The development of a society that is organized around a collective political project and solidarity among all depends on the people who comprise it. Suppose people have this idea and ideal of cultural and historical communion. In that case, this constitutes a potential model of “decent democracy” (when the system of government guarantees the effectiveness of fundamental rights in a democratic normality), but it is not enough. While in theory it may appear to be a smooth democracy, in practice, it can fail. The verbalization of that democracy is just that, a theory, but the institutions do not work in practice.
And the institutions do not work for one reason: they do not have a model of government (a political model of control between the organs of political and governmental power) of decent democracy, which is maintained by vested interests.
This is the X-ray of Azorean democracy, which is not a decent democracy: firstly, because it does not have a system of government with eminently political oversight (1), but also because the regional governing coalition (political parties that have hegemony over the governance of the country and the region, the PSD and the PS) has an interest in maintaining this precarious model (2), but also because it does not have a society interested in democracy (3).


1: The Portuguese Constitution guarantees the effective realization of fundamental rights for all citizens because the national system of government imposes on the political power of the parties (the Assembly and the Government of the Republic) a counterweight of entirely popular political power (the President of the Republic). However, it does not guarantee the same to citizens attached to the political autonomy of the Autonomous Region because the regional system of government is based exclusively on the political power of the Legislative Assembly and the regional government.

2: Over the years, island governments have multiplied initiatives to increase legislative power or evade constitutional control. The 1997 and 2004 revisions, the most emblematic in terms of Portuguese autonomy, are examples of this: models were constructed, not to improve the laws and lives of islanders, but to allow regional governments, through parliaments with an overwhelmingly single-party majority, to govern as they pleased, even if this contravened the Constitution and, consequently, violated the fundamental rights of islanders. For this very reason, in doctrine, and among the authors of these amendments themselves, there is unanimous agreement that the autonomous system has been distorted. Indeed, based on the specificity of autonomy, “specific interest” has been replaced by “regional scope,” as if specific interest were not precisely the basis of any regional law of autonomous origin. Or by extinguishing the concept of general law of the Republic, when it is a rule that can never disappear by the universal competence of the Assembly of the Republic to legislate for all Portuguese citizens. As they say, a meaningless “autonomous hole” was created (although things are moving forward in the Portuguese way). Still, we should rather say that we were playing with serious matters that ultimately resulted in the greatest concentration of power that has ever existed in the political history of the Azores, reflecting a painful paradox: when the Autonomous Region was created for harmonious development, a general rule that disappeared from the Statute but remains in the Constitution, a political monster was created that serves the business and “landowning” elite well—at a high cost to the poorest populations of São Miguel, together with the other islands that are now more adjacent than they were in the days of autonomy.

2: If it took the State eight hundred years to become a democracy, it is understandable that the Azorean populations, after five hundred years of isolation, are weak in democratic verbalization. Combine this with the reality of large-scale poverty and extremely high illiteracy, even among the educated social strata, and the perplexity is understandable: the islander has his eyes fixed on the sky, not to see beyond the fixed stars, but to fixate on the beauty of political autonomy that he does not understand. We are an ignorant people, whose regional parliament is the visible showcase. More so than before 1976, because before, as we had no freedom, our blindness was caused by blue pencils; but since then, there have been no excuses. Either man becomes an adult, or he lives a child’s life. We are children in adult bodies; we are sad, but we continue to work to maintain that sadness. Since democratic participation is a constitutional basis for creating political autonomy for the island regions, citizenship deserves attention, just as we give it to health and education. During the first regional legislative elections in 1976, the political parties and the then future deputies and politicians did not shy away from traveling around all the islands, teaching the people the ideals of decent democracy. Little did we young people know at the time that they only wanted our vote, not our enlightenment, but we knew they wanted to govern, not for the people, but for their social and financial prestige.
In short, we are sick. That is the least we can say. We do not have a decent democracy. We do not have decent politicians. We do not have decent (harmonious) regional policies. And yet we have political autonomy. Is this what we want? Would the democratic state created in 1976 treat the islanders better than the islanders themselves in autonomy? How many years are we going to put up with the lie? When are we going to stop lying to ourselves?


Arnaldo Ourique is a specialist in the Portuguese Constitution and the Azorean Autonomy.

    NOVIDADES will feature occasional opinion pieces from various leading thinkers and writers in the Azores, giving the diaspora and those interested in the current state of the 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).