The news that the director of the Judiciary Police was the prime minister’s choice for the position left vacant by Maria Lúcia Amaral’s withdrawal left almost everyone (except those who were in the secret, and even then) in favor of the band — and for good and varied reasons.
Firstly, because he is someone who became famous for, in January 2025, confronting, at the DN 160th anniversary conference, the discourse of “perceptions” that Luís Montenegro, from the autumn of 2024 and in the wake of Chega, cultivated in relation to crime and insecurity, on the one hand, and the association of immigration with both, on the other.
It is recalled that, at the end of November 2024, the Prime Minister made a statement to the country, flanked by the Ministers of Justice and Internal Administration (then Margarida Blasco) and the police chiefs (including Luís Neves), talk about a “feeling of insecurity” and the need not to “sleep in the shade of the banana tree” of the idea that Portugal is a very safe country. Two weeks later, on December 19, the famous and highly publicized PSP operation took place in the Martim Moniz area, in Lisbon, in which, under the motto “Portugal is always safe”, police officers from shotgun and helmet, in war zone equipment, dozens of immigrants leaned against the wall, on Rua do Benformoso, to be searched and identified.
This action by the PSP, which a year later would be censured by the Ombudsman’s Office — by a curious chance when the former Ombudsman, Maria Lúcia Amaral, was already in the police department — as disproportionate, unfounded and an attack on human rights, was defended by the Prime Minister in an interview with DN, on December 29 (“I didn’t see any disrespect for people’s dignity there”), as well as, once again, the idea that there would be a widespread “perception of insecurity”: “Portugal is a safe country, but there are perceptions that we all have, a subjective dimension that is the feeling of insecurity”.
It is in this context that Luís Neves’ fiery intervention at the DN conference emerged, when the director of the PJ made a point of dispelling the notion that Portugal is becoming a more insecure country— “Does anyone hear about ATM attacks today? [caixas multibanco] with explosives? Does anyone hear of people dying at gas stations as a result of robberies? Do you want to compare it with that period and say that today is bad?”he asked, referring to the end of the first decade of the century —, as well as the association between crime and immigration, namely immigration from the so-called “Indostanic countries” (revealing that the number of foreign inmates with that origin is 120, out of a universe of 11 thousand).
Qualifying “the idea of perception of crime and polarization around immigration” as “fake news”“disinformation”, “manipulation” and “hybrid threats”, Luís Neves certified that “numbers do not allow us to lie” and that he had brought them to public discourse to “deconstruct” what he referred to as “information manipulation”.
Strong words, the ones that Luís Neves used. And if they were understood as aimed mainly at the racist and xenophobic extreme right, they cannot fail to apply equally to the liberalities that both the Prime Minister and, for example, the Mayor of Lisbon, Carlos Moedas, have allowed themselves with regard to inflating the idea of insecurity and the “increase in violent crime”.
It is true that Montenegro has always opted for somewhat surprising choices in the police department until now — judge Margarida Blasco, the first option, was inspector general of Internal Administration, the body that supervises the police forces; the second, Maria Lúcia Amaral, was the Ombudsman, an independent institution charged with defending the rights of citizens against the State and which, in its history, has often criticized police abuses — Luís Neves, even due to his popularity on the left, is the most perplexing of all.
There were, of course, those who pointed to the result of the presidential elections as the trigger for this apparent turnaround by the PM: The two-thirds of Portuguese people, including many AD voters, who wanted to emphasize their rejection of André Ventura would have made him see that it is not a good idea to continue flirting with the racist and xenophobic securitarism of the extreme right. Luís Neves would thus be the somewhat clumsy manifesto of this consciousness.
Regarding this, we can only wait to see which of the Luíses, Montenegro or Neves, will change lanes.
But there are more issues to keep in mind. I am not and have never been a supporter of the idea that politics is dirty and that being part of a government is a kind of indelible insult; on the contrary, I believe that public service is very commendable and that such service can include being a ruler. However, the novel MAI was director of the police that investigates the most serious crimes, which include corruption, influence peddling and other crimes generally associated with important public positions, and it turns out that we have just learned a few weeks ago that the prime minister is — once again — targeted in a criminal investigation that will be in charge of the PJ.
Luís Neves assured, during his inauguration, that as director of the Judiciary, he did not investigate directly, and that there is an absolute “tightness” in the structure of that investigative police. Could it be. But what would be said if, when José Sócrates was Prime Minister and the Face Oculta process was being investigated, for example (in which there were, as we know, wiretaps with the PM), he had invited the then director of the Judiciary Police to join the government, and he had accepted? Surely anyone who now thinks everything is completely normal could be extremely shocked, right?
We may have to conclude that the perception associated with this invitation and its acceptance may not be exactly the most recommendable. Because, and continuing in the field of perceptions, anyone can ask the following question: Would the current leader of the criminal police accept being part of a government headed by someone who has doubts about the legality of his conduct? And if, because Luís Neves has an image of being immaculate, courageous and, as he made a point of saying during his inauguration, averse to “tacticalism”, the most obvious answer is no, is it possible to think that neither of them remembered that?
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