António Costa, the current PM, the right hand of ex-PM José Sócrates
Manuel Pinho, ex-minister of the Sócrates regime, accused of corruption
and José Sócrates, ex-PM indicted of 31 crimes of corruption,
money laudering and fiscal fraude
In the last decade, Portugal has slowly
and gradually awakened to a harsh reality:
that we have lived for years under a political leadership
that has become one of the cornerstones
of a gigantic web of corruption, promiscuity and abuse of power.
The consequent degradation of institutions,
a democratic impoverishment,
the destruction of economic values with the annihilation
of some of the country's major business references
(the largest private bank, the largest company in the capital market),
a wide-spread national bankruptcy
- which costs will be borne by the Portuguese
and will not be forgotten for a long, long time -
the exercise of total power at the service of a non-democratic logic
of domination over civil society
with the obvious and inevitable results
of intolerable practices for a democracy
such as the one in which the Portuguese want to live.
However, a few days ago,
the silence to which this scandal was subjected, was suddenly broken,
- although the real reason for such an abrupt change is still not very clear,-
by the most important leaders of the Socialist Party
who were all intimately involved
and committed to the political leadership of José Sócrates
in a very recent past,
including the current Prime Minister, António Costa.
This political intimacy did not end a long time ago.
It surely didn't end with the arrest of José Sócrates in November 2014.
But the performances of the socialists who suddenly invoked shame,
a retrospective ignorance or "a dishonour to democracy,"
as the Prime Minister, António Costa, declared in Canada,
do not impress us.
These confessions are politically spurious and ethically irrelevant.
For none of these intimate political partners of Socrates,
who, today constitute the very hard core of the present government,
as deputies and other more or less public figures,
has dared to assume any kind of responsibility of their own,
in the last FOUR years.
Not for one second,
did we hear any allusion to their political responsibility
- to the Portuguese people -
of those who actively cooperated and participated
in the political project that supported
a conception of power of total domination of society,
and in the context of which the alleged crimes were perpetrated,
according to the accusation against Socrates.
Neither was there any indirect reference
to the political responsibility of those who,
by all the means at their power,
recriminated, offended and tried to crush those,
who in due time criticized, admonished and demanded
transparency and an open democratic scrutiny.
What has become crystal clear is that,
these socialist leaders,
all helped to build an almost impregnable castle of socialist power
behind which walls, all these acts of corruption were practiced,
leaving Socrates and other leaders free to carry out these felonies
with little or no scrutiny.
Euphemistically put, none of these prominent socialist leaders,
has admitted to their seriously flawed political judgement,
of these despicable acts and behaviour of their comrades,
Socrates and company,
of which all of them are responsible,
with their complicit silence.
In a last desperate effort, these hypocritical socialists
now confess to be ill at ease with the latest revelations
of rife corruption at yet another ex-minister and comrade
of the Socrates regime, Pinho,
but they confess to be proud of Sócrates' policies
and the political project he has embodied,
a grotesque duplicity that can not withstand any serious judgment,
since these policies, were implemented,
in the sinister vortex of corruption
of which all Portuguese came to know so cruelly about.
For all of the above facts,
the democratic political responsibility of these socialist ministers
and deputies, who are still in public functions,
in the name of the Portuguese people,
can not be retracted.
A few days ago, Antonio Barreto wrote that after all,
"... it will be difficult to convince anyone,
that the members of this government,
had nothing to do with the Socrates government ..."
("Corruption and its varieties", DN, 5 / 5/2018).
What was truly strange in these last three years,
was to watch, without there being any kind of indignation,
protest, shame or contrition,
of the transfer of the hard core of the Socrates government
to the new government of the unelected Prime Minister, António Costa,
supported by comunist radical Geringonça.
The hard core ministers are all the same ones!
And none of them wants to take any political responsibility.
The same model of governance and power conception are repeated,
which these same politicians have decided to resume
since the end of 2015,
as if they could not act in any different way,
because the conduct of the past has become their second nature.
There is no shortage of examples:
1) the obscure role in the governance of a personal friend of the Prime Minister;
2) the arbitrary interference in the inner functions of private companies;
3) the guerrilla war against the independent regulatory authorities;
4) the colonization of the state and society;
5) unfavorable reports are hidden;
6) important information is withheld from of Parliament;
7) hostility to normal scrutiny;
8) SMS text messages to annoying journalists;
9) theshameless use of the public media for party and state propaganda;
10) open subversion of parliamentary commissions of inquiry;
and so on.
In recent times there has been an understandable concern in Europe
about the quality of democracy and the rule of law
in a number of Member States of the Union.
But what about us, who have maintained a regime for years,
suffering from the same grave defects
a) in state intermission in the private media;
b) the instrumentalisation of large corporations
and banking for the political domain of the party,
c) the manipulation of the judicial system, and so on
- and yet with the moral and political impotence of the cynics
we consider ourselves as an example for others?
The undersigned members of this declaration
are deputies to the Assembly of the Republic.
We are representatives of the Portuguese people.
To this extent, it is our undeniable duty not to shut up
or to avoid discussing the greatest scandal
in the history of our democracy,
regardless of the political-partisan balance
that this might call into question,
or of the private interests it may harm.
We have a general mission of representation
that the Portuguese have entrusted us with,
to take care of the public good and the common interest of the Country.
For this reason, our mission is simple:
a) to take to the final consequences of political responsibilities
of all those involved;
b) to contribute to the regeneration of our political culture
towards more responsibility, more transparency,
more institutional robustness, more resistance
to the successive attempts of infantilization
and manipulation of public opinion,
through the systematic use of lies,
propaganda and opacity.
In this scenario, it would be unacceptable
and even suspect, if Joana Marques Vidal,
is not be reinstated as the Attorney General of the Republic.
The Portuguese do not expect less from us.
After the unthinkable happened in Portugal;
after all the corruption came to light;
and nearly went completely unpunished;
we can not allow this to happen again.
This will be the predictable result in future,
if we all keep our silence and complacency today.
So the time has come to speak out and act.
This article is signed by the PSD MPs:
Miguel Morgado, Margarida Balseiro Lopes, Hugo Soares,
Duarte Marques and António Leitão Amaro
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