1. We have been watching a fashionable version of Portuguese politics in the film “The Death of Stalin”, the brilliant political satire, full of black humour, by director Armando Iannucci. In the film, Josef Stalin dies and the men who want to succeed him – in the intervals of preparing the burial of the historic Soviet leader – fight for space, for influence, for ascendancy. In short, they struggle for power.
Here we have all this, but in reverse. It is António Costa – who, as it turns out, does not intend to leave quietly – who is burying all his potential successors. And, whether he had wanted and planned it or not, the winged tragedy in three acts that is TAP gave him the motive, the murder weapon and, at least so far, the perfect alibi.
Pedro Nuno Santos, the nail that most stuck his head out in the future race against the socialist leader, has been torn apart for months. It is now clear that the then Minister of Infrastructure and his team managed the airline as if it were his and the PS’s coutada, which in many cases made choices that demonstrate a huge lack of knowledge about aviation and, more importantly, that the promise left to the Portuguese that TAP was not to be privatized, after all it was a dead letter. Wasn’t that the premise for asking the Portuguese to inject 3.2 billion euros into TAP? After all, we’ve been cleaning up the company so that we can now hand it over, cleanly, to the private sector? Again?
Fernando Medina, the candidate running on the outside track, doesn’t look any better in the picture either. Already known in the gossip as the “Minister Option D” – that is, “Doesn’t know/Doesn’t answer” – the Minister of Finance is fighting for survival. Adding to the many episodes as mayor of Lisbon in which I knew nothing – do you remember the data passed on to the Russians? And what about “tailor-made” construction contracts for a company linked to the PS? – Medina now adds new unknowns. Nothing about Alexandra Reis’ compensation, not even when he invited her to be Secretary of State for the Treasury, nothing about CEO Christine Ourmières-Widener’s contract, nothing about the absence of management contracts at TAP.
How many times can you plead ignorance before people start questioning what the hell is a minister doing who has so many important things overlooked?
The parliamentary commission of inquiry into the management of TAP has confirmed some of these perplexities, has revealed others and has changed the opinion of many Portuguese, who in recent weeks have been following the case fervently, as if it were a Netflix series. And still good. There is hope for interest in national politics.
2. The saga of the “new airport” of Santarém continues. In order: the local council gives exclusivity to the idea (?) of a structure to be installed on land we don’t know what they are (??), or whose they are, with money from investors we don’t know (???) and with a chico -smart to build 25 kilometers beyond the area (a radius of 75km from Lisbon) in which the Portuguese State is contractually linked to Vinci, the owner of ANA (????). If the Government agrees with this, someone explain to me why this is not poaching? And how come Vinci doesn’t win this easily in court?