The cry of the forgotten country

More than 30 years ago, on 24 June 1994 , the 25 de Abril Bridge was blocked by a honking horn in protest against the increase in tolls. We were in the final phase of the Cavaco Silva decade and José Pacheco Pereira wrote a memorable text – which I have only found quoted by José Manuel Fernandes – in which he describes the daily working life of a middle-class family, with children, living on the south bank, to appeal to the PSD to leave the bubble in which it lived – the most appropriate language at the time would be to come down to earth. Three decades later, for at least a year now, it has been clear that the incumbent parties, the left and some analysts and commentators live completely outside the reality of this same middle-class family, now in the 21st century, which today, in many cases, cannot pay its bills despite working.

Those who live in the centre of Lisbon or Porto are unlikely to be aware of a reality that has been growing in the country. There is a wide range of public transport, from the metro to Uber, as well as bicycles and scooters. And the immigrants that you generally know are either the so-called digital nomads or the rich, or the ones who bring food to your home or even the ones who drive Uber taxis. Just like the gypsy community that you know, is, in most cases, romanticised. They are left-wing like those prosperous ladies of the Estado Novo who felt sorry for the poor. They love education and public health, as long as they have their children in schools and health insurance or the fact that they work in the civil service allows them to go to private hospitals. None of this would be so serious if the parties of the regime had not also gotten involved in this bubble, with particular emphasis on the PS, but also the PSD.

In the land of forgotten people, the neighbours next door are immigrants with customs they do not understand and who, therefore, cause them fear and insecurity. They are families without money to send their children to school and who have difficulty paying their mortgages or rent, water and electricity bills – inexplicably high despite the fact that they hear every day that we are champions of renewable energy. They are workers who have to use public transport and who, if they live in the suburbs, face strikes and a degraded or scarcer supply than in the past, despite also hearing that we need to drive less to reduce our carbon footprint. They are people who, if they are sick, have to go to the emergency room, which is scarce because health centres have opening hours. These are communities that, now outside the major urban centres, see the State disappear from the places where they are, roads that are not motorways are degraded and investments in infrastructure are successively postponed – as Paulo Ferreira recalled on Rádio Observador, the Algarve has years of promises to be fulfilled in terms of water and health.

At the same time, those who have a small business live nightmares because of bureaucracy and their relationship with a public administration that seems to be there to prevent everything and forgets that it is at the service of the citizens. And, if they have any problems with the tax or administrative justice system, they run the risk of dying without the process being concluded. The recent case involving the professor , who won a lawsuit against a competition held 16 years ago by ISEG, clearly shows the state of this justice system that is so important for companies.

While they live in that reality, they hear the parties of the regime say that there is no problem with immigration, when more than a year ago it was enough to travel around the country or at least through the suburbs of Lisbon to see the impact it was having on these communities. A disruption that was being identified in housing, public transport, schools and health.

It is true that Luís Montenegro has begun to identify and address the problem, but only administratively. The most important thing is still missing: integration, which allows for mutual acceptance. But at least now we can talk a little about the problem, without being accused of racism and xenophobia, although there are still those who believe that it is all a question of perception. They are those who wait for statistics, which measure what has already happened, to tell us that there is a problem when we are already buried by it. Then there are those who think that people need to be educated and try to create empathy for immigrants or show the obvious advantages of immigration, as if people did not feel and see this, without realizing that the problem lies in the culture shock.

Chega MP Rita Matias, on Observador radio, said that “immigration is the elephant in the room”. She added that, as long as the other parties do not address the problem that is then the source of pressure on public services such as education, health and public transport, Chega will have a “green light”. This is what the PS did not understand and the AD realized too late and shamefully.

And while they live in this daily routine of living with people they don't understand, counting their money and dealing with problems they have to deal with with public transport, health and education listen to the incumbent parties discussing issues that are not focused on solving their problems. There they are debating whether health care should be public or private or whether waiting lists are longer or shorter, when what they want is to have a doctor when they need it. Or whether there are more or fewer students without classes, when what they want is for their children to be able to attend public school learning for their future. Or whether TAP should be state-owned or not, when many have never traveled with it. All you have to do is stop for a moment and listen to some debates from the perspective of a family with children and a minimum or even average income, living in the suburbs of large cities, to understand how absurd some of these debates are. As if those who want to represent them lived on another planet.

This is what André Ventura saw on his journey that, in six years, elevated his party to the second largest political party. Initially, the PS must have thought it would be fun to isolate Chega, feeding it, to prevent the PSD from coming to power. Until now, it has fallen victim to the tactic that was becoming more and more evident in the António Costa era.

While it is true that Chega’s rise is in line with what is happening in Western democracies, its success is also due to António Costa’s eight years in power. It was during this time that the PS fueled Chega in debates and in what it did not do to improve people’s lives, using public finances to stay in power while allowing public services to deteriorate. We should therefore be suspicious of the pledges of love for the NHS and public schools, two services that António Costa’s governments have degraded with the approval of the PCP and BE.

That is why António Costa is responsible for this disaster that has befallen the PS. Pedro Nuno Santos' original sin was to rush into the leadership of the party without realising that he would pay the price for the bad legacy that Costa left behind. He then managed his time in opposition very poorly, failing to gain credit for the contribution he made to the government and then misjudging the impact of Spinuviva. And finally, he made the mistake of not approving the motion of confidence, falling into Luís Montenegro's trap.

Luís Montenegro's risky move paid off, but if we think about it, after the money he distributed in eleven months and the attempt he made to appropriate the banner of immigration and security from Chega, the victory falls short of what, in principle, the electoral management he carried out should have offered. It is no longer enough to distribute money, make peace with pensioners and say that the immigration problem will be resolved.

In the 21st century, the daily life of a middle-class family that does not live in the centre of a large city is at least as difficult as the one that Pacheco Pereira described so well in 1994. At that time, we were coming out of a decade of Cavaquismo, with profound changes in the country, and the natural choice to express dissatisfaction was, as it was, the PS. This time, voters gave a small victory to the AD and the forgotten country chose Chega. The PS is going to live through turbulent times and really needs a cure for opposition. If the AD does not know how to get out of the elite bubble, if it does not know how to solve everyday problems, sooner or later we will have a Chega government.