In their second and final head-to-head debate for the October 6 general elections, organised by radio stations Antena 1, Radio Renascença and TSF, Rui Rio of the PSD and António Costa of the Socialist Party (PS) were questioned by the hosts about the recent resignation of the secretary of state for civil protection, Artur Neves, after he was named as a person of interest in an investigation into the purchase of equipment for fire fighters.
Rio refused to comment on Neves’s case, noting that it remains under investigation, but gave what he said was "an overall [political] assessment" of the government’s situation.
"The PS has always had a tic: when it is in power it sees the state as if it owned all of it,” he alleged. “What distinguishes António Costa's government relative to the past is that we have not only cases of PS activists and supporters being appointed to top public positions, but also their relatives. That goes a little further than what happened in the past.”
In response, Costa described the accusation as "absolutely unfounded" where both to the PS’s history and the present were concerned. He noted that his government has appointed some PSD figures to top positions on the grounds of their capacity.
"There is one thing that does not exist in the PS: proclamations of ‘an ethics bath' that is then trimmed to taste," said Costa, citing a phrase that was used by Rio in his campaign for party leader in 2016, and which came back to haunt him after a prominent member of his team was accused of irregularities.