In a week where the country’s president has gone so wildly off-script that an entire satirical television show was dedicated to making fun of him, voices everywhere have started questioning whether the torpedoing of Portugal’s absolute majority Socialist government (as well as that of Madeira’s PSD government) was really necessary.
Right at the beginning (back in November) Socialist sympathisers complained about what they saw as a political coup.
At the time – as the apparently ‘lurid details’ of Operation Influencer were splashed over the nation’s media – the criticism was essentially overlooked: the government was falling (after months of gaffs and scandal); the prime minister had resigned; public prosecutors were requesting preventive custody for the various accused; the nation was transfixed.
But then came the extraordinary moment when a ‘judge of criminal instruction’ looked at all the evidence and said he ‘couldn’t see any indications of serious crime’.
In fact, he couldn’t see any indications of crime at all, it transpired.
By this time, however, it was ‘too late’ to go back; the initial mumblings of a political coup were more or less lost in the maelstrom as parliament was headed for dissolution and new elections called.
Before even focus had time to tighten back up, two air force planes touched down in Madeira, and the country was presented with another ‘criminal investigation’ that effectively pulled the carpet from under the feet of long-standing political leaders.
New elections in Madeira are now little more than three weeks away – and surprisingly (perhaps) in the intervening months it has become more and more clear that ‘the evidence’ that brought about these dramatic political shifts is questionable.
Last week, the defence team ‘on the mainland’, fighting Operation Influencer, cited what they believe is an “insurmountable nullity” in the case (meaning it should be rendered ineffective).
The argument boils down to ‘procedure’ – in this case the collection of evidence, which should have been carried out by PJ judicial police, but which for reasons unclear was tasked to PSP (public security police).
If these arguments are upheld, it will suggest that there was no justification in removing an absolute majority government from power at all – raising the question, ‘how could such a thing have been allowed to happen?’
It is a similar story in Madeira: after an extraordinary three weeks in preventive custody, all defendants were allowed home: a judge considering the evidence against them saying exactly the same: he could see no indications of serious crimes (in fact no evidence of crimes at all…)
And throughout these extraordinary months, the Public Prosecutor’s Office/ Attorney General have refused to be drawn on what drove them to throwing such effective spanners into the political status quo.
True, Attorney General Lucília Gago used a conference in the Azores to refer to “multiple forces” (“from different origins and different backgrounds”) that she claims are intent on discrediting her department’s investigations, “and those who run them”. But the general public were left with no clues as to the identity (or purpose) of these multiple forces.
In the last week, both the new president of parliament, José Pedro Aguiar Branco, and the country’s Ombudsman, Maria Lúcia Amaral, have said the equivalent of ‘enough’s enough’. It is time now to understand what happened; who orchestrated it – and why.
Speaking to Antena 1’s Geometria Variável programme, Aguiar Branco said: “None of us want to believe in premeditated behaviour on the left, or the right, to provoke a certain political fact through a criminal investigation, but the truth is that no-one lives alone in this world, and this needs to be explained (…) If it is explained – and if the situation when explained makes it clear that suspicion does not exist, I think we are contributing to these two worlds living together in a healthier way for democracy”.
Aguiar Branco thinks it is high time for the Attorney General to ‘come clean’ and address parliament.
Maria Lúcia Amaral does too. Indeed, she appears already to have made up her mind: the Public Prosecutor’s Office (overseen by the Attorney General) has committed a “gross error” in Operation Influencer – even more gross in the form in which it implicated the former prime minister, without explaining what he is meant to have done.
“If there are suspicions about the prime minister of Portugal, I think it is common sense that we all want those suspicions to be resolved, or confirmed – or denied! Because suspicion over a former prime minister of Portugal is a stain on all of us, and an exterior stain on the Portuguese State”, she told Rádio Renascença.
“There are no unlimited or unscrutinised powers” in a democracy, she insisted – so now really is the time for ‘justice’ to explain its motivation.
Marcelo’s “least happy moment of his mandate”
This is the way in which Luís Marques Mendes – State advisor, political commentator and personal friend of Portugal’s president – described the ‘off-piste’ comments made by Portugal’s Head of State (at a dinner of foreign correspondents) that have since filled endless column inches.
In no particular order, he said that he thinks Portugal ‘needs to pay’ for injustices inflicted on other nations during its colonial past; he found former prime minister António Costa “slow because he is oriental” (and orientals are slow…) but ‘at least he was predictable’. The new prime minister is not predictable, albeit he too is ‘slow’, but with “rural behaviour” (meaning he doesn’t come from Lisbon or Porto).
All this was said while wining and dining – along with the cameo that the president has fallen out bigtime with his son (over the perceived favoritism scandal involving Brazilian babies given red carpet treatment on the Portuguese national health) and had to spend last Christmas away from his family.
“Something is happening in Belém”, wrote leader writer Fernando Cachão this week, recalling that President Marcelo is 77, and among a number of world movers and shakers who are approaching their 8th decade in less than conventional style.
