The President of the Republic warned on Wednesday that the fragmentation in the right-wing camp could extend to the entire party system in the next political cycle, given that there are “worrying signs” and that this “is a real problem”.
“France is an example. It starts in one of the hemispheres, destroys what existed in that hemisphere, creates another reality, and then reaches the other hemisphere. This did not happen in Portugal, but it is good that it does not happen,” said Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon.
The head of state warned in the middle of a speech at the National Congress of Economists: ‘It is good that this is not happening. It is good that we are living at the end of this cycle, and it is a presidential and parliamentary crisis. cycle that ends almost simultaneously [em 2026]”A cycle characterized by fragmentation into the two political party halves does not begin.”
“It’s a real problem that exists, and it’s not worth denying. It only has a solution if the party system really knows how to deal with it, namely those who have the duty to lead their respective hemispheres, to deal with the new reality that has emerged. , who came forward,” he reflected.
Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa added that “in terms of strategic planning, and especially economic planning, it would not be good if a cycle of striving for stability, despite the various external crises we have experienced, were followed by a cycle which consists of mini-cycles of government with party fragmentations and unpredictability in the functioning of the political system.”
According to you, there is ‘stability in the political system in general, both in the system of political parties and in society [entre Presidente e Governo]which has been going on for eight years and the normal thing is that it lasts ten years,” but “there are worrying signs”.
“My concerns are being expressed, which are old and date back to 2018, but which are becoming increasingly clear. And not so long ago, because we are two years away from the end of this cycle – more things, less things, since the The last part of the cycle is a huge election cycle that is of course characterized by all the events of that election cycle,” concluded he.
Earlier, the President of the Republic recalled that he has been warning for some time about the importance of alternatives in democracy: “I outlined the first worrying sign in 2018”.
“There is only democracy when there are alternatives,” he reiterated, insisting that when parts of the system “begin to systematically fragment and deteriorate,” “sooner or later the whole system is affected.”
In this speech at the National Congress of Economists, the Head of State, after listening to the Minister of Finance, Fernando Medina, once again praised the proposal for the 2024 state budget, which he described as “a subtle, clear, limited, conditioned exercise.” in a period of the most complicated in recent decades, but where we safeguard the present as much as possible and think about the future as much as possible.”
According to you, In this matter, anyone who “belongs to one of the moderate parties in the hemisphere that is not in power” is confronted with “the attraction of proposing very different alternatives, and then getting the feeling that the situation, the circumstances of the moment, wouldn’t work.” allows much else than what is happening”.
On the domestic front, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa again defended “regime agreements in what is obvious”, in “decisions that are structuring”, such as the new airport.
“They are structuring, they have been waiting for 50 years. It would be wise for them not to wait for the next cycle and then get into several mini-cycles of decision fluctuations,” he noted.
Within the European Union framework, he identified a “loss of strength among moderates” and a “very, very worrying” rise of inorganic movements and anti-system parties that were causing “a realignment of political systems, which is underway, and we don’t know where I have to go.”
In global terms, The head of state described the current moment as “more unpredictable than ever” and credited the previous US administration of Donald Trump with contributing to the instability: “It is starting to kill multilateralism, which then translates into the wars we are experiencing, a postponed war. effect”.
Still on Trump, he questioned the normalization of the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, in which “whoever had been a defeated incumbent, if not appealed, had his supporters calling for the most egregious violation of democratic functioning of an oldest in the world”, and that he “will be a candidate in the next elections”.
For Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, “The most impressive thing is the inability of the democratic system to renew itself,” with candidacies that “represent not the future, but the past of the past.”
In an allusion to the Hamas attack in Israel on October 7, he asked how it was possible that “great powers” such as the United States of America and countries “with enormous potential for self-defense and self-defense” had not foreseen what was happening. “complete failure in what apparently requires a sustained, medium-term effort to achieve”.
“This unpredictability is very, very impressive,” he said.
Source: DN
