In this crisis that the country is experiencing and which will continue for several weeks, the priority is to help all people who need help – whether in reconstruction or direct support – and to prevent the severity of new incidents in the coming days of rain and intense winds. But also crucial to this is the political and communication coordination that the Government must ensure with entities and the population to allow the right information to reach those who need it, to combat misinformation and to ensure the tranquility and comfort of those who find themselves in difficult situations.
This is one of the responsibilities that has failed since the day before Storm Kristin: communication from the Government has been unsystematic, clumsy and, on several occasions, unempathetic. Examples include the statements made by the Minister of Internal Administration about not knowing what went wrong or “working in a context of invisibility”, the disastrous video by the Minister of the Presidency Leitão Amaro (which has since been removed), or the way in which the Minister of Economy justified that people would now have a nest egg to cover the additional costs caused by the storm, because they will have just received their January salary. And it is also an example of the lack of systematic and regular information about the current situation and concrete recommendations for the population – which, for example, the time of the pandemic has made us accustomed to.
In the Government, there will be no lack of awareness of the importance of political articulation and good communication. After the Blackout, in October, the Government announced that it had approved a Manual for Political Coordination and Communication in Crisis Situations by the Council of Ministers. The Government’s statement explains that upon taking office, “the Government was faced with ‘a difficulty that existed in the face of serious crisis phenomena, whatever their origin, because there was no planned process of political coordination.’ And, therefore, this manual establishes the Government Operations Center (Corgov) which ‘will be activated by the prime minister in the event of a serious crisis, following the script defined by the Executive’. The manual covers ‘natural, human-made, cyber or digital, and physical crises’, allowing the Government to respond with greater rigor and predictability.”
In his deleted video, Leitão Amaro tells us that the Corgov manual will be used to respond to storm Kristin. If so, what is failing? Where is the rigor and predictability that the manual would ensure?
This manual is not public knowledge – it is classified as “confidential” – and so we cannot understand whether the manual is poorly written or whether it is being poorly followed. Both hypotheses are worrying.
The next few days are fundamental and the Government has the opportunity to correct itself and show that it actually has planning and that it is not managing the crisis improvised.
Parliamentary leader of Livre
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