WHEN SOME TIME AGO I POSTED a short text entitled 'Doing Things the European Way', which was bannered with the slogan "European Union: It's not Fascism when we do it", it was produced as a light-hearted joke. Although it had been apparent for some people and for some time in early 2014 that the European Union had been behaving rather like a dictatorship, I imagine that what has been taking place recently was far from even the most fletched of imaginations.
THE EUROPEAN WAY AT THE TIME was simply the heavy-handed, ham-fisted approach of Commission leader José Manuel Barroso, who, along with his grimacing puppet henchman Herman von "Humpty" Rumpoy, had on different occasions bullied the Republic of Ireland, France and the minnow states of the EU into accepting the Union's top-down rule in order to receive financial handouts, in the process ignoring popular opinion on individual matters in the respective countries.
WHAT HAS BEEN GOING ON over the last summer in the Union has been of such a greatness in incompetence, foolhardiness and overstretching of political reach and will that I have not felt it useful nor sensible to comment. The criminal actions of Angela Merkel in Germany in announcing that her country would accept as many as a million refugees-read-migrants-read-Balkan citizens-read-vote-winners without ever thinking this through is as I write leading to babes-in-arms at risk of freezing to death on the streets of major European cities or by the wayside as their families trundle from Syria to the Tyrol, utterly unprepared for what lies ahead.
THIS SAME HEAVY HAND AND DISRESPECT for the will of the people was shown in the dealings undertaken by Merkel et alia in relation to the good folk of Greece. Voting in a left wing government, in some way disrespectful to the idea of a centre-right European centralised bureaucracy, would only result in the centralised powers bringing Greece to its knees. This was a soap-operatic event which dragged on through the summer holidays, long after most onlookers had given up caring. And so the EU won again.
NOW, HOWEVER, IN PORTUGAL, we are faced with something entirely more sinister. The elections held on the 4th of October resulted in a clear vote against the pro-austerity government of photogenic Passos Coelho, of the Social Democrat party, and his elegantly-coiffured sidekick Paulo Portas, of the right-of-centre-right CDS party; beaming Socialist leader António Costa then presented his projected coalition of leftish parties to form a government.
THE SAME THING HAD HAPPENED in reverse in the UK in 2010, when Gordon Brown's Labour Party, despite being the most voted of the parties, was unable to present a viable government, thus leaving the door open to David "Dave" Cameron and his alliance with the Liberal Democrats under Nick Clegg.
A SIMILAR SITUATION SHOULD now take place in Portugal, whether under the D'Hondt system of elections, majority rule or the first past the post method. Unfortunately, President Aníbal Cavaco Silva of Portugal, himself a former Prime Minister with a minority government, has decided that a "leftish, anti-austerity" government would "at this time" be against the better interests of the European Union project.
I AM THE FIRST TO AGREE with Mr Cavaco Silva; yet I would urge him to venture one stage further in this desire for both fiscal and economic restraint and the wider European interest. Why, when we are undergoing such pain financially, should there even be such a costly diversion as elections? Would it not be better for countries to simply submit a list of parties and a (brief) summary of what each party would like to implement if elected and then Merkel, Schulz or Juncker (or someone appointed by them) could decide who wins? Think of the money we could save.
(My photo shows Cavaco Silva, President of Portugal, merrily addressing his people)
