Jardim's 'I Fuck Them'

President Jardim’s memorable reaction on seeing members of the New Democracy Party at an official function in the run up to the 2009 elections

Jardim on Election Rampage again

The Jornal vs the Diário

The regional  parliament’s  commission of enquiry on the press, instituted by the local PSD and comprised of PSD MPs came to the conclusion that the Diário wants to close the Jornal da Madeira. What a joke!

For many years President Jardim has ranted and raged against the Diário saying it is the main opposition on the island and that without the Diário no opposition would exist.

For over a decade, he has been promising and threatening to expropriate the Diário and to do so in such a way as to cause the greatest financial damage to its owners. He also threatened that the scope of Government measures taken to harm the interests of the DN owners would reach beyond the Diário newspaper itself and affect other areas.

In his official speeches, in the fashion of a true dictator, President Jardim has repeatedly urged businessmen to boycott advertising in the Diário. He once even burned a copy of the Diário in public.

Eventually, seeing that expropriating the Diário newspaper, the only real rival of the Jornal, would cause too great a scandal, Jardim announced that he would adopt more refined methods and that there was going to be a ‘cleansing’ among the ranks of the Diário newspapers.

His solution was to pump enormous sums into the Jornal, turn it into a freebie newspaper and undercut the advertising market by price dumping, all in order to cut the Diário’s source of revenue, force job cuts among the journalists and eventually bankrupt the newspaper.

Not unexpectedly, the national parliament’s commission of enquiry, whose report records all these facts, concluded the opposite to the regional parliamentary commission. i.e. The Regional Government is trying and succeeding to scupper the independent press in Madeira.

Jardim and the PSD labeled the conclusion a 'colonial' interference in Madeira’s internal affairs.

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.

Fraud at the Jornal

In 2008, the Jornal was for six months a free newspaper, that is, it had no cover price. During this time, it continually broke the law by publishing municipal adverts (that by law could only be placed in paid newspapers) and receiving the respective revenue. In mid 2008, it adopted a fake cover price to skirt the law and continue to receive this revenue.

Both the National Audit Office (Tribunal de Contas) and the State Press Regulatory Entity (ERC) have noted the irregularity of this blatant scam. The Public Prosecutor’s Office was alerted to this scheme in September of 2009, but has merely sat on the facts. Apparently, it is too busy investigating and prosecuting those who denounce such schemes and criticize the Regional Government.

Jornal da Madeira – The President’s Newspaper

The Jornal da Madeira is a daily newspaper owned by the Government and maintained in the market through Government funding. It is bankrupt and owes the taxpayer over 40 million Euro, but the Government continues to pour in 4 million a year to keep it going.

The Jornal is essentially a PSD propaganda paper, which is distributed free despite having a fake cover price of 10 cents. The Jornal only publishes political opinion pieces by the President’s closest collaborators. Jardim himself writes two full pages per week and other columnists write three or four days in a row. It is common for them to publish up to four opinion pieces, all by PSD militants.

Freedom of Speech 2

President Jardim uses the Justice system to silence freedom of speech. Lawyers and legal fees are paid by the Government and compensations are asked for Jardim and his henchmen. It’s a good racket. They have no expenses and pocket the compensations themselves.

Jardim regularly issues threats of taking people to court merely to silence dissent. At a party meeting prior to the 2000 elections, for instance, he ordered Government departments to take his political adversaries to Court at the minimum provocation: ‘I have instructed all Government Departments that they should immediately institute criminal proceedings at the merest hint of slander’.

Following the disaster of the 20^th of February 2010, he again urged Government departments to sue the ‘vultures’ who criticized the Government.

He himself regularly issues such threats directly, some of which have no leg to stand on and are not followed through. In any case, the Madeira Courts are filled the proceedings of Jardim and his henchmen.

Recently, a court judged in favor of the Garajau satirical newspaper in a case where the newspaper argued the Vice-President was using Government funding to criminally sue the paper for publishing facts that had nothing to do with his position or the Government. It was a blatant case of misuse of public funding to harass a newspaper. The ruling was overturned at lightning speed by the higher court in Lisbon. The Vice-Presidency’s handpicked lawyer was the leader of the Maoist MRPP Party, Garcia Pereira. The case has now been taken to the European Court of Human Rights.