PSD Euro MP Paulo Rangel has told a debate on the future of Portugal that people have to accept that there will “come a day when there is no Portugal” nor any Portuguese. It may sound dramatic, he told his audience at Lisbon’s Casa da Música, but it is “real”. The “paradigm” of democracy has shifted towards a “trans-territorial” situation where individual states will have neither power nor legitimacy.
In yet another incidence where the PSD appears to be saying everything that voters don’t want to hear, Rangel affirmed: “Our world has changed. It is not a problem of politics, but a problem of change of paradigm. Governments, parliaments no longer have the capacity to respond to problems, as the problems now have a trans-territorial dimension. The State no longer has the monopoly of power or legitimacy”.
Rangel – who lost his bid to be Portugal’s prime minister to Pedro Passos Coelho – is a regular columnist for Público newspaper and television commentator for RTP – continued with the underwhelming theme, asserting that: “votes today are worth less than they were in the past. Political formulae are also dead and there will come a day when there will be no Portugal. It may sound dramatic, but it is real.
There will be a day in which there are no Portuguese.”
Rangel then turned his attention to Islamic State, saying the “great objective of the terrorists is to reach the Vatican”.
As Portugal has a “symbolic marketplace” in the form of Fátima, “this is another point we have to face”, he said.
