The Houaiss Dictionary teaches that colonization is the “act or effect of colonizing”. And, it also teaches that colonizing, in a figurative sense, means “to spread, spread, invade”.
Now, it seems that Portuguese political life is being colonized by a certain discourse that, being so falsely simplistic, invades the thoughts of many who, lightly, think they can ride, for their own benefit, the most instinctive and irrational feelings of a part of the population.
It deserves reflection that in a country that has around two million poor people (more than four million if we do not consider social benefits), that does not have homes for its inhabitants, that has a dysfunctional public administration and an economy that only works because at least one million and seven hundred thousand foreigners (official social security data) make it work every day, despite this at the top of the agenda are the topics that we know about.
The more radical right built an agenda around immigration, gypsies, public social support and the affirmation of a certain nationalism/localism that was absolutely out of date.
It is curious, sad and above all worrying that in order to respond to a marginal agenda, those who had a historical obligation to combat it, end up, through action, giving it full citizenship and credibility, in the name of a certain short-sighted vertigo. In other words, to allow themselves to be invaded, voluntarily led to the condition of colonized people.
To an immigration issue that no one negligently anticipated, they responded with a law on nationality. To the inability to regulate those who operate tourism, construction or agriculture, they respond with standards that will cover Jews and descendants of Portuguese. Portuguese people who our endemic poverty forced to emigrate. And, by putting gypsies on the agenda, they are only diabolizing what is different and not solving any structural problem. Or is someone unaware that the majority of gypsy citizens are Portuguese citizens with original nationality?
In recent days, like icing on the cake, the speech has evolved into the Salazarist expression “my party is Portugal”, reminiscent of Oliveira Salazar’s 1930 speech “abandon a fiction -the party-, to take advantage of a reality- the association.” As if that were not enough, the idea is being propagated that a constitutional review is necessary, without discussing its need or object, rather and only, its repealing scope.
Colonization is indeed advancing. Submission to the populist agenda, too.
Citizenship regresses and freedoms, never definitively guaranteed, become more threatened.
Meanwhile the rule of law and the consequent rule of law seem to have left the stage. In Portugal and around the world.
Let’s all find him wrong.