A month on from the devastating consequences of upgrade and Portugal’s legal system is still in total chaos.
Millions of euros ploughed into it see law-makers unable to access vital information from the internet portal CITIUS, while up and down the country court buildings are “no-go” areas of scaffolding and brick dust.
But worse than administrative upheavals is the collateral damage that has left lives on hold, and, in many cases, lives seriously compromised.
“I cannot plan my life at all,” geography teacher Graciosa Ferreira, 38, told reporters last week.
Ferreira is one of six teachers fighting a claim for unfair dismissal.
The teachers’ case was due to have been heard around the time the justice ministry ‘rewrote the judicial map’ on September 1, closing down over 47 courthouses and absorbing 27 into new areas.
CITIUS’ subsequent collapse, effectively throwing 3.5 million legal cases into virtual limbo, has meant that no one now can tell when the case will come before an adjudicator.
“If the court finds in the favour of the school, we will have to pay back money,” Ferreira explained. “And the longer this drags on unheard, the more money we will owe.”
Elsewhere, lawyers, business people, debt collectors – even petty offenders – are being impacted by the system’s ongoing paralysis.
According to national tabloid Correio da Manhã, €842,000 has already been pumped into CITIUS to try and bring it properly back online, while in September alone €6.69 million was spent on rebuilding courthouses that have ‘survived’ the government’s redesign.
In the face of mounting calls for her resignation, Justice Minister Paula Teixeira da Cruz has played the whole crisis down, repeatedly saying it will be resolved within days. But as newspapers point out, the days now have grown into weeks.
A call round various law firms has revealed stories ranging from lawyers who cannot get paid, to hundreds of lives hugely impacted.
“I have more than 300 cases blocked,” Beja lawyer Casimiro Heitor told CM. “This has obvious consequences for clients. There are cases of separated couples with children whose feeding allowances are still to be defined; businesses that need to recover debts.”
Sandra Afonso, unemployed, is one of those parents locked in a financial wrangle with her former partner. “In July I should have started receiving €300 a month for my two children, but that didn’t happen. Now, no one knows what point my case has reached, and I am unable to even request the children’s father pays for their food.”
Self-employed businessman Belmiro Santos explained how his company had been trying to recover debts of over €150,000.
“I have more than 20 cases that have been blocked by the internet portal problem,” he told CM. “These translate into more than €150,000 that could have started to come through to us. But instead everything is stuck. For a family business, this is a complete nightmare.”
Faro lawyer Miguel Fonseca told CM how one of his clients has a bank account seized by the authorities for a debt that no longer exists. All the man’s money is in the account; the debt is bogus, but because CITIUS is down, nothing can be done to sort the situation out.
Similar stories pepper news columns everywhere.
In Marinha Grande, a law firm has even gone to the extreme of lodging a criminal complaint against the justice minister, but still nothing moves forward as the system remains in lockdown.
There is one ‘flip side’ however. The administrative chaos has left certain petty offenders smiling. A man whose driving licence was taken away in the summer told us: “The court said my driving ban would come into effect on September 1, so I was able to drive through the summer, which was great as I needed to drive for my business. But then September 1 came, and in all this mess they seem to have lost my case.”
