The strikes, the trees and the forest

1 “One day we will have to put an end to this”, the Prime Minister said during his campaign, referring to a strike by CP drivers that will last (and will continue) for a week. The Prime Minister could have said that about many other situations that are killing people in Portugal – people, the economy, the future and dignity. But it was about the CP strike that the Prime Minister was so relieved – and seemed outraged. In order for people to be able to take advantage of all the laughable and not at all laughable content contained in this strike, it is worth reading the information provided by CP: “… strikes called by the unions ASCEF, ASSIFECO, FECTRANS, FENTCOP, SINAFE, SINDEFER, SINFA, SINFB, SINTTI, SIOFA, SNAQ, SNTSF, STF and STMEFE, between May 7 and 8, 2025, by the union SMAQ, between May 7 and 14, 2025, and by the union SFRCI, between May 11 and 14…”.

There is a significant risk that the PM's statement is a rant. Such rants are extremely common, associated with a secret hope that things will happen on their own and that there is no need to upset anyone. All politicians have rants like these, delicate and painful, with which they want to convey the idea that an army of laws and soldiers is preparing and, dressed in camouflage, has already wielded a pen in their right hand and a sword in their left. What recent history teaches us is less warlike and closer to what would be the end of an edition of the Sequim d'ouro – a cute children's song contest, where the sequim was once a gold coin and today is just a little golden tin wheel, imitating a coin, used to make a show.

If this is not the case, and the Prime Minister has the genuine intention of putting an end to the various diseases that are plaguing the ailing country – or at least to the train strikes – it will be worth the man becoming Prime Minister. The prime ministership, a position that in his case and for any other alternative would be somewhere between indifferent and catastrophic, could then be of some use. It will not lift Portugal out of misery, infestation and shame, but it will allow its dying body to hold on and look better.

2 At crossroads like this — a country of stopped trains, with abandoned wills and mediocre protagonisms, at a time when all we see are the party caravans moving and, in the background like an anesthetizing bass, activism and causes — there is an opportunity for a politician to become a statesman.

The reactions to the Prime Minister's words are clear enough about what awaits him. With one exception, they anticipate a relentless opposition, which will allow the 15 unions present in the CP to continue to carry out their weekly, seasonal or special strikes, and guarantee by canon that strikes can be carried out in arrogant disregard for the community and without any penalty for the damages.

Pedro Nuno Santos pointed out that “you will never in your life hear a PS leader question the strike law”. It is a profound way of expressing his thoughts, although he is plagued by two illusions: that he is the leader of the PS and that life is equal to the painful duration of his leading role. PNS is one of the most melancholic cases in Portuguese politics. PNS is a good-hearted and impulsive young man (despite his 48 years, it is not customary to say that he is an intelligent and thoughtful man) with a repeatedly demonstrated ability to make sumptuous and telegenic blunders. He was catapulted into a position where he had no future or brilliance in the short term and in which António Costa did not want to compromise his dolphinarium – that is, those who supported PNS with the same coldness with which they would encourage a hunter to enter a forest that had burned down. It is a little distressing that he does not see it, because he does not seem like a bad person – but he really does not have the same weight in the party as other socialist figures.

André Ventura went unnoticed in this episode of the constitutional controversy. Chega is certainly the party that least identifies with the constitution, but it does not compromise a good tactic for the sake of a strategic flag. On the day that the Prime Minister was concerned about the train strike, André Ventura confronted the gypsies in the street and agreed to play the role of the only indignant Portuguese.

Rui Tavares has spent the last 24 hours giving a vague speech that has included chicken coops and chicken coop items – roosters, eggs… – and his most enigmatic expression is, “We talk to be the majority, we don’t talk to be a niche”. It is likely that this will be a five-year plan at least, if not for when another chicken coop phenomenon occurs, but with chickens. He has a goal for the next elections, but he did not reveal what it is “because it brings bad luck”. His giving in to the popular imagination is excusable, as is his attachment to the constitutional precept that puts Portugal on the “path to a socialist society”, although both owe much to superstition. Livre will not allow any changes to the constitution.

