Former President of the Republic, Mário Soares, today visited the recently released former Prime Minister José Sócrates to wish him a happy birthday.
Soares arrived at the Lisbon address on Sunday morning but refused to make statements to the gang of press and photographers camped outside Sócrates’ ex-wife’s apartment in Rua Abade Faria, Lisbon.
Sócrates is 58-years-old today and is free to spent his birthday under house arrest, preferable to Évora prison where he has been held for the past 41 weeks.
Soares did say that he was very pleased that Sócrates has been released but did not make any other comments.
When Sócrates was arrested at Lisbon airport last November, Soares lept to his defence, saying that Sócrates’ detention was political and that, "everyone in this country believes in his innocence."
In the opinion of Soares, the case "has to do with the rogues who are after a man who was an exemplary prime minister," adding that Sócrates "is a man of dignity and worth and has not even been tried," and that "if he is judged, he will be acquitted."
Maria Adelaide Carvalho Monteiro, Sócrates’ mother and his son also visited the birthday boy but made no statements.
The address in Rua Abade is registered in his ex-wife's name at the conservatorio as a shed, but behind the skillfully down at heel façade lies a pleasant T3 villa in its own garden with an indoor swimming pool.
The rates bill reflects that of a warehouse rather than a rather luxurious villa and the property, purchased in 2008, appears never to have been re-rated to pay the correct level of local taxes.
A license was approved for remodelling in 2008 but the property has never been re-rated.
Who did the work? One need look no further than a company owned by Sócrates' chum and co-accused, Carlos Silva Santos. Who paid for the work? The media hounds will find out.
There seems to be no end to the deliberate connivance attached to this family.
