The Enough Game

Alongside great strategy games like Chess and Go, humanity is now presented with a new game inspired not by military battles, but by political strategy. It's the Game of Chega.

In the Chega Game, there are two players: a judge and a defendant. Anyone can be a defendant. But judges can only be those with proven moral superiority, such as supporting communist dictatorial regimes, tolerating the oppression of women in Islamic communities, or having voted for José Sócrates. In other words, they must be left-wing. The goal of these players is to identify and punish people who say forbidden things. While it may seem confusing, it's very simple: any public figure who makes the slightest criticism of emigration, security, Roma, or Muslims is, of course, playing the Chega Game. The judge then identifies them, labels them racist and xenophobic, and triumphantly concludes that they are playing the Chega Game. And so the game ends, with one virtue point for the player and one shame point for the defendant who was caught uttering 'hate speech.'

The newspapers Público and Expresso feature the grandmasters of Chega's Game, the Bobby Fischers and Kasparovs of identifying who's playing Chega's Game. These players' acumen is such that they can even decode Chega's moves in the speech of socialist mayor Ricardo Leão. This is on par with Capablanca's famous opening.

However, the Chega Game has become more complicated lately. So much so that even the grandmasters are starting to have trouble identifying who is playing the Chega Game. They are confused by the arrival of new voices that, according to the rules, shouldn't speak in the Chega style. The first to confuse the grandmasters was Pedro Nuno Santos when he stated that emigrants must respect our culture. It was a blasphemous clash: the meek becoming fierce and the last wanting to be first. So, the left-wing leader of the Socialist Party (PS) is starting to repeat the speech of the right-wing leader of Parliament?

The grandmasters hesitated, consulted their consciences, and then fell silent. Because saying that emigrants should respect Portuguese culture has a different meaning depending on who says it. If it's Ventura, it's racism. If it's Santos, it means he realized that the issue of emigration concerns the Portuguese. Just as Capablanca could identify in seconds the traps set by other chess players, our grandmasters of the Chega Game realized that this PS leader repeating Ventura's warnings wasn't playing the Chega Game. It was, rather, a strategic maneuver designed to combat Chega's populism. Or to win elections through the popular vote.

Because, when it comes to emigration and security, shacks and squats, common sense and compliance with the law, most Portuguese people are playing the Chega Game.

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