"To have a truly democratic country, this type of attitude and behavior must be rejected with all our strength, we cannot allow something like this to exist", defended João Oliveira, in statements to the Lusa agency.

The communist candidate for the European elections, who was a deputy in the Assembly of the Republic (AR) for the PCP until 2022, having even been the leader of that parliamentary group (from 2013 to 2022), said he hopes that, "from the point of view of the situations that have been identified, there will be some action in accordance, depending on the seriousness" of these same behaviors.

"And I also hope that, from the point of view of the functioning of the AR, solutions will be found so that this, objectively, cannot happen", he stressed.

After participating in a public session with retirees, pensioners and the elderly in Montemor-o-Novo, João Oliveira was asked by Lusa about how he views the denunciation by PS deputy Isabel Moreira regarding misogynistic and racist insults by Chega deputies in parliament.

In the years he was a deputy, João Oliveira said that he "never" witnessed "any of this in person", but added that he was aware of "reports that such situations were happening, here and there, in different circumstances".

"I think that this corresponds to the conceptions and the political program of those reactionary and retrograde political forces in which the extreme right is inserted", he said.

"Conceptions of belittling women, belittling immigrants, belittling their adversaries and political opponents", he specified, to exemplify that these "are anti-democratic conceptions that are championed by those political forces".

But, he stressed, "those reports that are made already add another degree of seriousness, because that already means individual behaviors of conditioning, constraint, coercion of others based on this type of conception".

"And I think that this is something absolutely unacceptable" and "it must be objectively attacked with all our strength to prevent the idea from taking hold that such behaviors can have any space in our country", he argued.

Recalling that, when he was a deputy, "the expression of those benches was not what it is today", in an allusion to Chega, João Oliveira admitted that "this could also have a more serious expression today than in the past".

"But whether on a larger or smaller scale, whether in greater or lesser volume, these are behaviors that are unacceptable and must be completely rejected and attacked", he insisted, reiterating that reports such as those that have now been made "do not allow things to pass with indifference".

This is "something that is too serious to be treated with indifference", he argued.

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