As Causes. Portugal, so far and so close…
After 15 days working in France, I had a double privilege that covid had stolen from me for almost 2 years:
a) To see closely what was happening in a different country, in this case France, perhaps the foreign country to which I consider myself closest;
b) Seeing from afar – and therefore in a vague and imprecise way, also because I don’t remember a single reference to Portugal in the media that I followed – what was happening in my homeland.
It’s not surprising that Portugal and France mix today more in my spirit than they would without this short “exile”.
So let’s get to it.
FRANCE AND PORTUGAL: A LIKE?
In France presidential election in April. The objective of the system, the constitutional practice and the fact of following the legislative ones, are defining the next 5 years of this country and, to a large extent, of Europe.
If, as happened today, the radical right (divided between three candidates) would have 30%, the moderate right 18% and the center occupied by the current president about 24%. For all left-wing parties – radicals, ecologists and moderates like the PSF – that’s 28%.
In Portugal, how legislative changes will define our next two years. And if eliminated now, as a result of the “Survey of polls” by Rádio Renascença, the left would have 52.1%, the center (PSD) 28.5% and the right moderate and the radical 12.9%.
In other words, France is a country of the Right and Portugal is a country of the Left. Right? No, I think it’s wrong, as I think they’re both more alike than you’d think.
It is true that in France there will be a 2nd round in the presidential election. Most likely Macron (center) will face Pécresse (moderate right) and either of them can win, so he needs about 50% each. And it is true that a left will not go to (that) game.
But there is a difference.
In France, the center mainly collects votes from the moderate left, as being on the left is anathema to winning.
In Portugal, the center collects mostly moderate right vote, as being on the right is anathema to winning.
In other words, in France there is a lot of embarrassed left and in Portugal the opposite happens, but discounting that, the real difference between the two countries is not big.
FRANCE AND PORTUGAL: DIFFERENT?
The right in Portugal and the left in France have an identical problem, but they approach it in a different way.
Indeed, it is possible that a left would prefer Macron’s second-round defeat and a greater right turn, as that way moderate left voters return home, joining the 28% who resist Macron’s bear hug. The left is more alive than it appears.
But in Portugal, the right prefers Costa’s defeat and Rio’s victory. In other words, it is resigned to not having political expression adequate to its sociological base. Maybe it’s like that because it only represents 13% or does it just represent that because it’s like that?
I do not know how to answer. But I know what’s going on on the PSD.
Let’s get to it.
PSD: WHY REFUSE THE RIGHT?
The PSD’s slogan at its Congress was “Center”. If it were just a slogan it wouldn’t deserve attention. But in my opinion it’s more than that.
For several reasons.
Firstly, because there was a Rubicon: for the first time the PSD is going to revalidate it saying in the campaign that if the PS for the most voted party will make the PS Government viable for 2 years.
It is true that Costa is required to say before the amendments that it will do the same, or that it will obviously not be said. But after that, nobody will expect that Rio will not be viable after its probable defeat.
Secondly, because the dominant message of leading cadres and congressmen became clearly that the PSD is closer to the PS than to the CDS and IL, nicknamed the Enough of microparties, which according to Rio are even irrelevant because of have only “half a dozen votes”.
In third place, there was a book with texts by Sá Carneiro from 1974-5, which served to defend that the historical leader was on the left.
I knew and loved Sá Carneiro a lot from 1978 until his death and I could prove that at least since then until his death he was not leftist. But what is relevant is that in 2021 this will be the message that becomes official.
Fourthly, as a reference Adalberto Campos Fernandes in an excellent text in the DN, and this is the most important, the data from the 2021 Census reveals a country “with fewer people, more vulnerable, more dependent”.
That is,
a) the country in 2021 has 182 elderly people (over 65 years old) for every 100 young people. In 1980 the proportion was the opposite;
b) retirees were 1.8 million in 1980 and are now more than double (about 3.7 million);
c) civil servants were less than 400,000 in 1980 and are now nearly 800,000.
With these data, it is more than natural that the PSD is increasingly a centrist party, averse to taking risks and making reforms.
RIGHT: RESIGNED TO IRRELEVANCE?
I have nothing against this position of the PSD, of course. In fact, for about 2 years, shortly before the pandemic revealed itself, he defended a government of the central bloc also because the risks that have existed for 40 years in this solution are now much smaller.
What I say is that the PSD, since 1975, has never been so far from representing the right ideologically, politically and even sociologically.
