World Association of Newspapers writes to President Cavaco

The World Association of Newspapers (WAN) sent a second letter to President Cavaco Silva about the Jornal da Madeira. The letter states that the Jornal has ignored the decisions and recommendations of the Press Regulation Entity and the Competition Authority  and that the distortion in the Madeira press market has worsened over the years.

The WAN is concerned about the funding conceded to the Jornal in the 2012 budget, which disrespect the recommendations of the above-mentioned entities. This ‘seems to confirm that the Jornal da Madeira is a publicly-funded tool used to support the President of the Regional Government who is in power for 34 years’.

According to the WAN the funding exceeds what any private investor could be expected to inject into a press company and result in a massive distortion of what should be a free and transparent press.

The Wan urges the Portuguese President to, in conjunction with the Prime Minister, ‘take the necessary measures to terminate the use of public funding which violates the principles of freedom of expression.’

Bertie Skips Motion of No Confidence

The regional parliament, today, was set to debate a motion of no confidence proposed by the Socialist Party. The President of the Regional Government, who never goes to Parliament, simply ignored the debate, sending a single junior member of his executive to represent the Government.

In view of the Government's absence, the Socialists withdrew the motion, calling on the President of Portugal to either dissolve parliament or ensure the Government is present at such debates, as would be the norm in a real democracy.

Jardim called the motion of no confidence 'an episode of political terrorism mounted against the President of the Regional Government.' 'This folklore on the part of small parties aims to disturb government, through constant intentions to summon us to Parliament, when the government members are far too busy concentrating on the more important challenges of the future of the Madeiran people.' -  Bertie was due to be giving a talk to pupils of a school in Curral das Freiras. Too busy to be accountable to Parliament then...

City Councilor target of new acts of vandalism

The car belonging to the brother of city councilor, Gil Canha, was set alight at 1.30 Monday morning. The car was parked in the yard of the residence and was totally destroyed by fire. Gil Canha’s wife’s car was also vandalized the same night, in the indoor parking lot of the block of flats where he resides.

The Madeira Socialist Party leader, Vitor Freitas has alerted President Cavaco to the climate of violence and fear in Madeira, asking him to condemn those who incite violence.

The Funchal City Council today expressed its solidarity with the Canha family and condemned these acts of vandalism and persecution

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". 

My Impression of President Cavaco Silva

On Monday, as part of the PND delegation, I went to a meeting with President Cavaco Silva, to discuss the dates for the forthcoming regional elections. It was, of course, an opportunity to discuss other matters as well and I duly raised the case of the continued violation of the election laws by President Jardim: namely the misuse of official events, such as inaugurations, for party-political propaganda. I emphasized that the speeches made were not typical political speeches about priorities and measures to be taken, but were usually limited to diatribes, labeling the opposition ‘enemies of the people’, ‘enemies of progress’, ‘colonialists’, ‘collaborators’, ‘saboteurs’, ‘fascists’, ‘agents-provocateurs’, ‘traitors’ and so on. Such speeches, voiced in exalted tones, are no more than an incitement to hatred and have sometimes contained explicit incitements to violence. Free, fair and informed elections are impossible when such abuses of the President’s duty to be impartial occur.

President Cavaco expressed the wish that the atmosphere of calm and serenity on the mainland would extend itself to the islands. Although he was duly attentive, he did not seem very inquisitive. Indeed, he seemed reluctant to inform himself of the full extent of the problem. Perhaps, he thinks the whole scenario will fade away if it is simply ignored. ‘Are things not a lot calmer now?’ Seeing that Jardim has used the same strategy and violated election laws for over thirty years to continue to swindle elections it is less than likely that he will back down now that he is more desperate than ever to cling on to absolute power.

President Cavaco, his cousin the Bishop and the Jornal

The Jornal violates the Constitution, which stipulates that news organs must be impartial and independent from state powers. It appears, however, that no laws exist in Portugal to enforce the Constitution and that the existing state entities are either powerless to do so or have no will to do so.

Faced with decades of this abuse on behalf of the Jornal and the Regional Government, the Socialist Party passed a law to prohibit state entities from owning newspapers. President Cavaco, in his last mandate, twice vetoed this law, enabling Jardim to carry on with the Jornal as his propaganda newspaper.

Curiously, the Jornal is nominally guided by the Church. According to the company’s statute, it is up to the Bishop to appoint the editor-in-chief and to ensure the paper abides by its editorial statutes.

 The Bishop of Funchal is none other than Cavaco’s cousin Dom Carrilho Cavaco, who says he refuses to interfere on the editorial line, since the Church is a minor shareholder, leaving, by implication, the task to the major shareholder - Jardim’s government.

No surprise then, that Cavaco’s recent candidature for the Presidency was given extra-favorable coverage in the Jornal and that all the political opinion pieces lauded Cavaco and trashed the rival candidates.