The Newtour/MS Aviation consortium, the only competitor approved (by the narrowest of margins…) for the privatization of SATA Internacional (AzoresAirlines), and meanwhile extended to Mr. Carlos Tavares halfway through the process, with the tacit consent of the jury, requested and obtained a further postponement of the submission of its formal proposal to “PURCHASE” this strategic company, currently owned exclusively by the Region, until the 24th of this month.

The reader may ask: Why does the word purchase appear in capital letters and between quotation marks? Simply because, according to the public information available so far, published by the Expresso newspaper on the 6th of this month, what the consortium proposed to “PURCHASE” SATA Internacional was to give €0 for the company and then take that “PURCHASE” out of the pockets of the Azoreans and the country to the tune of 630 million euros, thus appropriating a debt-free company at no cost and, in addition, being paid (amazingly) another 30 million euros in cash! If such a plan were to be confirmed, it would be anything but a purchase; rather, it would be a true and shameless assault on the Azores, the Azoreans, and the country.

And the lax and blackmailing threat, put forward by Secretary Duarte Freitas, of the outright closure of the company as the only possible alternative to the ruinous and absurd deal sought by Newtour, only demonstrates how, for several years and under several governments, the company most responsible for enforcing the Azores’ inalienable and constitutional right to territorial continuity within Portuguese space and the basic right of residents to enter or leave the archipelago has been shamefully neglected.

The solution to which the Azores and the Azoreans are entitled, I am convinced, is another alternative that, unfortunately, was never attempted in due time and that EXCLUDES THIS PRIVATIZATION! The money the consortium wants to extract from the public purse through its “PURCHASE” is sufficient to justify suspending the ruinous privatization process underway. SATA Internacional, as a company that is currently irreplaceable in the strategic public service it provides for the mobility of residents, territorial continuity, and support for the regional economy, should be the subject of specific support justified by the outermost location of the territory. To this end, negotiations should be initiated immediately between the Region, the State, and the European Union, with a view to modeling the financial support, whether through a specific transport program such as POSEI, the reformulation of the Finance Law of the Autonomous Regions, or another option.

Of particular relevance to the Region, this note also mentions the recent visit to these islands by the left-wing presidential candidate, António Filipe. The candidate recalled that the Azores face high levels of poverty and difficulties aggravated by insularity, stressing that the exercise of autonomy is an achievement that does not dispense with national solidarity, which is essential to ensure greater economic and social cohesion in the country. The presidential candidate defended the principle of positive discrimination for the Azores, “…taking into account the objective reality that insularity and the particularities of the archipelago imply…” (here is the mobility of the Azoreans).

At the national level, this candidacy proposes to counteract the fact that the right wing currently controls all sovereign bodies and is committed to an agenda that defies the Constitution, attacks the rights of workers, deepens inequalities, promotes privatization across the board, degrades public health and education services, assaults social security resources, and disregards culture and community associations.

This candidacy is crucial at this moment in time for the healthy and indispensable restoration of national and regional political balance.

Mário Abrantes is a regular columnist for various Azorean newspapers and has been reflecting and writing about Azorean issues for many years. We are pleased to have his columns in English for our readers of Azorean ancestry and those interested in the Azores.

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 a sense of the significant perspectives 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).