The fall of the heir. An email dated February dictated an exit that the government considered “vital”.

The decision was formed during the day, as the Ministry of Infrastructure and Housing and Communal Services was increasingly surrounded by the question: did the minister know about the compensation paid to Alexandra Reis for leaving the TAP in February? And this is because in mailbox of Secretary of State Hugo Mendez Since then, TAP management has received a message about the results of negotiations on the manager’s departure: 500 thousand euros of gross compensation for terminating the contract. The Secretary of State knew, that’s why he resigned, that was certain. And the minister?

The minister is Pedro Nuno Santos, who is also the most hackneyed name of postcostism in PS. This is a very heavyweight in today’s socialism, with weapons in the vast majority of party districts and the face of left socialists. A profile showing the delicacy of answering the question of one’s own departure. But Pedro Nuno, who spoke several times during the day with the Prime Minister, had no doubt that during the day the inevitable path: no one will believe that the information that was in the Ministry did not reach the minister, and the fact that it did not reach is a problem in itself.

At the top of the executive branch, the same conviction prevailed: formal steps were taken to establish the whole truth with TAP, and the information provided by the company was sent to the CMVM and Inspecção-Geral das Financeiras – in a case in which the government knew that in order to truly make amends, he would have to act “transparently” and “based on information, not what he said” – political assessment was lacking. And, having learned these days that the Minister of Infrastructure had information about the agreement, it became “absolutely necessary for a political decision”- explains the line “Observer”.

Here the output will be solid: “Either the minister knew, or he had to know”. Not knowing, the glitch continued to be “serious” and could not be resolved by Mendez’ departure. The conviction, which added to the growing “indignation of public opinion” and which the government listened to, realizing that the issue could never be resolved only at the legal level, that Medina’s decision to dismiss the secretary of state even before this clarification was carried out, also already showed.