Everyone is to blame for political crisis, which “could and should have been avoided”
No punches have been pulled by presidential candidate – and former television commentator – Luís Marques Mendes: the last few weeks in Portugal have been a “complete disaster” in terms of democracy – and everyone is to blame for the political crisis that has brought down the minority centre-right government.
Indeed, the crisis “could and should have been avoided”.
Speaking to journalists on the sidelines of a national meeting on local and regional press, Marques Mendes appealed for a clean election campaign, so as not to further aggravate the ‘divorce’ between the electorate and political parties.
Little has been said about the date of the elections in May (Sunday 18th), but it falls the day after a key Portuguese football ‘final’, thus fears this could result in even greater abstention numbers than usual are riding high.
Certainly, Marques Mendes is of the opinion that it “would have been much better for the country” not to have opted to dragoon citizens back to the voting booths, after just one year of choosing their government.
“This crisis, first of all, could and should have been avoided,” he said, and “everyone” is to blame. In short, the situation in which the country has arrived is “a disaster for politics, a disaster for parties, a disaster for governments, a disaster for oppositions, a disaster for democracy. If the parties don’t understand this, then they don’t understand anything that is happening,” he added.
The only way to avoid further worsening the schism between people and parties “is to have a positive campaign now”, with a debate of ideas, and based “on causes and not on cases”.
“My appeal is for people to change their lives (…). If the campaign is based on cases and little cases, then you can be sure that abstention will increase and the divorce between politicians and people will worsen,” he warned.
Asked whether presidential candidates who run outside their parties could benefit from the discontent of the Portuguese people, Marques Mendes was ambivalent. There is no democracy without parties, he considered, and the presidency of the Republic “is the most political body of all (…) which means that whoever is running for president of the Republic is a politician”, he said. ND
source: LUSA
