Long Live the King!

               

              Anyone who has been fortunate to have strolled from Trafalgar Square to the Mall past the Admiralty Arch on a fine winter’s day, with the sun shining through the velvety colours of the countless Union Jacks that cheer up the naked trees of St. James’s Park to see the changing of the guard in Buckingham Palace with the royal standard flying over it knows that a monarchy is better than a republic. Period!

                This discussion, always latent here, has hit the agenda following the publication of a manifesto under the title “implement democracy, restore monarchy” by a monarchic pressure group. Besides being a timely initiative (see previous post), they make a few valid points, namely the fact that Portugal had a democratic regime while under the rule of the king, something the republicans couldn’t keep for long. The republic, implemented by way of a coup, was itself later dismissed by a mutinous army, paving the way for half a century of reactionary dictatorship. Actually, the story is quite similar to Spain’s: a very progressive government replaces a relatively moderate one, only to find that its support basis is too feeble to resist, thus inviting a yet more radical (reactionary) faction to power. The Portuguese are simply too much ahead of the Spaniards in that respect: we went through the same things nearly two decades before them and without a civil war.

   Another interesting point they make derives from the striking parallel between the Portugal of today and that of the final nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. At the time the country had had a period of relatively stable growth, mostly fueled by some big investments in the network of infra-structures. Fontismo (from the name of the minister who had put the plan into practice, Fontes Pereira de Melo) may have looked like some sort of avant-la-lèttre Keynesianism, but it somehow failed to put the country on the path of sustainable development. Then, as Portugal collapsed under the burden of debt, a British ship aimed its guns at Lisbon following some clashing territorial claims with our inconstant ally Britannia during the scramble for Africa; the ship (they could at least have dignified us with the sight of a fleet…) didn’t shoot (it didn’t have to) and Portugal was utterly humiliated, its sovereignty badly hurt. The king was a collateral victim of all this (he was shot a few years later), and the monarchy eventually fell amid some mild and merry skirmishes, mostly in the socially conservative, deeply catholic (at the time) northern Portugal. Now, as we try to deal with the consequences of Cavaquismo (a modern sort of Fontismo, from Cavaco Silva’s name, current president of Portugal and prime-minister by the time when Europe was drowning us in money) and other –isms (such as Guterrismo and Socratismo) we don’t have any sovereignty at all and it is Africa that’s scrambling for us. So, given the similarities, why not getting rid of the president (in a civilized manner, of course)?

    As it is implied in the starting lines of this post I’m rather sympathetic towards the monarchic cause, but for different reasons. As a consequence of academic inclinations I have a certain degree of intimacy with British culture. On the other hand, my literary frame of mind renders me quite sensitive to the symbolic aspects of social life. The point is that the Portuguese republican institutions have failed to function as a solid symbolic reference, one strong enough to guide people in times of trouble. We really don’t look up at anything for comfort; we just look at each other, usually in jealousy, suspicion and resentment. The manifesto hints at those reasons, but leaves them largely unexplored, diluting them in the idea that a king is good because he’s not entangled in party politics. Actually it goes much deeper than that: a king is not a political entity at all. Historically and culturally speaking there were kings before there were cities (polis, in the classical Greek sense). When the task was simply to keep a group together people looked up to the authority of a king, and not to the discussions of a parliament. In a slowly fragmenting society, with dissolving social ties and waning points of reference a king could perhaps be the living symbol of the unity of the tribe. With the advantage that since the invention of constitutional monarchy one can have both: unity and diversity, a king and a parliament.  

   Objections to monarchy usually stem from the idea that a king is not democratically chosen by the people: but neither is the country itself. You don’t choose your parents and you love them nonetheless. You can’t choose certain things; they choose you instead. And that’s exactly why they’re so important, precisely because they've made you the object of their preference, thus rendering you important. If everything was a matter of choice nothing would matter much: one could always choose something else. The vague postmodern illusion that identity is a matter of choice entails an uncomfortable moral void which, in politics, is discernible in the general sense of a lack of common purpose. In extremis choosing an identity means having none or, according to the best available option, a second or third-hand identity.

   So, yes, I dream of coming along the Rua Augusta down to the Terreiro do Paço, gazing at a white and blue flag flying over the Arch of Triumph there, mirroring fair Lisbon, the azure sea and the gentle sky.