President Cavaco Silva’s high-profile fainting episode was the perfect allegory for the state of the country. He took to the stage to give what it has to be said was a fairly predictable Portugal Day speech, and found this time his moment of glory was sullied by the deafening, relentless chants of around 300 protesters.
Waving banners denouncing him as “incompetent”, demonstrators repeated the angry words “resign, resign” – meaning them to include the PSD/CDS-PP coalition government in the animated condemnation.
Cavaco Silva said not a word. He didn’t flinch from the text of his speech until page two, where he looked up, seemingly confused and then simply crumpled.
Carried off the podium chair-lift style, the unexpected fall from his usual state of grace left onlookers in an agony of discomfort.
Journalists were bustled out of reach of the president and TV cameras panned the expressionless faces of assembled dignitaries.
In the crowd, the public explained its motivation. Said one: “There is almost no point demonstrating anymore. This government does what it wants anyway.”
General Pina Monteiro, head of the armed forces, came to the stage and reproached hecklers for “upsetting the ceremony”.
He said the president was coming back to the podium to finish his speech – and he called for people to show their respect.
They did. The president returned to his speech, and took up exactly at the point where he left off.
There was no word to the protesters, no explanation for what has been called his “indisposition” – indeed no reference to the episode at all.
And there, in a nutshell, is the state of play in Portugal.
Chaos is raining down from every quarter but people are warned to show their respect and those in charge are showing as little emotion as possible.
As Público newspaper pointed out before the president’s fainting episode: “The current political environment is doing no one any favours. The president is registering huge levels of unpopularity, the government is at war with the Constitutional Court (TC), the PS is caught up with leadership battles and Europe cannot decide on a president to succeed Durão Barroso.”
That’s before one considers the gaping hole in the government’s housekeeping (thanks to recent rulings by the TC), the fact that 500,000 public sector workers and 40,000 members of the armed forces will all be back on pre-austerity pay this month (thanks to recent rulings by the TC) and the news that the government may well have to forgo the final tranche of bailout money (again, thanks to recent rulings by the TC).
Although President Cavaco Silva has declared he “will not be pressured”, this is possibly the moment where well-chosen words fail to cut the ice.
Tuesday’s protesters, in reality, were not the problem. The problem is much more connected with the state of the nation and how (or indeed if) the government can wriggle out of this one.
Passos Coelho has come under fire for declarations that there must be more scrutiny of TC judges – the inference being that, if there was, there would be less likelihood of judges who took care to protect the Constitution.
As leader writers were quick to point out, Passos Coelho’s comments were more in step with dictatorship than any form of democracy, and indeed since he made them, his script writers have been at pains to change the tune.
The government is now “respecting” the recent TC rulings that lopped upwards of €600,000 off the State Budget for 2014, and it is now simply hoping that the drop in commercial interest rates and sale of €750 million of public debt will make up the shortfall.
Meantime, it is in negotiations with the IMF over the last €2 billion tranche of bailout money, and basically holding its breath until a key meeting on June 16 next week.
The biggest problem, the PM explained in Santarém at the beginning of this fraught-filled week, is that the government really doesn’t know what the TC will throw at it next.
“We can only know the extent of our budgetary problems this year when we know all the decisions of the TC on our state budget,” he said. “And we still don’t know this. Once we know the extent of the budgetary problem, we will resolve it,” he added – leaving very few convinced that this is the way things will work out.
As the PM, his ministers, the president of the Republican Assembly and armed forces chiefs looked out at the people while President Cavaco Silva regained his composure in an army ambulance, the photograph of heads of state in a little dinghy being propelled round a recently-opened Discoveries Park came eerily back to mind.
Can this administration steer through all the obstacles ahead and make it through to the “right path” that it claims to be on?
