Private Eye on Madeira

(published in 2009)

With our cake, port and hardy island mentality, Madeira, an outcrop in the Atlantic and an autonomous region of Portugal, conjures up old-fashioned values. Our fondness for our traditional way stretches to our politics and a bygone era when leaders were no-nonsense characters who knew how to get things done.

Dr. Alberto João Jardim is such a man. He has been in power for 30 years (a little behind Colonel Gaddafi but just ahead of Robert Mugabe). As a young man he was an ardent supporter of the Salazar dictatorship in Portugal and wrote propaganda for its army, then fighting dirty wars in Africa. He was against multiparty democracy but these days Madeira is, at least constitutionally, a part of modern Europe and ours is an elected leader.

For this Dr. Jardim praises what he calls our "superior people", our blissfully few difficulties being the product of a "satanic triangle" between what passes for an opposition, the independent press and the English, who have long controlled our economy.

A place as special as Madeira needs a special kind of democracy. Thus our public prosecutors recently decided not to pursue a case against the violation of election laws on the grounds that the violations weren't serious enough. Opposition speaking times in parliament have been cut three times in the last year, provoking one opposition deputy to raise the Nazi flag in protest. The president (who is executive head of government) only goes to parliament once a year to get the budget approved. On this occasion, he answers no questions and speaks for an unlimited time, during which he insults every member of the opposition, one by one. The Spanish paper El Mundo calls Jardim 'El Maestro del Insulto'.

But why bother with parliament when one can speak directly to the people? In one year, Jardim managed to preside over 450 official openings: a roundabout, 100 meters of new road, any number of white elephants. The ruling Social Democratic Party has a policy of supporting an ambitious public works program; and who better to deliver on so many of such contracts than a clutch of building firms and one of the island's biggest suppliers of cement, in which, coincidentally, Jaime Ramos, the party's general secretary, is a prominent shareholder! He is also treasurer of the party's foundation which owns 40 or so buildings on the island, used as party offices and conference centers. The foundation also owns land in the mountains which served as a landfill site. Symbolically, it is now being converted into a space to hold, er, political rallies.

Madeira's publicly owned newspaper, the Jornal, officially undercuts its rival with a cover price of just 10 cents, but in practice is handed out for free thanks to the generosity of the taxpayer (€3 million a year) and the advertising departments of government  ministries and agencies, who contribute €500.000 annually. The paper toes a consistent editorial line, as might be expected when only Jardim's closest party allies are allowed to write opinion pieces.

The president, with no sense of irony, sees himself as something of a "godfather" figure, recently exhorting his party's youth wing to be a mafia "in the good sense". When João Carlos Gouveia, leader of the main opposition party, raised the issue of corruption in parliament, the majority passed a motion to have his mental faculties examined. Opposition MPs promptly walked out in protest - leaving the president's supporters to vote through 17 motions in a mere 15 minutes.

When Cavaco Silva, the Portuguese president, visited last year, Jardim warned that he should not attend parliament because it was filled with lunatics. Accordingly Cavaco received opposition delegations in a hotel room. He concluded his visit observing that Jardim's regime was a "model democracy".