Jardim acuses Michael Blandy of Fomenting Coup d'Etat

Less than a week after the elections, the Jornal da Madeira printed a news article accusing Michael Blandy of fomenting a coup d'etat:

It accuses Blandy of having a "diseased obssession" against Jardim and continues: "In the last two years, or be it, since the 2011 regional elections, Madeira is witnessing an attempt at an internal coup d'etat, lead by the Blandy economic group, which assumes itself as the real leader of the opposition".

The piece is not signed by any journalist and was given a full front page spread.

Jardim's propaganda reminds me of the Khaddafi's interview shortly before the dictator was ousted, when he kept repeating "my people love me, my people love me" and blamed all his troubles on foreigners.

Jardim invents false debt

In his public interventions over the last months, Jardim has insistently repeated that Portugal owes Madeira 9 billion Euros, 3 billion more than the Madeira debt.

He claims that according to the Portuguese Constituion, all Madeira's health and education expenses should have been paid for by the Portuguese State and that the State therefore owed Madeira 9 billion.

When Madeira was granted the statute of Autonomous Region, it got to keep all the tax income generated on the island and received extra from the mainland to compensate for its isolation, but to claim - thirty odd years later - that the State should also have paid all health and education costs is absurd, dishonest and utter tripe.

This is the type of manipulative disinformation that Jardim has used for the last thirty years to evoke phantom external enemies and to mobilise the people to keep him in power. Its disgusting that the national authorities allow him to keep voicing the same dangerous drivel unchallenged.

The Conspiracy Theory Today

Bertie’s conspiracy theory is again echoed in the most simplistic terms in the latest edition of his party newspaper, the Madeira Livre (Liberated Madeira), which has a print run of 25000 copies and is posted through anyone’s letterbox.

The caption reads ‘if the respective parties, or a coalition, won the elections, one of these creatures would be president of the Madeira Government’. A bracket points from the photos to a British flag and a sign of the freemasons, implying all the opposition are controlled by the English and the freemasons

Why Jardim hates the English

In the early 90's, when Jardim's party was beset with corruption scandals, Jardim began a more belligerent phase of his now 3 decade-long rule. With a tame TV and the Jornal under his control, the only news that bothered him was the Diário, half-owned by the Blandy family. Jardim needed a new fight to take the attention off the corruption and persecution scandals. He blamed the Diário and the English and set out on a hate-speech campaign, saying that the English wanted to return to the days of the dictatorship. He claimed there was no democratic opposition, that the Socialist Party had been infiltrated by the communist Party and wanted to install a totalitarian regime which would then be controlled by the English. He then set out to persecute and destroy the English and Anglo-descendent families by constantly vilifying them, destroying their businesses and expropriating their assets.

The campaign against the Diário then also began in earnest. He threatened those who put publicity in the Diário and ostracised all those who had any connection to the English. On many occasions over the last decades, he has threatened to expropriate the Diário itself and to find other means to run the 'foreigners' off the island. The English were the perfect scapegoats for all that went wrong. Like the Jews in Nazi Germany, they were portrayed as evil, shady characters, who were only interested in exploiting the Madeiran people. Like the Jews in Nazi Germany, Jardim used the law and state power to expropriate their assets, offering a symbolic compensation for them. The 'church' newspaper, the jardim-controlled Jornal, was one of the main vehicles for propagating this message. And 'cartoons' such as the one above showing the british flag and attacking the English have appeared on an almost weekly basis over the years

President Jardim insinuates Angela Merkel and Michael Blandy are Nazis

The opinion piece published in the government-owned newspaper, the Jornal , has motivated a protest from the German community. Read Jardim’s rant below:

‘Blandy, aber wer ist?’

Herr Blandy, an individual who inherited an English fortune made in other times when the Madeiran People were miserably exploited, has mobilized his “SS assault troops” – a mongrel corps that ranges from communists to the extreme right and which calls the daily edition of a political pamphlet  “journalism” – to once again attack me and [my] regional politics.

The devil could criticize Madeira and the now unmasked germanophile Blandy would immediately place his legions at the service of evil.

