Lisbon, Sept. 18, 2024 (Lusa) - The president of the Lisbon Municipal Assembly suspended the plenary session on Tuesday after an argument between PSD and Left Bloc (BE) members. The mayor had also decided to leave the room after being accused of lying.
"He called me a liar and I'm going to leave the room while the BE is talking," said the mayor of Lisbon, Carlos Moedas (PSD), during the meeting of the Municipal Assembly, where he was reporting on the work of the council between July and August.
This decision followed an intervention by BE member Maria Escaja on the placement of large-scale billboards in the city. Escaja criticised Carlos Moedas for "repeatedly blaming the previous executive" when the contract with JCDecaux was signed during the current mandate.
"Carlos Moedas is lying. Why doesn't he take responsibility?" she asked.
In defence of his honour, the mayor left the room at 17:27.
Afterwards, the BE's intervention continued with Joana Teixeira, who considered that Carlos Moedas' attitude revealed his inability to answer the questions.
This led to an argument between PSD, CDS-PP MPs, the BE, and independent MPs from the Citizens for Lisbon movement (elected by the PS/Livre coalition).
Miguel Graça, from Cidadãos Por Lisboa, said the right-wing deputies' interjections were because the BE bench was made up of "women deputies." This escalated the argument and led the president of the Lisbon Municipal Assembly, Rosário Farmhouse (PS), to suspend the meeting.
"The work will be suspended for five minutes," warned Rosário Farmhouse, asking the services to suspend the live broadcast.
"What's happening here is a disgrace. Either they calm down and work together or the meeting ends here. As long as they don't calm down, work won't resume," said the president of the municipal assembly, who then convened the leaders" conference on the auditorium stage.
At 5.55 p.m., proceedings resumed, with BE member Joana Teixeira continuing to speak.
The deputy mayor, Filipe Anacoreta Correia (CDS-PP), who represented the municipal executive in Carlos Moedas's absence, expressed his regret at the incident in the assembly.
At 6.05 p.m., the mayor re-entered the room after BE's intervention.
As part of the proceedings, Chega MP Bruno Mascarenhas presented two plans for the incident: "I don't see that there was any misogyny [...] and I don't understand that the BE had an attitude that called into question the mayor's honour".
"It's normal in politics to say that politicians meddle, it's part of the political dialectic," said Bruno Mascarenhas, considering that Carlos Moedas lacked “a bit of padding” to stay in the room.
In response, the mayor rejected this way of doing politics, "to attack people's suitability, to call them liars".
From the PSD benches, Carlos Reis criticised "those who turn politics into a Manichean exercise", saying that accusations of lying "disqualify democratic political debate itself" and warning that those who hold or have held government positions must assess "which companies they want to face the mayor", in an allusion to the next local elections in 2025, taking Carlos Moedas' re-election for granted.
The installation of up to 125 large digital advertising hoardings in Lisbon has prompted the Automobile Club of Portugal (ACP) to file an injunction against Lisbon City Council and the companies JCDecaux and MOP - Multimédia Outdoors Portugal, because their location and size "clearly jeopardise road safety".
In this regard, the Lisbon City Council has asked JCDecaux to suspend the placement of more large format billboards in the city. It will negotiate with the company solutions for those already installed.
Although the process began under the previous government, the concession contract to JCDecaux for the installation and operation of advertising in Lisbon was approved by the current council in September 2022. The contract has a 15-year term, and the company will pay CML "an annual fee of €8.3 million" in return.
The contract includes "900 billboards, of which at least 10% must be digital"; 2,000 shelters; 75 public toilets; 40 removable billboards for institutional advertising; "a number of large format digital billboards not exceeding 125 and which together comprise a total area of advertising faces between 2,500 m2 [square metres] and 3,000 m2; and 20 digital billboards and five digital billboards (4x3 metres), to be used exclusively as municipal information equipment".
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