Tomorrow will be marked by yet another election, this time to elect the municipal executive and legislative bodies and the civil parish councils in each municipality. In principle, these elections should be the ones that most closely affect voters and motivate them to go to the polls. However, looking at the history of previous elections, this has not always been the case, at least not uniformly, and there is no shortage of analysis.

Sometimes it has to do with the candidates’ shortcomings, other times, as in the case of re-elections, with an “excess” of merit, considering that the election is guaranteed, so why bother going to the polls? But nothing should be taken for granted, least of all in politics, so let’s not leave the decision in the hands of others and let’s be the ones, in our municipality, to vote for the candidates for the various bodies, whom we trust, either because they have proven themselves or because we believe that, although new, they have the qualities to govern us. We all know, but it is worth repeating, that local government governs a very substantial part of our daily lives, from the water (and its quality) we receive at home, to garbage collection, to the work we want to do, to parking and traffic on the streets and some roads in the municipality, to some taxes and fees we pay, to public infrastructure that needs to be built or improved, whether in the city or town or in the parishes. And there is another added value: the influence (or pressure) they can exert on both local government bodies and even the central government for matters that fall outside their powers and responsibilities.

Finally, municipalism draws on the country’s oldest political and administrative organization, which is rooted in the nation’s ancient tradition of proximity between those in power and the citizen. We know that it is not widely used. Still, any citizen can attend the sessions of their municipal assembly and speak up, defending their point of view before the elected municipal deputies and representatives of other local government bodies who sit there, or make a well-founded complaint and, not infrequently, be successful. It is the closest thing to a true people’s assembly. For these and many other reasons, voting tomorrow is not only a duty, it is a right, we would even say an obligation, because it is an opportunity to vote for our “neighbors,” people we trust and, once elected, once elected, we bump into on the streets and whom we can pull by the coat-tails to find out about the progress of a measure, a project, a pothole in the street that needs to be repaired, a pending issue with the Republic or the Region, in a relationship… you here… you there. And that only makes sense if the strength of my word comes from “my” vote. So, you know: tomorrow is voting day.

Editorial in Diário Insular, José Lourenço, director, and Armando Mendes (PhD), editor-in-chief.

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