Today, the Autonomous Region of Madeira is everything except autonomous and the development model imposed by Jardim is a total failure. The island lives above its means; drowning in a sea of debt, it is totally dependent on the outside.
After 35 years of political autonomy, with an own Government, with substantial transfers from the State Budget, topped by 25 year of generous EU funding, Madeira has modernized on the surface but not on the inside. It bet everything on concrete (which benefited a restricted clientele) but ‘forgot’ everything else.
That is: it has highways and tunnels which impress tourists and hurried journalists, but although, proportionally, no other region of the country has received so much external funding, Madeira, after 35 years of PSD-M absolute majorities, continues, as before, one of the most backward regions of Portugal, with the greatest number of poor people, the greatest percentage of illiteracy and of school dropouts, the biggest social inequality and the most civil servants. Without industry, agriculture or fishing, it is once more facing mass unemployment and immigration. If this were not enough, the regime created by Jardim is a simulacrum of democracy, a stain on post-revolution Portugal.
Discover who Alberto João Jardim really is, how he came to and maintained himself in power. Figure out the inner workings of the regime, its relation to the Church, the justice system and the media, the web it has spun, and the widespread subsidy-dependence on the island. Find out who is who in the Jardim regime, ponder on the supreme leader’s unbridled language and his frustration at never managing to attain a position outside the island. Question the silence and inertia of the successive occupants of Belem (Presidency) and São Bento (Portuguese Government) – and above all, the complicity of the national PSD (Social Democrat Party).
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