Liberate Portugal – Observer
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The latest legislative laws were, for many, a “surprise” in their results. First of all, because they allowed the PS to obtain an absolute majority; but also for excluding historical parties such as the CDS-PP and “Greens” from Parliament, or for reducing the BE or the PCP to irrelevance, which together elected fewer deputies than Chega, and both less than the Liberal Initiative.
The useful vote operated on the left is the logical corollary of the failure of the Geringonça, insofar as the growth of the PS must have been built at the expense of the voters of BE, CDU and PAN. The PS victory will be a consequence of the PSD’s inability to present itself as a credible alternative for governance, at a time when the country comes out of the pandemic crisis in a complex scenario from an economic and social point of view. Rui Rio, can support the campaign that power him “by votes of the morca in his hands”, bet on the sympathy of mere and “kittens”, which visibly can grant him media success, but not governance. In an election in which António Costa presented himself weakened, by two years of governance in a pandemic environment, by the failure of the Geringonça, and with an internal “vulture” opposition visibly waiting for his death, it is surprising that Rio has not “pulled the gallons” and He defended a simple idea, within which it would be a credible message in the face of his persona: “The PS and its partners on the left failed in the most important approval of our democracy, fundamental for the relaunch of Portugal in the post-Covid. I am a man of certain accounts, with me there will be no faults”.
The CDS will also have the strength of the PSD, as it is largely dedicated to explaining what is supposed to be an attempt to demarcate the emerging parties within the scope of the center and the campaign (Enough, in a Liberal Initiative and its own campaign) FRIGIDEIRA). The effort to demarcate identity, in the case of the CDS-PP, taken to the extreme, was fatal. In the case of the PSD, Rui Rio was unable to stop the rise of Chega and capture for himself the protest vote for which the marriage itself was originally designed.
Enough and Iniciativa Liberal, each to the chosen representation, for seeing their image enlarged, because they are more concerned in a significantly significant way for the selected chosen segments, but all of them are concerned with their identification and can hear their appeals.
The absolute majority gives António Costa the stability he needs to approve his political program. The next four years will be tested of four years of reinforcement, which will have the reinforcement in a context of fire and delay in the last years of duration of the reinforcement classes, a need to reinforce the investment to averages in the last 12 years by the adjustments (and options ) of human resources or the sanitation system of a decompensated public sector, reorganization of the public administration system, expiry of pension systems respond to the aspirations of the youngest and the so-called “remedied”. The PS will have to make choices in a context in which the extreme left in Portugal has lost strength and representation, and it is foreseeable that its court will migrate to the socialist sphere of influence.
For a right that is balkanized and disoriented, a majority of the PS, at this stage, made at the expense of emptying the extreme left, could be a turning point for its restitution: there are protagonists and a message to the challenge.
At the end of 2020, in this same column, I wrote a chronicle in which I questioned whether There is a Future for the Rightand “The difficult election of the right in the last and the first difficulties is not the cause of a difficulty of massive cultural declaration, with deep roots, which in the coming years may be possible within a year.
With the end of the CDS and the rise of the Liberal and Chegada Initiative, it is important that its right be qualified in its representation, from the outset having the function of who are the segments of the population that constitute its social structure. Improving, still, as party summits with politicians with more density, technical, social or intellectual mobilization capacity.
Even if it takes advantage of the dilution of the extreme left in Parliament, and the reduction of its social weight (which PS António will gradually sponsor, even for reasons of internal sequence), to emphasize what are the political proposals on the right, in a time that is very far from the socialist to consolidate itself as vanguards of the matrix 60. The economic and social disruption that we are experiencing, as a result of the accelerated changes brought about by the digital revolution, is the right time to build social and cultural capital, new languages and symbolic goods essential for the perpetuation of transmission and.
For this, it is essential that once and for all it is understood that several rights, and that they all have space within democratic pluralism. The current emptying of Chega, as there is no nostalgia and in the exploration of feelings of rejection of the political system, will eventually occur if appealing proposals occur within the center-right framework. Enough’s political proposals will not resist the consistency of the future, and of what it takes to conquer it. If there is no democracy in our electoral results, in the aftermath of a certain electoral result, such as the cheerleading of a certain number of European deputies and which in terms of democracy do not exist, they no longer have expression (also) they continue almost to call “fascists” all those who do not suffer from reverential fear or who do not align with their very particular conception of “democracy”. Perhaps the date of arrival to be perceived that today will be irrelevant, the noisy dates are irrelevant and that it is up to the center and right of their proposals, they will build their social capital and representativeness, without being duly subject to the moral judgments of those who have already does not represent anything or anyone.
I’m far from sympathizing with Enough’s solutions, I’ve been critical from the start, but I also say that I’ve never felt – and time is right – that the solution for those who want to unblock the right go through dramatic trances, political hygiene and permanent excuses for the danger of the recovery of “fascism”. Democracy is done in the depth of debate and ideas, not in persecution and exclusion. For example, during the entire electoral campaign, no one was able to present the Portuguese with the true numbers of the RSI, emptying the debate and deepening of social ideas such as criticisms of Enough to this support system, preferring the parties to give rise to a snobbish contempt, of whom he has nothing to explain to the Portuguese. All over Europe, the extreme lefts are exhausted, and parties with a similar matrix to the ones that arrived are integrated into the normal functioning of democracies, without witnessing the breakdown of the rule of law. Reconciliation of the center and the right with their electorate involves deepening the debate, reconciling reconcilable differences, and building social and political capital that appeals to people, not persecution of people and parties legally but so little that – as far as I can see – it has ever presented any bill in Parliament or that, nevertheless, could violate our Constitution. When, incidentally, André Ventura verbalizes racist decisions against decisions taken by Seal, the criminal misbehavior acts. All of us who have a humanist conception and defend freedom must oppose all political initiatives that, specifically, parties with sympathies, such as Chega, BE or PCP, presented in Parliament or in places where they have access to governance, do not we must defend their exclusion from the democratic system, which is not via the democratic system, which is not via the democratic system (as originated in the latter).
The limit is in tolerating the intolerable, because that is where the path of tyranny opens. Now, the rule of law and our democracy have already stopped the full aptitudes of the parties’ impulses on the fringes of the left; There are no parliamentary reasons to guarantee, in the case of a party, even what is not parliamentary or capable of ensuring that the game, in the case of a party even Enough, is situated in its antipodes, to the right.
What is fundamental is what is fundamental (including the PS itself and the PS itself) take advantage of the coming years to regain sovereignty over their political discourse, planning social capital and representativeness, without the revered or received fear of media conditioning – I repeat – noisy minorities who no longer represent anything or anyone.