I know it didn’t please everyone, but I have to say that I enjoyed seeing the presidents of the PSD/Azores and PS/Azores, José Manuel Boleiro and Francisco César, in the media last week, talking about important regional political issues, culminating in the nomination of a consensual name for President of the Economic and Social Council.
I would like these meetings to occur more often and address the serious problems facing our Autonomous Region, allowing us to find common ground between the two largest political parties at the regional and national levels. It should be borne in mind that the law of numbers even requires such an understanding since both parties jointly hold, as a result of the most recent elections, a two-thirds majority in the number of Members of Parliament, which is essential for amending the Constitution itself.
Some will say such a dialogue is impossible because the PSD/Azores is bound together with other parties in a government coalition experiment that is bearing some fruit and has many more to come. However, I would like to believe that the agreements in force regarding the governance of our Autonomous Region do not nullify the partisan objectives of the participants, especially when the best interests of the Azores are at stake. In fact, we have just seen how the leader of one of the parties participating in the national AD has brought to the fore, invoking precisely this quality, a highly controversial issue of our country’s foreign relations, which, moreover, are entrusted to the political responsibility of another member of the government, incidentally belonging to the other party in the coalition.
I have already recalled how the 1997 constitutional revision was carried out by firm agreement.
The 1997 Constitutional revision was carried out by agreement between the PS and the PSD, bypassing the slow work of the competent parliamentary committee. Subsequent experience has confirmed that this is the way to make progress on what is needed, and committees are an excellent means of seeking to establish broad consensus and killing off successive attempts at constitutional revision…
As for the constitutional review, twenty years have indeed passed since the 2004 review, which focused, in particular, and with great understanding and openness, on autonomy. However, it is even more urgent to change the Regional Finance Law, whose inadequacy is there for all to see. It threatens the institutions’ credibility and the democratic autonomous regime itself.

The LFR in force dates back to the transitional period and has never been formally challenged by the national and regional governments that have succeeded it. It’s true that myself and my list colleagues, Joaquim Ponte and Lídia Bulcão, voted against this law, which earned us disciplinary proceedings brought by the then President of the PSD Parliamentary Group, which came to nothing, mainly because we defended ourselves with vigorous arguments, making it clear that we would challenge any penalty imposed on us before the Constitutional Court, in the name of freedom to vote, the constitutional prerogative of Members of Parliament. But, as the then General Secretary of the Party was soon to say, we escaped the disciplinary process, but we wouldn’t escape the electoral process… In fact, as we should remember, all three of us were eliminated from the PSD lists in the following elections!
From then on, the issue was plunged into an uneasy silence. The PS, which had voted against the LFR mentioned above, did nothing to change it, perhaps because deep down it even agreed with it, so many were its similarities to the LFR imposed by its own majority in the days of the José Sócrates/Teixeira dos Santos duo, against which, in those distant times, the PSD, in turn, had voted, apparently without conviction. I was the one who presented the argument against the bill, as mentioned earlier… In the end, this duplicity of positions by the two largest national parties proves the narrow-mindedness of their respective leaderships when it comes to Constitutional Autonomy – the golden days of their commitment to the project, which was spearheaded from the outset by the Social Democratic leaders of the Azores and Madeira, in the good old days of Francisco Sá Carneiro and Francisco Balsemão, are a thing of the past.
The advantage of seeking a prior understanding with the Autonomous Region of Madeira is desirable, but in the phase of prolonged crisis experienced there, it may prove very difficult, if not impossible. On the other hand, indeed, the President of the Regional Government of Madeira is also the President of the PSD Congress, and he has already made it known that he has powerful arguments to win the case in the discussion of the State Budget, whose ritual dances are now taking place…
Some morbid or apocalyptic statements about the region’s financial situation have been made. Perhaps I’ll come back to them at a later date. In the meantime, it would be a good idea to do something to promote changes in the current system, taking advantage of the climate of sharing the spoils of the supposed budget surplus, which has taken hold throughout the country.

João Bosco Mota Amaral was the first president of the Autonomous Government of the Azores. He regularly contributes to the newspapers Correio dos Açores and Diário dos Açores.

NOVIDADES will feature occasional opinion pieces from various leading thinkers and writers from the Azores to give the diaspora and those interested in the current Azores a sense of the significant opinions on some of the archipelago’s issues.

Translated to English as a community outreach program from the Portuguese Beyond Borders Institute (PBBI) and the Modern and Classical Languages and Literatures Department (MCLL).