Last updated 18 June, 2000

In August and September 1992,  the Lisbon weekly O Independente accused me of selling a family estate, Monte dos Frades, after my brother in law  obtained in 1987 subsidies for its agricultural development. Opposition leaders from the socialist and centrist parties called for my resignation. I claimed this was a personal matter, and filed proceedings against  the newspaper, its director Paulo Portas (who since became president of the Popular Party), and  four other journalists (Maria Helena Sanches Osório, now director of Lisbon daily A Capital, Pedro Guerra, Maria Guiomar Lima and Graça Rosendo, now at the Lisbon weekly Expresso) for libel.
I sent a detailed point by point rebuttal to be published in the newspaperand in a letter to the president of the Assembly of the Republic offered to answer any questions in parliament, as I had been elected member for the Oporto constituency in October 1991.
This happened on 12 of September, in the presence of the media. The representatives of all the opposition parties refused to ask any questions, but the parliamentary leader of PSD Domingos Duarte Lima questioned me during several hours and his deputy José Pacheco Pereira compared the situation to Kafka's trial as the was in fact no accusation. Nevertheless, the accusations had had a strong national and international repercussion, namely through  the English press (e.g. the Daily Express published an article titled "Portuguese minister posed as peasant", noting with sarcasm that I had chaired the ECOFIN council during the first half of the year) which lingered on.
O Independente continued to attack me and refused to publish the rebuttal I delivered on 3 September 1992. In spite of being ordered to publish my letter by the Lisbon Police Court, the newspaper only carried out the publication on 27 December 1996, after loosing the appeal in the Constitutional Court. As it not then mention the fact, I clarified this issue in  a letter to the editor which was published on 3 January 1997.
In the issue of 23 December, 1994, one year after I had left office, the cover story of the section VIDA of  O Independente was entitled "Memories of the Orange house" (the nickname of PSD members  is oranges) and the lead was "Cavaco-ism has already a lenghty real estate saga. From Cadilhe to Duarte Lima, via Braga de Macedo, Dias Loureiro and Couto dos Santos many oranges had real estate problems". The names used referred to prominent ministers of Cavaco Silva or, in the case of Duarte Lima, the parliamentary leader of PSD from 1991 to 1994.
I issued further proceedings against the article’s author,  Francisco Camacho, the director of the newspaper Paulo Portas and the owner of the newspaper (SOCI). In this case I chose civil rather than criminal libel. The judge distributed his list of issues to be heard in court, originally in the number of thirty, subsequently having added two more, on the 31 October 1996.   The trial began on 10 February 1998, witnesses testified and closing speeches were presented on April 1. The judgement was favorable to me and Portas was condemned. He appealed  but the higher court ruled that Portas had to pay punitive damages in the amount of $20,000, twice as much as the lower court had decided. This was reported in Diario de Notícias and inPublico.
 

The list of 8 dates at each one of which the trial was adjourned

The criminal  trial, however, has not yet commenced for the defendant, Paulo Portas, run for office in 1995 and did not forego his parliamentary immunity. After he resigned from parliament in late 1996, there were several unsuccessful attempts at convening the six journalists I had accused in the Lisbon Criminal Court (Boa Hora). In February 1998, Portas become leader of the CDS/Popular party and the pressure for him to appear in court rises. He finally appeared on the 20 May but one of the other defendants, Maria Guiomar Lima missed the trial. In spite of my lawyer’s request to proceed without her presence, the trial was adjourned once more. The new date is now 28 October 1998.
In an attempt to cope with the anger regarding the continued delay in starting the proceedings, I decided to open this page, with the hope of closing it before too long!
 
 

In May 1999, the suit was suspended because Portasa was candidate to the European Parliament. The other defendants  provided an acceptable explanation and were acquitted shortly thereafter. Meanwhile he was again elected to the national parliament and I'm still waiting to close this page... There was a decision of  parliament to grant him immunity, which  newspapers claimed was against his will, when in fact this is is exactly what he was seeking. My letter to that effect was published in Público, 7 February 2000.  Because of news reports that, in another case, immunity had not been granted, my lawyer asked the judge on 25 February 2000 to try and bring Portas to trial. There has been no response so far.

I was luckier with the civil suit which began in 1995, where the higher court ruled that Portas had to pay punitive damages in the amount of $10,000, twice as much as the lower court had decided. This was reported in Diario de Notícias and in Publico.

Return to my homepage