After a weekend in which professional football games were cancelled (one with dramatic consequences) due to police calling in sick en masse, media reports have stressed “these protests by police forces are set to continue”.
The month-long struggle by PSP (Polícia de Segurança Pública) and GNR (Guarda Nacional Republicana) agents to win parity with PJ (Polícia Judiciária) colleagues – unilaterally awarded a special ‘risk supplement’ that adds to their monthly pay – has seen enormous protests in Lisbon and Porto. But none have been so widely ‘appreciated’ (for that read ‘not appreciated’) as the latest ruse to call in sick before football matches.
This new line of agitation has infuriated government paymasters, prompting a Sunday morning meeting between the minister of interior administration, José Luís Carneiro, and the two forces’ commanders in chief, that lasted roughly three hours.
The reality is that football matches cannot go forwards without a set quantity of police on duty, as per the affluence of fans: the bigger and more important the match, the more the numbers of police required.
This saw to it that an important league game between Sporting and Famalicão on Saturday had to be suspended at the 11th hour, due to the number of police no-shows. And this led assembled fans outside the stadium to run amok, causing a number of injuries (one said to be serious).
The fracas, eventually broken up by anti-riot police, was blamed wholly on the police protest – the inference being most, if not all the agents who presented sick notes were not sick at all.
Carneiro showed himself to be visibly furious – describing the police actions as “acts of indiscipline and insubordination” that “exceeded the bounds” that constrain police by dint of their role as upholders of the law.
Carneiro’s approach – in which he insisted on the opening of disciplinary inquiries to weed out sick note malingerers – suggested that much of the trouble was instigated by ‘extremist factions’ within the forces. This appears to have gone down like a lead balloon among angry agents, which is why it is widely understood that the ‘sick-note protests’ are here to stay.
As the Resident went to press, national media was ‘exposing’ doctors who issued the sick notes, concentrating on the government’s position that police are ‘making it all up’.
But in the midst of all the unpleasantness, SINAPOL union leader Armando Ferreira threw a curved ball into the picture, musing on air that he wondered what could happen on March 10 (when the country goes to the polls in fiercely contested legislative elections) “as it is the police who transport the ballot boxes and ballot papers”.
Ferreira was then put on the spot by his interviewer, asked if the elections were at risk. He replied: “There is that possibility (…) If something similar to what’s happening today happens on that day – and we’ll see what happens in the next few matches, particularly FC Porto and Benfica – things could take on a dimension that I’m calling on the government to take note of the warnings from the GNR unions and associations and what they’ve been doing over the last few days…”
As is the habit of media stories, this “possibility” turned into a story about a ‘union leader threatening a boycott of the March 10 election”.
Further unpleasantness followed: police appealed to the prime minister to say something – the government’s continued refusal to address the iniquity it created by rewarding PJ police and leaving all the other forces ‘out in the cold’, driving tensions up further.
And on Monday, António Costa – whose absence from national affairs has been quite marked over the last few weeks – did say something, playing completely to the gallery.
Said Lusa, “Portugal’s outgoing prime minister has repudiated the words of the leader of the national police union (Sinapol) about the possible disruption of the March 10 parliamentary election and said he believes that the security forces will never commit such an act of betrayal of democracy”.
This “warning from António Costa” (Lusa’s words) was contained in a letter, replying to the appeal sent by police on Saturday.
Beyond the PM’s “deep conviction” that “the security forces would never perpetrate such a serious act of betrayal of our democracy”, the letter contained little joy for smarting agents – giving no indication at all that the government was prepared to ‘open its purse strings’ in the way it had lavishly awarded over €500 million in support to protesting farmers (see page 6).
Indeed, the official mantra remains that a ‘caretaker government’ does not even have the power to commit to permanent expenditure (if it wanted to).
Thus, the deadlock continues; the bad feeling on both sides hardens while commentators stress that public opinion is on the side of police.
“Central power should have found a solution to the calls from these professionals before it became a caretaker government”, considers Correio da Manhã’s deputy director Alfredo Leite. “By not doing so, they provided the fuel that has fanned this radical fire taking advantage of the injustices within our country’s police forces to the dangerous point we have reached today.”
Prison guards schedule new total strike for February 22
Prison guards have attended all police protests this far, as they too have been left out of any equation when it comes to the ‘risk supplement’ awarded PJ police last November.
The guards have already scheduled a strike between Tuesday, February 13, and Sunday, February 25, which “could compromise the transport of prisoners to court” – at a time when court officials are also on work-to-rules, slowing courtroom business. Now they have scheduled a new total strike for Thursday, February 22, to take place between 00:00 hours and 23:59.
According to a statement sent out on Monday, three demands justify the scheduling of this latest action: “the valorisation and dignification of professionals”, the “restructuring of remuneration supplements” and the “approval of the performance evaluation system for prison guard professionals that has already been completed” (in other words, which guards are still waiting for).
The document was sent to the Prime Minister and various members of the government, the regional executives of Madeira and the Azores, the Director-General of Administration and Public Employment, the Directorate-General for Reintegration and Prison Services, and prison directors.