Never, therefore, has the Right been so little represented since 1975. And in the French case, the Left has never been so little represented as it is now, since in 1958 De Gaulle created the V Republic.
That’s why I see myself in the title of Francisco Mendes Silva’s article, published for days in “Público”: “The Right is either liberal or not an alternative”. And, I say, the good alternation is between cadres that bet more on equality and others more on freedom.
Rui Rio is a more diluted António Costa. It’s not an alternative, it’s a substitute. That’s why it won on PSD. He may even win in the country, but he will be the worst Prime Minister and his victory would prove useless.
MEDIEVAL JUSTICE IN THE 21ST CENTURY
Rui Rio won a great victory in the PSD Congress, which paradoxically expresses the limits of his success, especially since the congressmen were elected on the same day as the Diretas he won.
This theme is for the next program. For today I want to highlight your tweet suggesting that the Government had devised a strategy for the arrest of João Rendeiro to coincide with the electoral campaign.
The nonsense here has three mothers: ignorance, populism and incontinence.
And yet, in these days Rio would have a lot to talk about to strengthen his case to change the judicial system, which he was unable to diminish.
See examples, on which Daniel Oliveira, Manuel Magalhães e Silva, Ricardo Sá Fernandes, Pacheco Pereira (with António Xavier and Ana Catarina Mendes), Miguel Sousa Tavares, and with whom I agree, criticizing the medieval mode of do justice, which shames us as a people:
a) Revenge against Rendeiro, for having fled, treating him without the dignity that any condemned person deserves in a Rule of Law;
b) The million-dollar and unreasonable guarantee of 6 million euros demanded of Manuel Pinho, a way found to send him to house arrest several years after he could have chosen never to return to Portugal, which is also objectively a violation of the State of Right;
c) The tolerated statute of limitations for alleged crimes related to public-private partnerships on highways, after an investigation that lasted 11 years, which is also a violation of the rule of law;
d) The more than three years that it took for the accusation related to the violence of 7 GNR soldiers in 2018 against weakened immigrants in Odemira.
All of this is frightening.
All this reminds me of the courage that was needed for 20 years ago, lawyers accept the defender of someone accused of pedophilia, because they were messed up as if they were too.
For this reason, I commend those who had the courage to be indignant at the complicit silence of politicians who were terrified of losing votes on the sidewalks that were driven to the red and ignominious.
THE PRAISE
Nuno Garoupa, for having accepted to be a candidate for deputy for the Liberal Initiative; but praise would always be due, whatever party he chose.
He is a top figure in academia in the US, was President of the Francisco Manuel dos Santos Foundation and is perhaps the person who has studied our judicial system the longest and best.
The praise is all the more due as the level of candidates from the various parties – perhaps the PSD is the worst – is very low in terms of national, not to say international, image, and in this the comparison with France – which I have been talking about – it shames us.
READING IS THE BEST REMEDY
I saw in the Financial Times the analysis of the book “Born in Blackness” by Howard French.
The book places Africa as central and not peripheral in the Age of Discovery from the 15th century onwards and gives a historical voice to the enslaved and colonized.
French, descendant of a slave, picks up a work that is apparently mandatory reading. I will read it, but I would venture to advise you to read it now.
THE QUESTION WITHOUT ANSWER
In November, more than 1.5 million tests were carried out and in December more than 130,000 are being carried out a day. And we are almost all vaccinated with 2 doses and risk groups also with a third.
Despite this, the number of positives is not very high and the severe cases are fortunately even less.
Thus, two questions: how can one admit that it was decided to close the vaccination centers for 8 days, from January 23rd to January 2nd?
And how is it understood that discoveries and clubs are closed (where one could only enter vaccinated and tested) and that life becomes complicated in hotels, local accommodation and restaurants (but not in shopping centers), as if we were in 2020?
Is it the smell of news that speaks louder?
THE SMALL MADNESS
On November 16, I praised Francisco Assis’ willingness to go back to being a candidate for the legislative elections (which he would have refused in 2019 for disagreeing with the contraption). But I did more.
Then I remembered that in the mines they used canaries to know when the level of methane or carbon monoxide was dangerous for the miners.
And I also remembered that roses were planted in the vines to warn that it would be necessary to attack powdery mildew with sulfur.
That’s why he said that “Assis will be like the rose or the canary so that we can see if radicalism is no longer prevailing on the left.”
PS didn’t want the canary or the rose on the lists. The message is clear. And the mild madness was that some like me thought otherwise.