After three violent murders, the Portuguese government cannot ignore criminal migrants ━ The European Conservatives

Just days after Portugal’s largest ever demonstration against mass immigration, three people were murdered in Santa Apolónia, one of Lisbon’s main railway junctions.

On Sunday the CHEGA! (CH) party – now Portugal’s third largest, but only five years old – organized a demonstration that attracted thousands of people protesting against current immigration levels. Of the parties with parliamentary representation, CH is the only one calling for a reduction in immigration numbers and a large-scale crackdown on illegal aliens in the country. Another part of the platform is the restoration of the border control authority, which was abolished by the previous socialist government and replaced by a “migration agency” with few tangible powers.

While authorities are still investigating the murders in Santa Apolónia, evidence shows that criminal elements were involved, with all three victims killed by gunshots to the head, while the barber shop owner who was a crime scene has been arrested in the past on drug trafficking charges.

Although Portugal is currently governed by a supposedly ‘right-wing’ coalition of Social Democrats and Christian Democrats, the government has not only failed to address the issue of immigration, but its media surrogates are perpetuating the Prime Minister’s narrative that discredits any correlation between immigration and crime figures are denied.

For example, the Brazilian government has confirmed the possibility that one of Brazil’s most notorious criminal gangs (PCC; Primeiro Comando da Capital) now has a presence in Portugal, which is also home to Brazil’s largest diaspora in the world. CH has also continuously warned about the impunity with which criminal elements of the Gypsy community act, while police and fire brigades are paralyzed by ‘anti-racist’ directives that the Social Democratic (PSD) government has continued with gusto.

If that suspicion is confirmed, the incident comes at the most unfavorable time for the PSD government led by Prime Minister Luís Montenegro.

After winning elections last March by the smallest margin in Portugal’s history, his minority government dithered over the need to form a governing coalition with other political forces in parliament. CHEGA! is too toxic after years of demonization by the left-wing media, fueled by the PSD. The only other option is the Socialist Party (PS), but Montenegro fears that the PSD will become indistinguishable from the PSD in the eyes of the electorate in the event of a ‘grand coalition’ – and that is if the Socialists, who are leading the polls would do that. susceptible to such a compromise.

The PSD is already under fire from the right for insisting on dropping the term “woman” in favor of “menstruating person” in Health Ministry documents and for refusing to reinvest in police and fire brigades, all issues that CH is addressing .

If ethnic organized crime is found to be involved in the Santa Apolónia killings, Montenegro’s tenure will be further discredited.

This is significant because the PSD’s electoral strategy appears to have consisted of drawing red lines against CH in the hope of blackmailing its electorate into transferring its vote to the PSD, thus ensuring a return of the Socialists to the prevent power. This is why it rejected government coalitions after the March elections and why it acted disinterestedly in this fall’s budget negotiations. If the budget does not pass and a political crisis arises that risks new elections, the PSD would try to make itself a victim and achieve a second victory, hopefully closer to an absolute majority.

However, such a strategy cannot work if the PSD is forced to launch a campaign that is even more distrusted by conservative voters. Denying reality makes for a bad strategy when the facts overtake the story.