THIS is the surprising moment the “sexist” Portuguese president pointed at a girl’s cleavage in front of her mum earlier than telling her “she’ll catch a cold”.
Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, 74, made the grim remark throughout an official go to to Canada on Friday.
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On his stroll round Toronto, the president was greeted by a mum and daughter of Portuguese origin.
The pair held up their telephones as they filmed Sousa, laughing and smiling whereas chatting with him in Portuguese.
But issues rapidly take a flip when the outdated chief raises his hand and points in direction of the younger lady in front of the gang of individuals.
“The daughter is more beautiful than the mother,” Sousa stated.
“But the daughter might catch the flu, yet. Have you seen her cleavage?” he added, earlier than strolling away and smiling to himself.
He wraps his arm round a girl’s shoulder as he laughs at his remark earlier than the surprising footage ends.
Sousa’s phrases have been closely criticised by different politicians exterior his social gathering.
“He should apologise. Sexism is killing us. It’s not a joke,” stated Isabel Moreira, a Socialist Party MP.
“This is 2023. You can’t just walk up to a woman you don’t know and make a ‘joke’ about her weight or about her cleavage,” Moreira added.
She was making a reference to a different scenario that unfolded simply final week when Sousa supplied a girl a chair, solely to moments later ask: “Do you think it will hold?”
But the president denied any wrongdoing when confronted by reporters.
“It wasn’t a sexist comment. I didn’t think of it like that and neither did the young woman or the old ladies. It wasn’t sexist at all,” he stated.
Many have hit again at Sousa nonetheless, calling his feedback “regrettable” and of “poor taste”.
“In fact, the president talks too much and doesn’t say what he should,” Manuela Silva, Director of the Democratic Women’s Movement, instructed native media.
She added that his remarks have been made in a “lighthearted manner that undermines the dignity of women.”
“There’s a set of rights which were gained by girls that aren’t being fulfilled, and that is what ought to concern the President, not poor style jokes… I believe he comes throughout very poorly,” she continued.
Sousa was visiting Toronto to have talks with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau about resolving the scenario of the “tens of thousands” of Portuguese individuals who work in Canada however stay in unlawful circumstances.
“They are working hard in Canada, and I think there is a great openness from the Canadian Government to solve the problem”, Sousa instructed reporters.
It comes after Formula One’s governing physique leaped to the defence of President Mohammed Ben Sulayem after sexist feedback on his personal web site resurfaced earlier this 12 months.
Sulayem was quoted as saying “women who think they are smarter than men, for they are not in truth” in a submit on a private web site that appeared to have been revealed in 2001.
And in 2018, Atletico Madrid’s president sparked controversy over “sexist” feedback he made to a feminine journalist.
A feminine reporter from Cuatro News requested: “Some say that Atleti has no money to renew, that [Antoine] Griezmann took everything. What does he say?”
He stated: “I do not talk about money because it is bad manners and less with a woman.”
Women’s Aid
Women’s Aid has this recommendation for victims and their households:
- Always maintain your telephone close by.
- Get in contact with charities for assist, together with the Women’s Aid reside chat helpline and providers corresponding to SupportLine.
- If you’re in hazard, name 999.
- Familiarise your self with the Silent Solution, reporting abuse with out talking down the telephone, as a substitute dialing “55”.
- Always maintain some cash on you, together with change for a pay telephone or bus fare.
- If you watched your accomplice is about to assault you, attempt to go to a lower-risk space of the home – for instance, the place there’s a approach out and entry to a phone.
- Avoid the kitchen and storage, the place there are more likely to be knives or different weapons. Avoid rooms the place you would possibly develop into trapped, corresponding to the lavatory, or the place you is perhaps shut into a cabinet or different small house.
If you’re a sufferer of home abuse, SupportLine is open Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday from 6pm to 8pm on 01708 765200. The charity’s e mail help service is open weekdays and weekends in the course of the disaster – [email protected].
Women’s Aid supplies a reside chat service – accessible weekdays from 8am-6pm and weekends 10am-6pm.
You also can name the freephone 24-hour National Domestic Abuse Helpline on 0808 2000 247.
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