The situation is complicated; that much is true. Christmas is approaching, another turn around the Sun, and everything else. And the problem is very, very difficult. These presidential debates are so exhausting that I find myself switching off the television with tears of frustration after hearing such abject statements that there is no way to classify them. Late last week, here on our islands, things were said—obscene things—that I refuse to repeat in this reflection. Things are truly complicated.

And it is in this wintry, and particularly infernal, context that Manuel João Vieira appears, emerging through the mist. For years, he had promised this journey, even saying he would arrive on horseback. I think he might still do it before his campaign ends. For now, he has appeared wearing a rough military uniform, fake Superman pins, an unshaven beard, a dragging voice, and a deliberately folksy speech. He is an amalgamation of all the people running for president—caricatured in a frighteningly realistic way—yet without losing sight of the true purpose of his mission: to charm and to show just how easy it is to fool the Portuguese.

Manuel João is an artist, born to a modest middle-class family, who grew up among battered stages, burlesque cabarets, philosophy books, and dialectical materialism. I don’t know him personally; I have never spoken to him. We share friends, of course. And for that reason, I can say, with little doubt, that he is an intelligent, talented man, fully committed to the absurdity of his surrealism. He is, on the other hand, a middling variety artist, a chronic grumbler with no cure, capable only of loving himself in the act of self-destruction. He is a man of extreme imbalance who now steps, for the first time, onto a stage large enough for him.

Because Vieira’s candidacy has been prepared essentially since the start of the millennium. Like someone running a marathon, much of what he now says on television he had already been saying since the beginning of his journey. Piped-in wine and a Ferrari for every Portuguese are old ambitions. Manuel João hasn’t changed much. What has changed is our country. It has become Americanized and, after that, sank into total moral decadence. Americanism—also known as the terminal stage of contemporary capitalism—is a toxic disease that has spread like a pandemic for many decades. We are infected, and the next evolution is what brings us Manuel João’s candidacy: rock bottom.

Candidate Vieira is obviously not a future president. He is the first to admit it, saying he will only quit if he is elected. Candidate Vieira is a mirror of a part of our country that has always existed but was ashamed to show itself. He is the lout who, after five glasses of wine, goes to talk to the lady journalist and sings a little tune in prime time. He is the singer-songwriter who dresses in a deliberately disheveled way to appear against a system he does not even understand. And he is, these days, the new Salazarist—returned from the tomb of Santa Comba to teach us immorality and bad manners. Manuel João, as a character and performance, represents all that and more. It is a high-level surrealist spectacle that many people are interpreting poorly.

It is easy to find people saying they’ll vote for Manuel João in the first round and for Ventura in the second. There are too many like that. Some women, too, unfortunately. I don’t think there is anything inherently wrong with voting for Vieira in the first round, so long as one does it with the true sense of intention. Presidential elections are generally a farce staged by the right, which the left has rarely known how to unmask in time. With Seguro leading the extreme center, Manuel João may not even be a bad idea, as a way of saying that everything else is equally ridiculous. Just don’t think Ventura is on the same wavelength.

To believe that is not only naïve but also dangerous. Falling into the temptation of hearing a guy like Vieira speak and thinking he is serious reveals a widespread ignorance disguised as personal conviction and know-it-all bravado that clogs our social networks. Ventura would be Manuel João—if Vieira were an idiot and not an actor and artist. Not understanding these risks risks losing the country even more than it is already lost.

Manuel João Vieira is a wandering troubadour who turned Portugal into a surrealist movement, now finally glorified with his official candidacy. While Livre and the Bloco seem to be struggling with signatures—something promptly denied on social media—our provocateur delivered more than twelve thousand to the court to formalize his run. And that is the greatest symbol of candidate Vieira. The country is in bad shape. The situation is complicated. We have hit bottom. May this candidacy allow us to see the nakedness of our kings, so that from here we may begin to lift ourselves from the hard ground onto which we have fallen. Thank you, Manel. You are, indeed, a really cool guy.

Alexandra Manes is from Flores Island but lives on Terceira Island in the Azores. She is a regular contributor to several Azorean newspapers, a political and cultural activist, and has served in the Azorean Parliament.

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).