Paulo Raimundo has a discourse on the words of the Prime Minister and a possible modification of the strike law that is not allegorical and unintelligible only because it is not necessary to know what the PCP says to know what the PCP thinks. The thinking of the Communist Party is the immobilized heritage of a group that the law of life has made increasingly smaller and, to make folklore and make it visible, of some young people who insist on wearing T-shirts with the face of Che Guevara, a hideous murderer that any normal person would wish had not existed.

Mariana Mortágua reacted strongly to the idea of ​​the Prime Minister changing the strike law. She said, in Coimbra, where the Queima das Fitas has not yet started: “… talking about work solely and exclusively in a campaign to say that workers’ right to strike will be changed clearly reveals the right-wing’s programme…”. The lady’s connection to the world of work is not very clear, but if it is as strong as MM thinks, it is worrying to think that only 4.36% of Portuguese people work. “We have never heard the Prime Minister worrying about those who take the trains…”, a second complaint from MM that raises a suspicion that has not yet been revealed – that the change to the strike law is, after all, intended to make strikes even easier, more frequent and more penalising for those who use the trains.

Inês Sousa Real said that the strike “is penalizing the wrong side”, which is an unequivocal position on the side of the people. However, she is opposed to any changes to the strike law and believes that the executive should negotiate – a natural and simple idea, but without any specific reference to who will be the interlocutor in a party called People, Animals and Nature.

There is no certainty that the challenge that has been launched and accepted will have any consequences. In an election campaign, party leaders are free to say anything. The losers will not have to keep their promises. The winner(s) will not be able to do so because the losers will put up insurmountable obstacles. That is how it has been.

Structural reform implies breaking conventional certainties. Reform is not about changing things, it is about transforming people. The invocation of the sacred right to strike, which is immediate and indisputable, is to insist on a dogma that only has any place in a dogmatic and stagnant society. It is a fallacious statement that reflects a serious narrow-mindedness and is completely alien to the meaning of coexistence between people.

All the left-wing parties, those that in a party-political regime claim to be the repository of unmistakable truths, will oppose the Prime Minister’s willingness to change the strike law – if today’s Prime Minister becomes Prime Minister after 18 May and if he has not forgotten what he said. They will do so in parliament, in accordance with a majority they may have, and they will do so in the streets. The trade unions will be mobilised for heroic days of resistance, they will create chaos and spread the idea that it is not their fault. Journalists – uncritically raised in the late socialist environment that paralyses Europe or, more simply, raised – will raise their voices louder and say, without laughing, that they are a stronghold of democracy. The population will live patiently during these days or weeks – unless some unexpected event awakens the explosive and noisy vein that feeds the hearts of the masses – and will finally believe that things were not so bad and that the government is largely to blame for not engaging in dialogue.

This is most likely from what we know of history. Unless the PM is convinced of some things.

3 Anyone who is going to face a tough and prolonged battle must be determined to win it. They must clarify whether they are right or wrong and, if they are convinced that they are right after repeated critical exercises, they must have all the conditions to win. Mrs Thatcher's 15-month struggle with the mining unions is cited as a compendium of organisation and determination – beyond the opinion that one may have about the economic recovery and the structure of British identity. Reform clashes with entrenched interests. In the case of the unions, interests are associated with a very long training in immobility and in the art of becoming heavy-handed. Then, it may be necessary to leave someone behind. Not leaving anyone behind makes sense when you take primary school students on a trip to the Oceanarium. In an adult society, in which selfishness, evil and opportunism move, this is a fatal mantra that has only increased injustices. Someone has to be left behind, if they are not to move forward.

