The great blockade to democracy

I will start with what seems most relevant to me as a starting point: it is very difficult today for any social-democratic and liberal government in the European Union not to have the practice of lobbying regulated, exactly, because without this, it becomes more difficult to understand at an advanced stage of any process where the crime of influence peddling begins and ends.

At a time when some socialists, with the help of social democrats and liberal supporters, choose small politics, ignoring what we know about the ‘chaff’ of the process influencer, fascists or communists play their part. Even so, it becomes clear that the PS and António Costa are more to blame in the current reality and it is mainly their responsibility for the lack of justice reform.

But let’s focus on what is no less important and serious at this time:

What we saw on the part of the Public Prosecutor’s Office in this case, failed in the first hour by an investigating judge in a stunning and decisive way, reversing and eliminating everything that was most substantial they intended, cannot and should not fail to greatly worry the most justicialist of souls . There is no turning back. If the Public Ministry is not taken over by hidden and undemocratic powers, everyone needs to realize that fighting corruption in this way and manner in Portugal will create a worse and much more dangerous country. This same cause, necessary and significant, will be subverted in its entirety.

Naturally, there are many who even yearned for this slime, by whatever means. They don’t care at all that all those who govern us live with paralyzing fear at every step taken, thus treating any government representative contrary to their political and personal agreement as not respectable. But this is the end of democratic governance and Rui Rio explained very well a few months ago why this was at stake.

It is the public ministry of political agents and not of legal agents.

After this decision by the investigating judge, of what is known and was being “trafficked” to some newspapers, today it has been more than a week in which the Attorney General of the Republic has not given any explanation whatsoever to the Portuguese about the democratic breakdown they imposed to the government and consequently to the country for no apparent reason. That same day at night, I warned about the fact that we most likely have an entity with this power and so far outside the democratic orbit or the understanding of the powers that be, that they no longer even counted on the resignation of the Prime Minister. Much less that the process and the unprecedented searches generated this executive shock. You need to know the modus operandi and the history. This is exactly what I saw confirmed by President of the Public Prosecutor’s Union of Magistrates a few days ago in an interview. From here on, what gives me chills is not just my confirmation of the worst. It’s the explanation. In the opinion of this personality, the resigning prime minister should not have taken the communication of justice very seriously and could perfectly have remained in place after that paragraph from the Public Ministry. Obviously it’s all crazy, but it’s important to say that, yes, if António Costa were the Portuguese Donald Trump, if he had something to hide and needed the special privilege of the position, he would do everything he could to continue.

It is in this democratic blockade of murky and dangerous waters that I also heard Pedro Nuno Santos mentioning that this case and justice should not be at the center of the upcoming electoral campaign.

Well, I couldn’t disagree more and I see things in the completely opposite direction: the electoral campaign can be part of the justice debate, with a special and continuous look at this case, since any serious active politician can only want to be aware of what we have in front of us. Once again, the future governability of a European Union country with a social-democratic, socialist and liberal democracy depends on this.

I’ll finish by mentioning that the best example is the case of the PNS itself, which dictated António Costa’s ear-pulling. In the same way that I can understand PNS’s exasperation when he mentions that we have been discussing the location of a new airport for 50 years, I imagine what would have been if he had gone ahead and in full process, António Costa had approved the decision around the location. Something of this size that, in addition to approvals of the environmental impacts of a wide range of public entities and municipal management, extremely high public investment, also depends on the supply of private companies and many “lunches and dinners” with businesspeople. How would this Public Ministry act in the face of a dossier that had a governance gap of this size right from the beginning? Or how would you react when the first company, municipal management or whatever, appeared to accuse the other of unfair competition and insinuate that there was executive favoritism? What would the “lunches and dinners” look like in the process of the new airport, certainly corrupted by the government right from the beginning, in the eyes of the Public Ministry?

The operation influencer and Start Campus would probably be an even bigger joke than they are.

No, this country is not easy at all. Nor will it be for the populists who want to occupy the political center after what happened on the 7th.