My Country, Today

        One might as well ask if it really had to take a deep economic crisis to make the portuguese finally understand what the idea of society is meant to signify. One might as well wonder if only a neoliberal shock could show us crystal clear what politics is about. One might also think that only a deep social and economic crisis could awaken us from the civic slumber we had indulged ourselves with. In the meanwhile, one might as well have remembered, perhaps inspired by the examples of past generations, that it takes blood, tears, toil and sweat to actually build anything worthy of admiration. And, by the way, we could also had borne in mind a clear picture of our utter fragility, a constantly renewed consciousness that no man is an island and that there is no such thing as a self-made-man: not in Europe, not even in America and much less in Portugal. We could have learnt the lessons our very landscape taught us: the harsh climate of the north, its rocky stubbornness yielding only to the strength of many arms combined; the dry extensions of the south, their flat horizons turned into blood-stained gold by the sweat of many and the profit of few; and the sea, the never-ending sea, the eternally mysterious sea. We could have remained wise, but we haven't. We could have been faithful to ourselves, but we haven't. And now we’re lost: as we have always been.  

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.   

On Power and its Trivialization

              

             Some days ago, in another one of his inspired moments of high rhetoric, the President of Portugal Cavaco Silva said that he was partaking in the terrible sacrifices the Portuguese are enduring in these times of economic hardships. To prove it he added that his pensions (note the plural) “won’t almost certainly be enough to pay for his expenses”. Our president is known (among other things, of course) for his lack of verbal skills and during his long public life has already got us used to these amazing utterances. In spite of all that there’s a general feeling here that this time he has crossed the limits, not the least because he earns more than € 10.000 a month. I know it’s not that much if one compares him to his peers (the only possible comparison in this situation): but it was him who decided to compare himself with the average Portuguese pensioner, who earns some € 300. Given the current touchy disposition of our impoverished country the event immediately caused a wave of outrage: mostly facebook-based (as outrage almost always is these days), with one or another more or less humorous initiative of the “a coin to help the President” sort. I won’t join the chorus, really. I won’t even speculate about why he may have said such a thing, even conceding that it is all the more surprising given the fact that he is usually discrete and habitually measures very well what he says. My point here is that this sort of pseudo-events illustrates quite well some of the basic malfunctions of our contemporary political systems as far as the symbolic construction of the notion of power is concerned.

               It is now commonplace to complain about the feebleness of today’s European political leaderships and to contrast them with the authority and vision of a Churchill, a de Gaulle or a Jack Delors. In Portugal the most prominent spokesmen of this point of view is Mário Soares (who obviously includes himself in the lot of great, charismatic past leaders). But the point is that no one will let anybody be a charismatic leader nowadays. Charisma has a remarkably low life-expectancy these days: usually it dies after facing the press and the public opinion for a few weeks. The democratic demand for transparency as a necessary pre-requisite for consent has in contemporary society degenerated into the idea that politicians have to be permanently justifying everything they do. Finally, television turned it all into a masquerade. Politics is today little more than a half-serious reality show, in which everybody tries to play his part with the sole aim of gaining more popularity. Cavaco, for example, has always played the part of the poor, humble and honest average rural Portuguese, a common man, even if he is one of the richest men in the country. What’s the problem, one could ask: after all, there’s an obvious difference between actuality and representation and the Portuguese media has always been obedient to the established power in favouring the latter over the former. The problem is when the masquerade falters, either because of the music that stops playing, or because the mask itself becomes grotesque (or both, as is the case with Cavaco).

              I want to make something clear: I obviously believe that politicians have to justify what they do to the citizens: they just don’t have to do it constantly and not in such subservient terms. Political power has degenerated into political marketing; charisma has wrongly been assumed to be something one can buy from some image consultancy agency. Trust, the essential constituent of democracy, has vanished and left in its place an all-too-ready disposition to run after public opinion, to try to please the common people who always criticize without bothering trying to understand, who talk about everything without an overall vocabulary of about... 500 words. Really, democracy is something suitable for enlightened societies, but where are they now? The Enlightenment has been so long ago... This paradoxical dark age of ready-made communication and superficial commentaries doesn’t look like a particularly fertile soil for democracy to flourish. When we measure a man’s political worth not by what he says, thinks or does but solely by the number of times he appears on TV, something must be terribly wrong. When power succumbs to mundane trivialization and authority is sought on the basis of emotional iterations such as Cavaco’s, then there’s no possibility of leadership. It should moreover be noted that the Portuguese word for leadership, liderança, is a neologism, a rather recent one, hastily borrowed from English. We’re playing with new toys, here: it’s a pity we haven’t read the instructions manual.