The incident occurred when Rebelo de Sousa visited Toronto’s Portuguese community
Several political parties in Portugal reacted on Sunday to the country’s president’s statement on Friday, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousaa story about a young woman’s cleavage during a visit to Canada that went viral this weekend.
The scene, captured by television cameras, took place in Toronto, Canada, on Friday as Rebelo de Souza was walking through the “Little Portugal” neighborhood to meet members of the Portuguese community in the North American country.
At one point, the Portuguese president stopped to talk to a mother and daughter and said to them sarcastically: “My daughter is prettier than her mother, and your daughter also has a cold. Didn’t you see what her neckline looks like?”
Video of that moment went viral, and criticism of the 74-year-old Portuguese head of state has not stopped.
Rui Tavares, one of the founders of the environmental party Livre, said in a statement to La Publica on Sunday that these remarks did not represent the President of the Republic’s “defense of people’s autonomy and respect for their rights.” responsibility. election. “His countrymen”.He believes that the words of Rebelo de Sousa “Ultimately putting a fellow citizen in a situation where she has no choice is likely to be uncomfortable.”
Inês de Sousa Real, a spokesman for the animal rights party PAN, said the president should clarify whether his comments had “no malicious intent” and “stress the importance of not normalizing these comments.”
“We recently mobilized in Spain and the international community on the Rubiales case,” the spokesman recalled. He continued: “We’re not here to equate the seriousness of the situation, but the fact is, we can’t forget that we live in a world where domestic violence and sieges are quite serious, and a lot of the time it’s words that don’t mean any harm. .can be seen as legitimizing conduct with other intentions”.
De Souza Real and Tavares responded after Socialist Party General Secretary Isabel Moreira made the remarks on the social network X (formerly Twitter) on Friday evening.
“The concept is self-explanatory. It’s 2023. This is not a woman you don’t know who is being told a ‘joke’ about her weight. This is not a ‘joke’ about her cleavage. If you don’t understand, Who would tell you? “That’s PR (an abbreviation for public relations in English), learning. and apologize. Sexism kills us. This is not a joke,” Moreira concluded.
This is not the first time Rebelo de Sousa has been involved in this type of controversy, as Some of his comments last weekend have caused a stir While visiting the Alentejo region, he offered a seat to a woman and asked, “Will the chair hold up?”
The leader of Portugal’s far-right party Chega André Ventura also joined in the criticism of Rebelo de Sousa. “If I were to comment on a woman’s cleavage in public, we would have received dozens of complaints at the ERC (Social Communications Regulator), the Attorney General’s Office and I don’t know how many associations and observatories on gender equality,” Ventura wrote on the X network on Saturday.
The president’s party, the Social Democrats (center-right), has not yet commented on the controversy.
Rebelo de Sousa already caused controversy at the end of August when he commented on the kiss incident between then Spanish Football Federation president Luis Rubiales and footballer Jennifer Hermoso, saying it was “a small issue” If compared to the war in Ukraine.
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