Incidents aside, João Almeida presented the CDS bill as a way of ensuring legality, uniformity and institutional neutrality in flags that can be flown in public buildings – which centrists, like Chega, restrict to national, European Union and other institutional and heraldic, referring to autonomous regions, local authorities, security forces or military -, excluding what he said were expressions “of divisionism, propaganda and social vanguardism”.
Fabian Figueiredo was the first to accuse the authors of the proposals of being against the use of rainbow flags in public buildings, saying that they “are not there by chance”as they are “symbols of a fight for the right to life”. Recalling that homosexuality was a crime until 1982, the PT member cited former centrist leader Adolfo Mesquita Nunes, when saying that “there were always reasons to be afraid” in the LGBT community.
When deputy Nuno Simões de Melo presented the Chega bill, referring to “flags associated with specific communities”, he received ironic praise from Pedro Delgado Alvesbecause “he said to him that he was coming, without fear”. For the socialist deputy, the authors of the proposals “create a problem that does not exist to fuel cultural wars”.
Also Paulo Muacho, from Livre, said that the “supposed ideological and political neutrality” defended in legislative initiatives does not match the episode in which Chega used the facade of the Assembly of the Republic to hang banners with the face of André Ventura. And he added that the approval of the bills would prevent the colors of Ukraine or Israel from being projected on that same facade.
“We all realize that this is a hidden way of continuing to persecute the LGBT community,” continued Muachosaying that “the obsession of the right” – having started by saying that “it is increasingly easy to distinguish the CDS from Chega” – will not be able to prohibit LGBT people from being free.
After the liberal Jorge Manuel Teixeira and the social democrat Carolina Marques made repairs to the bills, There was still time for Chega deputy Pedro Frazão to accuse the CDS of not having voted against the projection of the rainbow flag on the stairs and facade of the Assembly of the Republic. He was denied by the centrist parliamentary leader, Paulo Núncio, and he ended up recanting, claiming to have been misled by a piece of news.
For your part, communist parliamentary leader Paula Santos said that the CDS and Chega “seem like they are having a competition to see which of the two is more reactionary”ruling out that there is “any type of problem with the use of flags” and imputing “censorious and authoritarian purposes” to the authors of the proposals. And the only PAN deputy, Inês de Sousa Real, described it as “embarrassing” to see a party that supports the Government “persecuting rights, freedoms and guarantees”.
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