, "freedom of expression or censorship" is not at stake.

"It is not about cutting off the word or censoring anyone. It is about the president of parliament assuming, as the second figure of the State, that he distances himself and condemns certain speeches. By not doing so, he becomes complicit with them", he criticised.

The deputy of Livre pointed out that, during this incident in the parliamentary debate, Aguiar-Branco ended up being applauded only by the 50 deputies of Chega, and that "not even his party, the PSD, took a position by his side".

"This means that tomorrow he will have to put his red line somewhere else because at this moment what he did was give carte blanche to insulting and defamatory speeches", he accused.

The leader of Livre also pointed out some "contradiction" to Aguiar-Branco, arguing that the day before the incident the president of parliament had "reprimanded" Livre since the party, at the beginning of each intervention, "insists on greeting the president, the deputies but also the citizens in the galleries".

"For the president of the Assembly of the Republic this was something that he was not sure could be done, the next day it is already possible to insult other countries without him taking a position", he lamented.

On Friday, after the parliamentary incident, in statements to journalists, the president of the Assembly of the Republic defended that it is not his responsibility to censor the positions or opinions of deputies, referring to the Public Prosecutor's Office for any criminal liability of parliamentary speech.

The PS has already proposed today to take to the conference of parliamentary leaders how to reconcile freedom of expression in parliament with "red lines" such as "hate speech" or racist, which was agreed by Aguiar-Branco.

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