Anyone who has had the privilege of visiting our islands this summer will certainly have noticed a common feeling among their populations: a deep disillusionment and discontent with this second government of José Manuel Bolieiro. The coalition’s inertia is a painted copy of the worst PS governments. The worst thing that can happen in politics is for leaders to distance themselves from the people and show signs of social insensitivity.

What we are witnessing is not good for politics. Some leaders are detached from the people’s problems and are stuck in an internal bubble of ostentation that bears no correspondence to the region’s actual difficulties. With all due respect, it is just as insensitive for Luís Montenegro to be partying in Pontal, when the country is on fire, as it is for regional leaders to be dancing in festive marches or showing off at faraway events, when citizens and businesspeople are complaining about the lack of products on the shelves and tourists and residents are sleeping on the floor at airports due to the irresponsibility of public companies and the lack of leadership on the part of those in charge.

Popular discontent is growing because, five years later, this coalition has yet to implement a single structural reform. Everything has been postponed, studied more than once, and put away in the moldy drawers of the government bureaucracy.

Conclusion: we have a region with limited financial resources, an increasingly bankrupt airline, ineffective public companies, and an increasing number of appointments of friends and sycophants of the regime, further exacerbating the vast public debt that cannot be sustained.

A region with 20,000 civil servants and an indebtedness of almost 1 million euros a day cannot be sustained. All the wealth we produce and the income we give as taxpayers is no longer enough to cover the costs of the huge regional administrative machine, let alone to invest in what we really need. It’s no wonder that the coalition’s resources are in a coma, with no incentive to respond to the countless arrears in all sectors of activity, including the dehumanization of waiting more than a year to pay for patient travel.

Whole families all over these islands are waiting for a specialist’s appointment or surgery, farmers are asking for urgent meetings, fishermen are calling for the government to resign, entrepreneurs have been waiting for payments since the time of Covid, the cost of living continues to gallop, there are decisive issues for the development of several islands that have been awaiting decisions for years, even after studies and more studies, there is no sign of the important reforms that have been promised, everything is sailing along as if we had a day-to-day governance.

Even tourism, the only engine dragging the fragile regional economy along, is showing signs of a downturn in its growth, with fewer domestic tourists than ever before, save for subsidized foreign tourism, which even prefers local accommodation to hotels, denoting a flight from the high prices we are asking in various sectors of tourist activity, which are prohibitive for residents.

The “thriving economy” being discussed may be centered in Ponta Delgada, but the rest of the islands, including Terceira, are fragile and face numerous difficulties, with worrying tourism figures. The Azorean Economic Activity Indicator itself, which the government is so fond of invoking, has not yet reached 2% growth in any month this year. In contrast, last year it had already registered it three times in the same period.

With 500 days of governance, the coalition seems to be in a waning phase, lost in itself, without noticing the growing unpopularity due to a lack of decisions and freshness on the part of its protagonists. In the worst PS governments, this is also how the fall began.

It seems that the ‘centrist’ parties are becoming complacent, confident that the alternative is worse. I wouldn’t put too much faith in this conviction, knowing that voters are no longer afraid to give their votes to those who protest most radically when they don’t get answers from the traditional parties. People are becoming fed up and restless with so much inertia. Even the mayors and deputies of the coalition feel uncomfortable when confronted by the people of their constituencies.

Don’t be surprised if one day the country wakes up with an admiral as head of state and André Ventura at the head of the government. Or a similar scenario, with José Manuel Bolieiro waking up and José Pacheco sitting in his chair…

That’s where we’re heading.

Osvaldo Cabral is an emeritus journalist with over 40 years of experience covering the Azores. He was the director of RTP-A (the public television station) and the Diário dos Açores newspaper. He is a regular columnist for many newspapers throughout the Azpres and the Diaspora.

NOVIDADES will feature occasional opinion pieces from various leading thinkers and writers in the Azores, providing the diaspora and those interested in the current state of the Azores with insight into the diverse opinions on some of the archipelago’s key 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).