The Portuguese Parliament closes its doors. The plenary session is adjourned. Throughout the corridors of the small power, advisors and interns circulate in an endless rush to print more paperwork, take messages, and make threats, justifying their existence. At night, they’re on the sofa, with their heads between their legs, wishing they’d never chosen such an inglorious career but hopeful of an ambitious future that will never come.

Parliament is interrupted. Pedro Nuno Santos slowly comes down from his parliamentary bench and contemplates two doors to exit. In the center, nothing new is seen apart from a few more webs of conservative spiders. On the right are two big men, looking like bag snatchers, ready to greet him. Pedro doesn’t know which way to go, but he knows he won’t be going through that tiny door on the left; to pass through, he would have to take off a lot of coats.

With Parliament interrupted, Hugo Soares rushes towards his boss’s office. He passes in front of any self-respecting trainee, clearly demonstrating the reasons that have led him to where he is. He’s the chief trainee, first in line to repeat all the arguments they throw at him, even if he doesn’t understand them or wants to. What matters is defending, rightly or wrongly. Hugo reaches Luís’ door and knocks regularly on the chapel door. On the other side, Nuno Melo, fully uniformed in military clothes decorated with the flag of Olivenza, opens a crack. Everything is ready for your entrance, dear colleague.

Montenegro waits silently at the top of a platform, hands intertwined. At first glance, it might seem that the prime minister is still meditating on his precarious situation. More attentive observers might notice the half-empty bottle, which hides his nervousness and covers his wrinkles. Perhaps a consequence of some urban-rural behavior already denounced by Professor Marcelo? We’ll never know now that the president has lost his voice in a tragic collision of immoralities.

Luís Montenegro looks up at Hugo Soares. Is all lost? The intern shakes his head and swears that he will still be able to negotiate with Nuno Santos. He reminds his boss of the days of the Jotas (Young members of the PSD) when everything was negotiated behind closed doors and never had to go to elections except to formalize what was already known. He recalls that he had always been one of the great chieftains of his time and that it wasn’t now that he would lose everything just because they were playing in front of more cameras. He expected them to win a resounding victory, alongside the future president Marques Mendes, winning in the and with André Ventura taking coffees at the PSD headquarters in Malveira.

The still prime minister sighs. He’s tired of those “cases and little cases.” He, too, was one of the Jotas and Pedro Passos Coelho’s chief trainees. But he’s gray with grown-up children and a well-bred company to feed. The sun no longer rises warmly on him, and he looks greener and greener. Everything Hugo says to him tastes like an emotion of mistrust. He picks up the bottle and takes another swig. The label reads “SpinumViva Melhor,” the original product of the future president of Portugal, Cristina Ferreira.

Pedro Nuno Santos passes the door to his opponent’s office. He’s thinking of going in. He has already quoted Sá Carneiro. From there to the central block, it’s just a giant step. Ventura peers down the corridor and licks his lips, almost as perniciously as his party colleague is alleged to have done while fondling underage children. The PS leader reaches for the door handle, but something stops him.

Is it rain? Is it wind? It certainly wasn’t shameful, but there are local elections at the end of this hot year, and you have to show some fiber. Fernando Medina, trapped on the roof by two orange parrots, lets out a few insults and flies away back to the tower of the wizard of Kazakhstan.

The work in Parliament resumes momentum, and then the long-awaited moment arrives. Montenegro, already overcome by the remnants of the bottle, accepts his fate in a cloudy, as Hugo Soares tears his robes and says that they will still win the elections. Whenever he opens his mouth, he reminds me of Rabelais in Panurge’s Flock: “Panurge, without saying a word, throws the ram into the sea, screaming and bleating. All the other rams, shouting and bleating in the same tone, began to throw themselves into the sea immediately afterward, all in a row. Each one tried to throw himself in before his companions. It was impossible to stop them because you know it’s natural for sheep to always follow the one in front, wherever it goes.”

He almost bets but leaves that for when he goes to visit the other bosses in the casino.

Portugal is coming down with yet another flu, and as it is a country of large patriarchies, it suffers from that problem already well diagnosed by Lobo Antunes: the male cold. In this case, we don’t know if there will be enough pathos to cure this fever, and Lurdes is on vacation; she doesn’t get paid enough for this. We’re heading for spring, and with the fog lifting, perhaps Sebastião won’t be riding through the Chegana mists or carrying a flag from liberal Argentina. Who do you vote for?

Maybe Tiririca was right. It hardly gets worse than it is.

Alexandra Manes is from Flores Island but lives in Terceira Island, Azores. She is a regular contributing writer for several Azorean newspapers, a political and cultural activist, and has served in the Azorean Parliament.

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).