art.54º of the Law stipulates as duties of the members of the Orders
a) to defend and honor Portugal in every circnumstânce;
b) to act, in public and privately, according to vertue and honour;
c) to abide to the determinations and rulings of the Order;
d) To dignify the Order in every circumstânce.
Members of the Order should not harm in any way Portugal's interests.
Art 55.º
Whenever there is information that the violation of any of the above mentioned duties, the Chanceler of the Order should open a disciplinary process ...
On this process, the member of the Order will be notified of the accusation and will ahve the right to present his defense
If the accusation is judged against the member, according to the seriousness of its fault and the discredit brought upon the Order, he would be admonished or evicted from the Order
The eviction abides to the same procedure ot the act on granting and means the deprivation of the use of the decoration and the loss of all the ineherent rights.
A mere parking ticket will not entail the loss of the membership, of course.
One of the last cases we heard of (but soon forgotten and apparently not even an admonition was brought up) regarded football player Cristiano Ronaldo who was accuseded by the spanish treasury of forgetting to declare over € 23.000.000 in revenue.
Several politicians have been charged of various crimes, namely for corruption, but I have not heard that any would have to return the Orders...
I was giving an example of an order having a clear stipulation. I don't know if the Danish order has such stipulations and if it has they don't have to be equal to that of the Orange-Nassau order.
Each order has it's own rules. The point i was trying to make is that when an order has rules it's not up to those rules when someone looses the order due to a conviction rather than the personal sentiments of the head of the order. In this case Queen Margrethe.
You make valid points. The orders of the various countries will (normally) have statutes (regulations) which determines what will happen if the recipient has done something "unworthy" (the statutes for the St. Olav Order talks about "uverdige forhold" (unworthy conditions), but leaves it to the Grand Master (i.e. the king) to decide after having heard the council's opinion. So it will be an interpretation about how serious the situation is. Stig or others will have to tell if there are statutes for titles like Kammerherre etc. The statutes for the Dannebrog Order is here: http://www.omsd.dk/DanishOrders/docs/Dannebrogordenens%20Statutter%201693.pdf Relevant section is no. 5 (I think). If you are "dømt fra Ære, Lif eller Gods" ("sentenced from Honour, Life or Property", not sure if this is the best translation, though). So does this phrase mean "any sentence", whether suspended or not? I still find the decision too harsh, but if the section can only be interpreted in the strictest sense, I will of course back down from my opinion ...
DTH
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