Portugal’s Civil Protection chief, Rui Esteves, has quit after it was discovered that he may well have claimed qualifications to which he was not entitled. He was asked to quit - or be fired.
Esteves also faces earlier accusations that he had two public sector jobs, when allowed only one, but finally quit today after hearing that the Minister of Higher Education and the head of Castelo Branco Poly had asked the General Inspectorate of Education to check on whether he actually had earned the degree which he claimed.
The president of the opposition CDS-PP, Assunção Cristas, warned that just because the national commander had quit, "did not mean that the problems would go away,” while insisting on the need to establish political responsibilities after the devastating forest fires this summer.
"What I hope is that the replacement will be by a competent and capable person and that everything that happened this summer duly will be clarified," said Cristas, referring to the Pedrógão Grande fire, in which 64 people died, and other fires in Fundão, Covilhã and Mação.
Complaints of "poor coordination" and "incompetence," later were made against Esteves as commander of the National Civil Protection Authority who appeared not to have commanded or protected very well at all.
Rui Esteves only took over the top job in January 2017, when he replaced José Manuel Moura.
Esteves previously had served as district commander for relief operations in Castelo Branco and joins a list of taxpayer-funded twisters, José Sócrates and Miguel Relvas being the most notable, that imagine that inventing or embellishing qualifications to which they are not entitled somehow is OK.
