A sad campaign

On January 8, after the resolution of a judicial dispute, the transfer of the remains of Eça de Queiroz to the national pantheon was finally realized. At that time many remembered this excerpt from his work a happy campaign: “The country has lost intelligence and moral conscience. The customs are dissolved, the consciences in stampede. The corrupted characters. The practice of life is only directed by convenience. There is no principle that is not denied. There is no institution that is not mocked. No one respects itself. There is no solidarity among citizens. No one believes in the honesty of public men. Some happy loers explore. The middle class is progressively slaughtered in imbecility and inertia. The people are in misery. Public services are abandoned to a dormant routine. The state is considered in its fiscal action as a thief and treated as an enemy. Therefore, it would be expected that the political class would learn from this demolishing diagnosis of one of our greatest writers and take advantage of the tribute to strive to build a better country.

Unfortunately, however, just over a month has passed and the government was involved in an absolutely poor situation regarding a Prime Minister’s family company. Unable to resolve this situation in an absolutely transparent and definitive way, the government has rather chose to cause Parliament to dissolve with a suicidal motion of confidence after successfully surpassed two censorship motions. Unable to resolve any political crisis, but not by calling early elections, the president eventually summoned them once again, a few weeks of losing the power of dissolution. The country thus dived into elections that no one wanted, in a campaign that has been extremely sad.

Politicians multiply into rallies and ruined to which very few people go, transforming these rallies into party meetings and these ruined into mere militant processions. This does not prevent, however, that opponents and activists from appearing in their conflicts in violent actions that the police have not been able to control. It is absolutely unacceptable that a party leader like Rui Rocha may have been exposed to the attack he suffered, which only did not cause greater damage to being used by the activists a harmless product.

In addition, the campaign agenda has been absolutely exhausted, with serious damage to politicians who have participated in it, stressing the sudden health problem that has reached André Ventura and was surely motivated by the wear and tear caused by the intensity of the campaign. But this kind of campaign is clearly outdated at a time when people are especially informed through the media and social networks, therefore not justifying effort.

Finally the political message of the various parties has been extremely poor, being unable to minimally convince voters. Party programs are totally identical to those of the previous elections. Even so, some parties already claim that they give up their program if such is a counterpart of their entry into the government. Dozens of debates were made, in which no new idea came up. And the country continues to watch the collapse of public services, which is not even during the election campaign period can be disguised.

In this framework, next Sunday’s electoral result is unpredictable. And if there are difficulties in the formation of the government, the President of the Republic will no longer be able to re -call the country to elections for the ultimate time. The country thus runs the risk of being paralyzed for a year until the next president’s election. What would not say Eça de Queiroz of this sad campaign…