Left-wingers accuse government of ‘attacking social state, rule of law’
The political fall-out from last week’s police operation in Martim Moniz continues, with an Open Letter to the prime minister from over 20 ‘personalities in the fields of politics and justice’ accusing the government of attacking the social state and the rule of law.
The problem with all this fuss is that it has to be taken in the context that every political party these days is taking advantage of anything and everything, with an eye on upcoming municipal elections in September.
As a number of media sources have pointed out, police operations in Martim Moniz have been carried out for years – always in the same vein. The ‘heavy-handedness’ of this last one, was, in effect, no more heavy handed than others that took place before it: it is simply that the political tension these days is a great deal more febrile – as the Open Letter published in Público shows.
Signatories (“most of them from left-wing politics”, according to Lusa) alert Luís Montenegro to the “intolerable circumstance that, 50 years after the April revolution”, which brought about the social state and the rule of law, this centre-right government has “given unequivocal signs that it does not understand the deep meaning of ‘social state’ or ‘rule of law’, striking at the heart and bone of the Portuguese people’s social project inscribed in the Constitution since the conquest of democracy”.
“There is a symbolic moment when this government’s attack on the social state and the rule of law is exposed to the sun in all its crudeness, that moment that an image has inscribed in our collective memory, the portrait of the people lined up by the state against the wall while the parliament of Portugal debated and approved, with the votes of the Democratic Alliance and CHEGA, the first exception to the universality of the fundamental right to health,” the text went on.
In short, the 21 signatories, maintained that “disproportionate police actions violate the law” and the Portuguese Constitution, and referred to the image of people “lined up against a wall by dozens of police officers” according to the criteria of “their origin, the diversity of their culture or the colour of their skin” being reminiscent of “times we thought were buried”.
The various personalities also accused police officers and security services of being “used as lapel pins by political office holders in displays of authoritarianism”.
The signatories suggest that the government is following a recipe with electioneering objectives, which has already been tested in other countries, “with disastrous results of more inequality, more social exclusion, more violence”, arguing that “proximity policing does not mean proximity with batons or immigrant faces close to the wall“, Lusa concludes.
With any luck this topic will start to lose traction over the festive season. As a report by SIC Notícias was at pains to impress two days ago: “Police operations in Martim Moniz are nothing new. SIC has gone back two decades and found dozens”. It is simply that the political atmosphere in 2024 is such that everything that can be politicised, is. ND
Source material: LUSA
