These days, José Manuel Bolieiro is the president of a government stuck between SATA and the Republic.

The long process of privatizing SATA has led to what we predicted about a year ago: a huge mess, managed incompetently, which is causing obvious damage to the coalition’s popularity. Whatever the outcome, the assessment of this process cannot be positive from any perspective. The process was poorly conducted and the outcome will be equally bad, because the government has trapped itself in a tangle of negotiations and in a set of specifications that should never have existed as they are written.

It would have been enough to learn from the TAP reprivatization process, in which there is no tender, but direct negotiations with interested parties, assessing who is best placed to meet the requirements imposed by the government, which require the investor to be a reputable entity with financial capacity, holding the status of a certified air operator and with a minimum size measured by financial indicators.

Instead, we chose to take a gamble, hoping that several investors would come forward, and now the Regional Government is being held hostage by the only interested consortium, which is already imposing conditions, after being rejected by the government, then brought back after threatening legal action, and is now negotiating with the workers, knowing that the “heavy burden” will ultimately be borne by all of us Azorean taxpayers.

The responsibility for this outcome can no longer be placed on the PS governments. There was more than enough time to devise strategies and adapt them. As always, short-term political party interests prevailed over the region’s future. The parties themselves, removed from any strategic options in the negotiations, clung to power for their own interests rather than for the structural interests of the Azoreans. The management of José Manuel Bolieiro, Duarte Freitas, and Berta Cabral fails in any assessment of this SATA process. There is no need to talk about administrators because it was the government that chose them, nor about failed plans because it was the government, the sole shareholder, that validated them. As one economist has pointed out, this third-rate soap opera will cost each Azorean around €3,000, with the €600 million corresponding to 10% of the region’s GDP, while at TAP, the €3.3 billion buried there corresponds to €330 per citizen, or just over 1% of the national GDP, a huge difference in how the public good is governed.

It is no coincidence that the Republic has always run away from this SATA process, leaving its island companions to talk to themselves.

What this sad episode demonstrates is that the coalition has learned nothing from the failed privatization of SATA during the Vasco Cordeiro government, or from the other mess with Icelandair, which has caused the continued erosion of socialist governance. There is great confidence in the Santana Palace because Francisco César is seen as the lifeline of the governing coalition. Still, in politics, where everything is ephemeral, it would be wise for the ruling parties to reflect on how far the electorate is willing to put up with so many mistakes in such a short time.

The idea is beginning to circulate that the government’s negligence in so many areas seems to be a pattern, another example of which is the year and a half of inaction to recover the HDES.

Another scandalous case is that of the salaries of workers at the Lajes Base, where Luís Montenegro’s government cornered José Manuel Bolieiro, just days after a Council of Ministers meeting with the two island presidents.

Vice President Artur Lima, one of the most lucid members of the coalition because he knows how to turn things to his advantage, immediately addressed the issue and did not shy away from criticizing the Republic and even the Minister of Defense, who is his national leader of the CDS, while Bolieiro remained silent, certainly shaken by the snub from his friend Montenegro, after that “historic moment” that came to nothing.

Bringing back only the creation of a working group to review the Regional Finance Law is a capitulation, as the Republic now takes the lead in the process, when the two Autonomous Regions already had a proposal for revision, commissioned from the lawyer Paz Ferreira, author of the first version of the law.

What happens to the proposal? Does it go in the trash? Why wasn’t it turned into a bill and submitted to the Government of the Republic for approval? It is too much subservience to the Republic, as is now also the case with the silence surrounding the unspeakable threat to the Christmas bonus for Misericórdias workers. This subjugation to the centralists in Lisbon also extends to the lords of ANA/Vinci, who once again come to the Azores to announce works that should have been completed long ago and that were promised in 2023 during another similar visit.

The case of Ponta Delgada is scandalous: the third-largest airport in the country, which has grown in recent years,deserved only a minor refurbishment of the terminal from ANA. José Luís Arnaut, chairman of ANA, a social democrat and former member of the troubled PSD governments, has a knack, whenever he comes to the Azores, of dragging behind him the President of the Government, Regional Secretaries, and all the sad sycophants who bow down to him.

The regional government stoops to all this and leaves the population stunned, because it witnesses inappropriate praise for works at airports that are not ours, when the region itself has similar projects in hand, such as the promised extension of the Pico runway, a nuisance for this coalition that has been put on the back burner, and without protesting against the dragging out of the Faial runway, for which our dear friend Arnaut is responsible.

But the most ridiculous thing is that the PSD, in a shameless statement, takes credit for the announcement of the works as if they were its own, turning citizens into poor, politically disqualified people.

This government is halfway through its term, the ideal time for a profound reshuffle, which should not be limited to the Regional Directors. Some regional secretaries are very worn out and have already given all they had to offer. The coalition needs intense airing, with assisted ventilation, to regain new breath until the end of its term.

Discontent is widespread, even among the coalition parties, who complain about the lack of dialogue, ignore requests for hearings, refuse to sit down with local authorities, do not enter cafes, philharmonic halls, community centers, or clubs, and remain seated in the comfortable offices of the gigantic, lazy administration.

We are entering the Christmas season, and the traditional word ‘Hope’ of the season could become a torment for thousands of families who may not even receive their Christmas bonus.

What has become of the region of the “booming economy”…

November 2025

( Published in Portuguese on Açoriano Oriental, Diário Insular, Portuguese Times USA, LusoPresse Montreal)

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).