With all due subjectivity, but following a line of Western thought that comes from Aristotle (always check carefully who represents us in politics), Machiavelli (whenever politicians can abuse their power, they do), and Montesquieu (politicians and politics are understood through laws), Karl Popper (objective truth results from the connection between what we think and reality), and Francis Fukuyama (the birth of politics lies in the birth of humanity); observing a basic thread in the complex neurological and social network of the Azores, we can assess that island politicians have three types of friends, excluding family members: the excellent friend, the important friend, and the accessory friend.

The excellent friend adds something to the politician’s personal life, whether through the name or prestige they bring, or through the added value of their opinion and good intellectual company. This friend has a strong collective consciousness and is proactive within the collective. These friends are few in number due to the nature of things and are selfish, but this is balanced by their personal and collective functions.

The important friend adds friendship and has a collective consciousness, but their collective record is not universal. They are numerous and selfish, self-interested friends.

And the accessory friend adds nothing to their life and has no consciousness, neither collective nor even political. They are purely selfish because the whole logic of their life is exclusively about survival. This separation is not entirely watertight: individuals can renew themselves, and this is the greatness of those few men born into mediocre circumstances who, through hard work, become better examples of the human spirit.

With this type of friend, the insular politician creates, consciously for some and unconsciously for most, a political problem: the insular politician prefers the accessory friend because, first of all, it is the one who lends apparent power through its immense quantity. The politician has the illusion that quantity guarantees power. And, indeed, this is the case. But this political merit is circumstantial and transitory and, therefore, mediocre. The political consequences are tragic: with just “likes” and “favors,” this friend will provide the politician with power through free votes in the first phase or already burdened with a position or interest, but not conscious power; rather, a power of self-serving circumstance in which everyone will eat from the same trough in exchange for an image of great social projection, as if things were moving forward, when in fact they are slowly eroding the architecture of democracy. The verbs “to go” and “to do” are constantly used for the future and rarely for the present.

The politician’s second preference is the important friend: there are quite a few of them, and they exist because they have the illusion that their apparent collective interest will serve them, and often it does. But their political mark is weak, to say the least. The consequences of this preference are a fluctuating, superficial policy, poorly structured, yet sufficient to deceive the majority of the electorate.

And finally, their last preference, in last place, is the excellent friend: their value matters little to politicians, because what matters is rising to power and maintaining it. They prefer a life surrounded by mediocrity, full of (illusory) abilities, rather than choosing the one that would serve them best personally and politically. He knows this value; he consciously despises him or even sends him to the Berlengas. The consequences of this conscious decision not to take personal and political advantage of the excellent friend have profound ramifications for the collective: instead of progress, multiple promises that “it will be ready this year” or that “it is the biggest increase ever”; instead of governments and structural policies, the immensity of rot and pretense.

In the political history of the islands, there are rare moments when politicians, either by nature or by effort, prefer the excellent friend for his record of conscience and collective function over selfish and purely self-interested friends. In those moments, the populations take a civilizational leap forward.

In the Azores, in the early years of the PSD’s constitutional political autonomy and in the first and perhaps second terms of the PS, politicians bowed down to their important and secondary friends. Still, they did not leave out their excellent friends. That is why there was progress in many aspects of civilization, which everyone undeniably recognizes. At all other times, everything was mixed up: in a vast sea of numbers, one, two, three fireflies in the middle of that sea of mediocrity, and little else. The Azorean political autonomy created by April 25, 1974, has yet to be fulfilled in this regard, namely, in a truly autonomous region with political power of sovereignty at the level of fundamental rights. It is not due to a lack of constitutional norms. It is not for lack of politicians. It is not for lack of laws. It is not for lack of funding. But it is for lack of collective civic awareness on the part of politicians, who prefer mediocre exploitation, which, curiously, will not serve them well in the short term. In the longer term, when history is told through synthesis rather than detail, no one will remember them, let alone know who they were.

Note: the phrases in parentheses are ours and result from reading the works of these authors.

In Diário Insular – José Lourenço, director

Arnaldo Ourique is a specialist on the Portuguese Constitution and the Azorean Autonomy. A researcher in the fields of Politics and Society.

NOVIDADES will feature occasional opinion pieces from leading thinkers and writers in the Azores, providing the diaspora and those interested in the current state of the Azores with insight into diverse perspectives on key issues in the archipelago.