In yet another inspired form of contemporary protest, anti-oil group PALP has published the parliamentary emails of everyone from the prime minister to the most lowly backbencher who has what the group considers to be the “power to extinguish contracts” that have been signed with oil companies up and down the country.
Supplying a text that needs only to be cut-and-pasted onto each mail address, PALP hopes this latest ruse will stop the controversial contracts in their tracks.
For foreign readers, this is the gist of the message PALP is encouraging its supporters to send:
“Dear Sir/ Madam (depending on who one’s email is addressed to)
Thousands of citizens have shown on innumerable occasions that they do not want prospection or exploration of oil or natural gas in Portugal. They have presented all their reasons for this position. They know there are alternatives which the government in power has signed up to, following measures drawn up at COP21 and finalised at COP22 (the climate change conference that took place recently in Morocco). These citizens hope, therefore, that the government extinguishes the contracts that sustain gas and oil prospection and exploration activities.
Recently, in a communiqué issued following a story in Público about the Portfuel contracts (covering onshore exploration in the Algarve), the Secretary of State said the government would never do anything that “did not safeguard the law and public interest”.
Public interest will only be served with the extinction of all the (gas and oil) contracts.
This letter/ email is just another manifestation of this belief.
I will not accept that the interest of a few should be confused with public interest and be allowed to lead our country into a counter-cycle, full of serious risks that will impact on the future of the region, the country and the planet – risks that even politicians admit to be real.
For this reason I hope that you will undertake the necessary action required to block prospection and exploration of hydrocarbons in Portugal”.
The full list of emails and MP’s names to which the Portuguese text should be sent is supplied on PALP’s facebook page (Plataforma Algarve Livre de Petróleo – PALP), along with the text.
It is simply a question now of people everywhere getting busy cutting, pasting and pressing the send button.
