José Amarelinho may no longer be mayor of Aljezur. The mayor, who was sentenced in the first instance, in 2012, by the Court of Lagos, to lose his mandate for illegalities in the licensing of works in Vale da Telha, saw its appeal to the Constitutional Court rejected, in a summary decision of 20 December last.
José Amarelinho's appeal was presented following the judgment of the Court of Appeal of Évora, on 13 June, which confirmed the suspended sentence of three years and two months in prison and the loss of municipal mandate decreed by the Court of Lagos.
At the time, Amarelinho told the Sul Informação that he had appealed to the Constitutional Court, but it is now known that the decision was not favorable to him.
Five years ago, the Lagos Court sentenced Amarelinho to a suspended sentence of imprisonment of three years and two months, pending execution upon payment of five thousand euros to the League for the Protection of Nature, for malfeasance, in the licensing of works in Vale da Telha, when the now mayor was a councilor.
Manuel Marreiros, then mayor, was also sentenced in the same case, for the crime of malfeasance, to loss of mandate and to a suspended prison sentence of four years and three months, upon payment of five thousand euros to the Almargem association.
Amarelinho and Manuel Marreiros appealed and, in 2013, the Court of Appeal of Évora annulled the judgment of the Court of Lagos, due to the «deficient critical analysis of the evidence produced» in the first instance.
The mayors returned to the Court of Lagos, a new judgment was drafted and, after another appeal, the Court of Appeal of Évora confirmed the sentence.
This was one of the arguments invoked by José Amarelinho to appeal this decision to the Constitutional Court. Amarelinho explained that “four years ago, the Court of Appeal said different things and considered the sentence null due to the lack of critical analysis of the evidence, now it comes to say something different. There must now be a higher court to decide this case”.
However, the Constitutional Court (TC) considered that "the conditions of admissibility are not met in the appeal" for this instance and that "a question of unconstitutionality with an adequate normative dimension was not previously raised by any of the appellants during the process".
In addition, the TC considers, "the appellants invoke the unconstitutionalities to directly question the decision and not incidentally (and with autonomy) any rule that has been a criterion for that same decision" and "are essentially limited to resuming the reasons for disagreement which they had already indicated in the ordinary appeals previously addressed to the Court of Appeal of Évora».
The Constitutional Court concludes that the “(ostensive) inadmissibility of the appeal filed, without justifying the invitation to improve the respective application, since the insufficiencies highlighted cannot be overcome by mere formal corrections”.
In statements to the Sul Informação, José Amarelinho has already said “to have the lawyer working on the complaint”. Although the Constitutional Court does not consider that the improvement of the requirement is justified, the mayor does not think that this is a closed door. “In the complaint, we will highlight issues that may not have been well understood. It is not a closed door because, if it were, we would not be able to use this legal instrument».
The mayor of Aljezur, re-elected on 1 October for a new term, told our newspaper that, «in the principle of intellectual and political honesty that guides me, I have already provided information to the party, municipal officials and the Municipal Assembly, giving an account of the state of the process and what we are doing'.
Amarelinho recalls that “until the sentence becomes final, I have all legal rights and will exercise them. That's what I'm going to do», he concludes.
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