“The people didn’t fail.” The sentence with which journalist Margarida Vaqueiro Lopes ended an article at the beginning of the week should have been read to the President of the Republic before Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa returned to his days as a university professor, and as a television commentator, and to the critical analysis of the Government’s actions during the period of calamity that the country has been experiencing for a week due to the passage of the Kristin depression, which devastated a large part of the Central region – namely the Leiria region.
And what we saw and heard throughout these days supports the quote with which I began this text. Volunteers arrived in the affected regions from different parts of the country and began to help clean up and try to find whatever possible – from removing rubbish from the streets, placing tarpaulins on roofs or packing food in bags to be delivered to those who saw their lives transformed into days of survival without electricity, water and even roads.
All of this contrasts with the sad spectacle we were witnessing given by those who have the political responsibility for deciding and approving ways to support and prevent situations like those that affected the country.
In addition to the lack of prevention – the Portuguese Institute of the Sea and Atmosphere warned in advance that depression was approaching and that it would be dangerous -, there were later difficulties in reacting. And when this reaction emerged, it even worsened the Government’s image: a minister published a propaganda video in which he appeared on the phone (it should be said, to be fair, that as soon as he realized this he ordered it to be removed); another who took a group of soldiers to a certain point where they carried out an action (campaign?) and then, when it was finished, the scene was removed – they accused the residents in the area and were not denied. In fact, I heard one of these inhabitants say to a television channel: “Help? Only if it comes from the hungry birds.”
Let us add to the list the Minister of Internal Administration who arrived in Leiria and, among other phrases, said: “All this is a learning experience.” Those who watched saw the expression of the President of the Chamber… In fact, Maria Lúcia Amaral was joined by the Minister of Cohesion in another thesis: the Government was unaware of what went wrong in the delay in making aid resources available for the field.
For all these reasons, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa’s words yesterday, in Pedrógão Grande, can be considered a negative assessment of the Government: “People still haven’t realized what happened here, with 80% destroyed”; “especially those who are further away”; “The measures have to get off paper and be explained to people. Ordinary people don’t understand them. For them, they are politics.”
Did you hear the message?
Executive editor of News Diary
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