The President of the Republic, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, said on Sunday that his comments about a young woman’s cleavage in a Portuguese neighborhood in Toronto were due to the cold weather and were “not at all sexist.”
“It wasn’t a sexist comment, it didn’t occur to me, either to the young girl or to the older woman. It’s not sexist at all,” said the head of state, responding to journalists, in Toronto, during his official visit to Canada.
In a conversation with a young woman and her mother, a Portuguese émigré in Canada, in Montreal, on Thursday, filmed by RTP, the President of the Republic commented: “The daughter still has a cold, have you seen her, with cleavage?” .
When asked today in Toronto by journalists about the criticism his comments on Portugal have generated, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa appeared astonished: “Don’t tell me. I don’t even know what to comment.”
The President of the Republic said that “at the end of the journey through the Portuguese part of Montreal it began to rain, the weather was cold”, and that he warned about this “some elderly women, one of whom he was carrying, and others who were younger”.
“I told several people, but it turned out that only young women were recorded: be careful, because you still have a cold – I did,” he added.
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