Many of the hundreds of members of the PSP and GNR who gathered this Monday afternoon at the Ministry of Internal Administration, in Praça do Comércio, in Lisbon, headed to the Capitol theater, where in less than an hour the debate will begin between the two main candidates for prime minister, Pedro Nuno Santos and Luís Montenegro.
But before that, they made the national anthem echo in Terreiro do Paço. Claps and whistles were heard, a lot of whistles, in yet another protest action for better salary conditions whose main demand is an increase in the salary supplement identical to that attributed to the Judiciary Police.
The concentration is organized by the platform that brings together PSP unions and GNR associations. And the whistles are repeated in Parque Mayer, next to the Capitol, where protesters boo those inside and shout: “Shame! Respect! United police will never be defeated!”. They sing again: “Heroes of the sea, noble people…”.
The PSP will communicate tonight’s facts to the Public Ministry, police spokesman Sérgio Soares confirmed to PÚBLICO. The protest, which was duly communicated to the Lisbon City Council, planned to take place only in Terreiro do Paço. The route taken by hundreds of police officers to Parque Mayer was unauthorized and the police themselves had not provided any security devices in that area.
The platform of trade unions and professional associations stands out from the situation. Its leaders remained, throughout the night, at the Ministry of Internal Administration, in Terreiro do Paço. The GNR police and military personnel who traveled to the Capitol remained there throughout the debate. None of them were identified by colleagues at work.
The main agent João Pedro Veiga, 51 years old, came in one of the three buses that brought professionals from the two corporations from Coimbra. “All together we are one”, says the black shirt he wore for this protest, national flag in hand like many of his comrades. He lived in Lisbon for 18 years in dormitories and rooms and knows the difficulties a young police officer goes through at the beginning.
“We left police school full of dreams, with a desire to serve the State and the people. Time passes and we are destroyed inside. We have many duties and should have them, but we have no rights.” He gets emotional and says that he came to this protest because he remembers the words of the promoter of trade unionism in the PSP, José Carreiras, who died in 2003 following an illness, and was not yet 50 years old.
“He left again. He was in the historic ‘wet and dry’ moment. He was on the wet side. One day he said to me: ‘I’ve already done my fight, now it’s your turn’. So many years later, we continue to fight and that’s why I’m here.” When asked if he has hope that the next Government will respond to the police’s demands, João Veiga responds that if he didn’t have hope he wouldn’t be there. But the truth is that no party has put a concrete measure in its programs, he points out: “They only talk about valuing careers. As? No one says that.”
Officers Elsa Alves and Fátima Quaresma, aged 58, and Ana Silva, aged 57, come from Seixal. They have been police officers for three and a half decades and say they are here for the younger ones. “And for their future”, adds Elsa Alves. Ana Silva remembers that in neighborhoods considered dangerous, the uniformed police officers go ahead when they need to enter. Fátima Quaresma says with pride that her father was a police officer, her husband is and one of her sons has also embraced the career. If she tried to dissuade him? “He was the one who put the papers in. In a family of police officers, what could I tell him?” And this Monday also came to Praça do Comércio.
The three agents go back in time and remember the number of candidates they had to compete with for a place in the year they applied for the PSP. “200 women entered our year”, declares Elsa proudly. “There were always more than a thousand candidates. Now if they reach 500 it’s lucky”, laments Ana Silva.
Pedro Costa, the police officer who started a solitary protest in front of the Assembly of the Republic that spread to an entire country, is a source of pride for Elsa Silva: “He did what the unions had not been able to do in years. He brought the police together”.
PSP “depleted by government imperatives and lack of investment”
It was more than a month ago, and since then the class protests have not stopped. This Monday’s concentration comes after the platform organized, in January, on the 24th and 31st, demonstrations in Lisbon and Porto that brought together thousands of members of the security forces and which were considered the largest ever, in addition to vigils at the airports of Lisbon, Porto, Faro, Ponta Delgada and Funchal and at the seaport of Lisbon. The platform has also scheduled, for March 2nd, a national meeting of PSP police and GNR military personnel.
Although it was not assumed to be part of the dispute, several PSP police officers and GNR soldiers suffered casualties, which led to the cancellation of games in the I and II football leagues and the Minister of Internal Administration ordering the opening of an investigation. urgently to the General Inspectorate of Internal Administration regarding these sudden casualties. Also internally and by determination of the National Directorate of the PSP, investigations have already been opened into situations involving the discharge of members of this security force.
At the time the protesters were heading from Terreiro do Paço to the Capitol, the Minister of Internal Administration, José Luís Carneiro, released a letter addressed to the National Union of Police Officers. In response to an open letter from this organization that alluded to a PSP “depleted by government imperatives and lack of investment”, the government official lists the investments made in material resources in recent years and announced for the near future.
“The expressions used in the open letter to qualify the Government’s activity in terms of valuing security forces contrast with the perceptions of the national and international community regarding the GNR and PSP, insofar as their capabilities are often object of the greatest praise”, observes José Luís Carneiro, adding that, according to Eurostat data, in the period 2019-2021 Portugal was the fourth country in Europe with the highest ratio of police officers per hundred thousand inhabitants.
According to their calculations, between 2015 and 2023 there was an increase of 24.04% in the salary bill of the security forces. And despite recognizing that “there is still a lot to be done” in this matter, the minister leaves a warning: “Only by respecting all the rules of the democratic regime is it possible to sustain the practical agreement between, on the one hand, the guarantee of social peace, and , on the other, progress in the dignification of police careers”.