Several political parties in Portugal reacted this Sunday to the statements made on Friday by the country’s president, Marcelo Rebelo de Souza, about a young woman’s cleavage during a visit to Canada that went viral this weekend.

The scene, captured by television cameras, took place on Friday. when Rebelo de Sousa walked through the Little Portugal area meet members of the Portuguese community in this North American country.

There was a moment when the President of Portugal stopped to talk to a mother and daughter and said sardonically: “The daughter is more beautiful than the mother. Your daughter will still catch the flu, Didn’t you see how cleavage she has?”

The video of this moment went viral and Criticism against the Portuguese head of state continues to intensify. 74 years old.

The Portuguese President this Sunday denied that his comment was sexist and He explained that he did it because it was cold.

Rebelo de Souza was surprised. ““Don’t tell me, I don’t even know what to comment.” – he pointed out.

“It was not a sexist comment. It didn’t even occur to me, neither to that young woman, nor to the old women. It was not sexist at all,” Rebelo de Souza added in press statements in Toronto.

Rebelo de Sousa said this Sunday that at the end of his walk in the Portuguese district of Montreal (although Portuguese media had previously reported that it was in Toronto) it started to rain and it was so cold. He alerted “several older women, one with gray hair, and others who were younger.”

“I told a few people, but apparently only the young woman was recorded.”“Be careful, because you can still catch a cold, I caught a cold,” he concluded.

Rui Tavares, one of the founders of the environmental party Livre, said this in a statement to the newspaper on Sunday. Public that these comments do not represent the duty of the President of the Republic to “protect the right of the people to their autonomy and respect the choices of your fellow citizens.”

He believed that with his words Rebelo de Souza would “end put a fellow citizen in a position she did not choose and that it is most likely inconvenient.”

You might be interested > Rubiales avoids apologizing to Hermoso: ‘What happened is bad for everyone’ | video

Earlier, the representative of the animalist party PAN, Ines de Souza Real, said that The President should clarify whether his comment was made “without malice” and “emphasize the importance of not normalizing these comments.”

“We recently had the Rubiales case in Spain. and the international community has mobilized,” the representative recalled.

This is not the first time that Rebelo de Sousa has been involved in this type of controversy, as some of his comments during a visit to the Alentejo region caused a stir last weekend when He offered a seat to the woman and asked, “Will the chair hold?”

Currently the president’s political party is SDP (center-right) did not comment on this dispute.

At the end of August, Rebelo de Souza already caused controversy by commenting on the incident of the kiss of the then president of the Spanish Football Federation, Luis Rubiales, with football player Jennifer Hermoso, he said that It was a “minor problem” compared to the war in Ukraine.

(EFE)