Parliamentary Slur Sparks Inquiry, Tests Portugal’s Anti-Racism Shield

The latest dust-up in Portugal’s hemicycle didn’t end with order being restored; the Socialist bench turned it into a formal investigation. PS deputy Eva Cruzeiro has asked the Assembly’s Transparency Committee to probe Chega deputy Filipe Melo for allegedly telling her to “go back to your land.” From the right’s vantage point, this is the familiar pattern: the left dishes out sweeping accusations—“racist,” “xenophobe,” “fascist”—and then tries to criminalize a heated retort as if it were violence. Meanwhile, the same political milieu has looked the other way as pro-Palestinian marches in Europe (including in Portugal) feature Hamas apologetics and slogans many Jews experience as eliminationist. One standard for them; another for anyone to their right.

The flashpoint—and the context everyone forgets

Witnesses recall a tense 29 October hearing where MPs questioned Minister for the Presidency António Leitão Amaro on migration. After Cruzeiro accused Chega of promoting racism and xenophobia, Melo rose, gestured toward the exit, and allegedly said “volta para a tua terra.” Cruzeiro—Lisbon-born to Cape Verdean parents—later said the phrase reduced her to a “second-class citizen.” Parliamentary ushers calmed the room.

Here’s the missing context: branding opponents “racist” and “fascist” has become routine—a way to shut down debate over borders, crime, and integration. When that rhetoric lands, it is somehow “activism.” When a Chega deputy fires back in the heat of argument, it becomes grounds for disciplinary punishment and even criminal theorizing. Free expression for some; speech codes for others.

What the committee is being asked to decide

Sound engineers have delivered the chamber audio to the Transparency Committee, which must judge whether Melo’s words fall under protected political speech or breach decorum. Initial transcripts reportedly support Cruzeiro’s account and there was no formal apology. Under the Regimento da Assembleia da República, penalties can arrive quickly—from a warning to suspension of duties.

The right’s concern isn’t that decorum rules don’t matter; it’s that they’re enforced selectively. We’ve watched for years as left-wing deputies and allied activists paint conservatives as moral contagions with impunity. In the streets, anti-Israel chants and intimidation pass as “protest.” Inside the chamber, a sharp rejoinder becomes a case study for punishment. The standard seems to be: speech is “harmful” when it challenges left orthodoxy, but “legitimate” when it targets Jews, Israelis, or the right.

A constitutional sledgehammer for a political dispute

Cruzeiro’s complaint leans on Article 13 (equality before the law) and Article 1 (human dignity), and argues that outside the chamber the remark could fit the Penal Code’s discrimination provisions—punishable by up to five years in prison. That’s an extraordinary escalation. Are we really going to turn political back-and-forth into potential felonies while chants that many Jews hear as calls for their erasure skate by under the banner of “solidarity with Palestine”? If the goal is equal dignity, start by applying equal standards.

Chega’s rebuttal is straightforward: those who constantly smear opponents should be prepared to take heat in return. Heated? Yes. Illegal? No. That’s the essence of democratic debate—particularly on an issue as consequential as immigration.

The pile-on and the optics

The fallout is spreading. Livre’s Isabel Mendes Lopes wants Melo removed from the presiding board, calling his behavior “execrable.” PSD leaders are officially quiet; some centrists privately lament the climate of insults. And the press is now threading in an unrelated civil case in which a Chega activist says Melo owes up to €9,000—fodder to imply a pattern of misconduct and ramp up pressure for sanctions. On the right, this reads as a familiar media choreography: fix the narrative, then stack every unrelated grievance on top to justify punishment.

A system with opacity—and selective zeal

Since 2019, the committee has fielded multiple complaints over slurs in the chamber and even Nazi imagery posted online. But the public rarely learns how cases end; sanctions are often buried in internal minutes. The cure for distrust is transparency applied evenly—not sporadic crackdowns when the target wears a Chega pin. Legal scholars warn that opacity breeds suspicion that deputies live under softer rules than citizens. The right adds: and those rules turn strangely soft when the speech in question comes from the left’s own allies, including at rallies where Hamas apologetics and anti-Jewish hate are tolerated under the alibi of “context.”

What’s actually at stake

Chair José Pedro Aguiar-Branco must decide whether this ethics process runs in public or behind closed doors. Melo could receive a reprimand—or, in the harshest scenario, suspension, losing access to a €3,700 monthly salary and protocol privileges. Cruzeiro says the issue is larger than one outburst, insisting that parliament must apply to itself the standards it expects of society. On that principle, the right agrees—so let’s finally apply a single standard.

As presidential elections approach next year, voters will judge two things. First, Chega’s tone—fair enough. Second, and more importantly, whether Portugal’s establishment can defend convivência without importing a speech regime that punishes dissent on immigration while indulging open hostility toward Jews and Israel in the public square. If the left wants to lecture the country about dignity, it should start by condemning Hamas unequivocally and policing the hate in its own marches as aggressively as it polices words in parliament.

Free speech cannot be a privilege of one faction. If the Assembly wants to restore trust, it must stop turning right-of-center speech into a special offense while waving through the left’s own excesses as “justice.” Apply the rules—clearly, transparently, and to everyone—or admit they’re not rules at all.