When making profound changes, it is necessary to resolve the dilemma of the tree and the forest: to see the tree and not pay attention to the forest or to look at the forest and not see the tree. Either of these perspectives may be appropriate at different times and circumstances. It is a methodological option, a choice to be made based on what one intends to observe. They coexist or occur over time by the same observer or by different observers; it is from the synthesis of the two types of information that better knowledge results. A government that proposes reform is obliged to exhaustively collect information on all scales, from each individual and from an entire society, from an indicator and a trend. No one with their forehead pressed against an oak tree will be able to perceive that there is a vast pine forest that is burning around it. No King Dinis, absorbed in his planting of ships to be built, will notice the first processionary weaving webs in the most anonymous pine tree in his pine forest. A politician can read graphs in the dark, but if he cannot read a man's eyes, he will hardly make the right decisions. A hydraulic engineer can scrutinize a dry tap for a week, wearing glasses and armed with two PhDs in taps, but he will only unravel the problem of the lack of water when he gets up and takes a look at an entire river network. Other comparisons could be made with pastry manufacturers, gas stations and fashion designers. But it is politicians who are most interested in demanding a broad view of reality before making decisions.

However, what is the importance of reality, of facts, in guiding thought and behavior? Or, in a reinterpretation of the political scene, in the discourse and proposals of politicians? Not much.

4 Policies, understood as instruments for changing reality embodied in parties, owe much more to a projected reality than to the present reality. And the projected reality is defined by ideologies. In a party-political regime, the version of democracy that currently prevails, ideologies establish relatively inflexible methods and goals. They obey a need for order and permanence that is of a mystical-religious nature and, as in religions, they offer a framework of thought that replaces one's own thinking. For each of its members, of the PCP or the IURD, ideology has a simplifying and security function in the decision-making process, offers the comfort of a group conviction, is reinforced with ceremonies of reaffirming externalization – congresses, demonstrations, masses… – and conditions an uncompromising and proselytizing vision of the world.

The support provided by reality to political decision-making is very small. Political decision-making is based on convenient aspects of reality, the fragment of reality selected in the present to fit the reality projected in the future – sometimes a tree, when the forest is more convenient. The dispassionate use of a broad interpretation of reality as a basis for transformations happens sporadically and in critical situations – sometimes for good and sometimes for bad. A world full of instruments to support decision-making has not made political decision-making any more enlightened. The deep and tribal reasons of the partisan game continue to impose their rules.

Other, less cynical reasons make the integrated perception of the tree and the forest uncomfortable. They are smaller reasons and affect politicians on the day they have to exercise power. Then, the entire edifice of their promises becomes less solid than it seemed or is shelved. During the first few months, this need is justified by an unexpected legacy of chaos and disorder; there are revocations to be made, emergency plans to be implemented… and the rival party is conveniently overwhelmed with accusations. Politics as the art of the possible appears implicit in the speeches, and with this smoke of Bismarck, Churchill's dramatic assertion is hidden: “It's not enough that we do our best; sometimes we have to do what's required”.

Politicians have a natural difficulty in doing what is necessary. Because it is almost always difficult, technically demanding and unpopular. And since most politicians lack competence, they tend to value the only thing they have: popularity. Deciding is choosing and ultimately it all comes down to one question. Which life is more valuable: the one that complains today, in front of the television, or the ones that complain and will be extinguished tomorrow without anyone seeing them? This is a question that haunts transformative political decisions, the ones that are asked of a statesman.

It is certainly very difficult for Mr Montenegro to reform the economic structure when he sees the multitude of small business owners who have always been stuck in a shed where they repair motorbikes, or to regulate the exercise of strikes when he may need the votes of the Socialist Party to reform the health system. But these are the things that are asked of him.

Sometimes the tree and the forest seem incompatible. This contradiction contains the most unbearable nightmare of statesmen, those who chose, those who did what was necessary. They will know, because it must be part of their still human nature, that they will not die delirious for those they did not save. And forgotten, or vilified, by those who were saved.