Yesterday marked the fiftieth anniversary of Autonomy as we have known it since the Revolution of April 25. The Azores have changed profoundly—and for the better—and this transformation cannot be attributed solely to the natural course of time. Much of it is owed to Autonomy, which allows us to elect our own institutions of self-government: a legislative body that enacts laws and an executive body that puts them into practice.
Fifty years, however, have proved insufficient for us to attain the country’s average level of development, and we remain further still from the European Union average. The responsibility is entirely ours, and we cannot shelter behind the argument of insufficient resources to explain why we have failed to move faster than the rest of the country and reach a position from which we might stand alongside other regions in the principal measures of well-being.
The responsibility is ours when we make choices that later prove misguided; when we define our priorities poorly; when the scarce resources available are not distributed equitably among all the islands; when, confronted with inadequate funding for Autonomy, we handle the central government with excessive caution; and when the revision of the Regional Finance Law—for want of greater and better imagination—drags on interminably, with no indication of where it is heading or what course it will ultimately take.
The question of the Azores is a simple one: nine islands, with two hundred thousand inhabitants unevenly distributed among them, cannot generate sufficient revenue of their own to aspire to levels of development comparable to those of mainland Portugal. There is, therefore, only one way to achieve such parity: the country must enable investment in this part of its territory at levels sufficient to place it on an equal footing with the nation’s other regions.
Regardless of how deeply each Azorean may feel Portuguese—perhaps even the most Portuguese of all Portuguese—let us speak plainly: the Azores matter to the country because it is through them that Portugal’s Exclusive Economic Zone extends across well over one million square kilometres of ocean, with all the wealth those waters contain. It is also because of the Azores’ geostrategic position that Portugal possesses a measure of importance on the international stage, whether in Europe’s projection into the Atlantic or in America’s projection across it.
Preserving all this carries a price, and that value must be translated into the development of the Islands. The time has come to put an end to the notion that we are a burden upon the Republic—that every euro must be wrested from it with enormous difficulty, only to remain subject to criticism afterward.
Diplomacy must never be abandoned. Yet there are moments when one must raise one’s voice and strike a fist upon the table in order to be heard; otherwise, we shall never be taken seriously.
Everything else depends upon us alone—upon the wisdom and intelligence of the choices we make.
Editorial from Diário Insular, Terceira Island. Photo from Novidades.