Whatever it costs him, however high the cost to the companies of his group, with his absurd objective of “total war” he finds a pretext even in the unhappy declarations of a German female politician, who we do not confuse with the German People. (…)

Wagnerianly imbued with the “mission” to destroy the PSD and myself, like an excursion of the Nibelungs, Blandy and his “SS assault troops” everyday produce a paper with a longing to destroy everything, to vilify everything, and even more so now that the Country and the Autonomous Region are living their most difficult moments.

Its exactly the practice of all totalitarian forces that, when they foresee difficulties in the areas that they illegitimately detest, to seek to destroy everything in order to conquer easily. Or reconquer. Because there are those who still dream of the power of the pre-autonomy groups.

Only that this tragic delirium, born of mad ambition and condemned to failure, limits itself to listening to a few profoundly stained minions, and forgets ALL those who are also Business people, whose concern is that the present situation be overcome with intelligence and a firm hand. Otherwise, EVERONE  loseS. It is a fantasy to think that an adult society such as the Madeiran one, would allow the “masters of the past” to immorally take advantage of this juncture to swallow up everything on the cheap.

What the media of the obliging Merkelian Blandy is doing with its campaigns of hate and lies against myself and the PSD, cowardly taking advantage of the present circumstances in an attempt to erase the merit of [my] transformation of the archipelago, is too awful and incompetent to succeed in the heart of a Madeiran People, which is used to confronting difficulties and which, despite these, never loses its reason. Much less being crazy enough to return to the Madeira of the old days. At best, the madness of Herr Blandy will entertain a tacky minority.

This time, the rag has resorted to people who it has forgotten warn not to talk rubbish and has produced a text as bad as “mein Kampf”.

For example, there appeared some guy, owner of a restaurant – wer ist?- who has here found the conditions afforded to him to earn a living, something which he does not seem to have enjoyed in his native Country. Another one who “bites the hand that feeds him”. Since he probably never managed to learn Portuguese, he speaks of a nonexistent – quite the contrary – “agressivity towards Germany” (as if Merkel was Germany), and do you know what he wants?... That money should be given to small enterprises – such as his own, of course… - and not for the benefit of the collectivity!...and he has  the ignorant arrogance of saying that “building in Machico was carried out with no planning”!...The effrontery!

Ah, but there follows the nonsense of people who we don’t confuse with the Values of the majority of the German People living on the island. Observe the model of development that those interviewed have destined for us: “take advantage of the natural resources (!?), and not build on them”; “the [old]roads which were hand built” and which should remain open in order that, if an accident happens, they can come and demand compensation.

More: “there is a lack of other interests besides the mountains”. Man, not even the museums, not even the sea and nautical activities, not even the food and the folklore, not even the night, nor the casino, nor the contrasting landscape or the sports infrastructures, including golf, not even the botanical species, nor the hospitality and the permanent relation with our People, not even commerce with competitive prices in relation to tourists’ country of origin, or is it in the places of “Mass tourism” that you find a greater choice?...

I begin to think that there are some naturists around, who steeped in the vegetation, do not know what’s going on around them, even talking about the “Rabaçal cable car” that was never built, since we dropped the project. Now you will find that the Blandy paper, which was always against its construction, will raise a stink because it was never built. (…)

Oh, and the Blandy “assault troops” recruitment did not even neglect the sylph, Herr Delinger, especially chosen for being announced a member of the future socialist government of Madeira, stillborn, given the electoral hiding they received. And I’d not be surprised if this was not also Herr Delinger’s fault.

More. I began to fear for an Austrian “anschluss”. Didn’t the Austrian consul, a coastal madeiran such as myself, also join the party of these Valkyries?!...

Alas, Von Blandy’s daily is always on the path of negativism and of the nihilism of historical sectors of German philosophy. Not that those people know what that is. But because they believe themselves to be the navel of the world, they are convinced that their campaigns to instill hatred will take them somewhere…except there. And Herr Blandy maybe dreams of a new British “reich” over the Madeiran People. But …”Blandy, aber wer ist?”