Dear Editor,
I read last week’s news of former European Commissioner Durão Barroso being “stripped of his red carpet privileges” with absolute delight. About time that 140,000 or more people should sign their names to a petition and shame our so-called leaders who are so transparently looking out for number one!
Very few these days seem to remember that before becoming the oily president of the EC, Barroso was leading a PSD government in this country which he left, mid-term, in thoroughly incapable hands.
The result? Early elections, and the Socialists got in. Yes, the era of José Sócrates – and we all know where that took Portugal, don’t we? Straight into a padded-cell with the troika and €84 billion of debt, payable by 2021.
My point is that José Manuel Durão Barroso – the very same who ‘hosted’ the Lajes summit that signalled the start of the catastrophic war with Iraq – should not simply lose red carpet privileges in Brussels. He should lose them in every corner of the civilised world.
With people like Barroso in highly-paid positions in international banks, we have to accept that ‘there is nowhere left to hide’. One can only hope that Goldman Sachs’ principles are on a par with those of their new non-executive chairman, and that they drop him like a hot brick as soon as they realise that he won’t be as useful to them as they thought he would be!
George Costa
Aljezur
