Welcome to the Official page of the Presidency of the Portuguese Republic

Today we are celebrating the 5th October, the founding date of our Republic, the regime which we are proud to live in.

In a Republic, nobody is above the law. Laws are approved by the legitimate representatives of the people and applied by the courts that administer justice on their behalf.

In a Republic, all of us are citizens. Nobody is exempt from actively contributing towards improving the future of their country.

These were the principles that, more than one hundred years ago, led to establishing the republican regime.

The Republic also fetched the ambition for new ethical values and principles, such as serving the public cause, transparency in political practises and improved social justice amongst all the Portuguese.

Celebrating the Republic is also to consider the dreams that did not materialize and to reflect on all that has come about since 5 October 1910.

The republican regime, as recognized by History, was featured by extreme political instability, in which governments ensued at an extraordinarily high rate.

In a sixteen year period, between 1910 and the 1926 military coup, the country had 45 governments, each of them lasting, on average, four months. There was even a government which lasted for exactly one day. Of the eight presidents of the Republic, only one completed the mandate for which he was appointed.

Due to this inveterate instability, the regime of the First Republic was incapable of fulfilling many of the ideals and the dreams that were at the origin of the 5th October 1910 revolution, and it all came to a stop with an authoritarian military coup that established a dictatorship.

Forty years ago, the 25th April would render us the hope for a new era, with greater freedom and democracy, with improved economic development and social justice.

We have today arrived at the 5th of October 2014. We are celebrating this date at a crucial and decisive moment for our Republic. Portugal is still feeling the effects of one of the worst crises that it has faced in the last few decades and, although there are signs of hope in the offing, we have many challenges to overcome in order to reach sustainable levels of economic growth and job creation.

For this reason, it is urgent that we carry out a serious reflexion on the Portuguese political regime and that we jointly find solutions for the issues that affect the governance of our Republic.

Resulting from successive assessments and surveys carried out by credible and independent bodies, the Portuguese are among the peoples of the European Union those that show greater levels of dissatisfaction with the regime in which they live.

In line with the data of the latest Eurobarometer survey, 89% of those inquired tend not to trust political parties and 73% state they are dissatisfied with the functioning of democracy in our country. Only in five of the 28 Member States of the European Union is there a higher grade of dissatisfaction with the functioning of democratic institutions.

The conditions in which we live today differ vastly from those that led to the fall of the I Republic. We do not run the risk to go back to a dictatorship nor to a military coup as that which took place in 1926.

Belonging in an area such as the European Union guarantees that we share a community of democratic values and principles of freedom.

But even more decisively, the Portuguese are a people that cherish democratic life, and have often shown so in the last decades.

We fought for democracy before and after the 25th April.

We fought for freedom when we took part in the elections for the parliamentary assembly that approved the Constitution, in that which was the electoral act with the greatest turnout in our History.

We sided with democracy when we enthusiastically adhered to the European project, an historical option with unquestionable benefits.

More recently, facing an enormous economic and social crisis, the Portuguese showed, once more, their exemplary sense of civic duty and responsibility.

All of this provides us with reasons for hope and shows us a motive to fight for the quality of our democracy.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

The Portuguese are not dissatisfied with democracy or with the Republic. They are indeed dissatisfied with the way in which the democratic institutions have behaved in our country.

Various opinion polls have clearly shown that lack of trust in the institutions has been growing and is becoming deeper.

Citizens’ dissatisfaction and their lack of trust in the institutions – above all in the political parties – have been reflected in successive electoral acts, marked by worrying abstention levels.

Equally, the better qualified citizens’ rejection to the exercise of public office is greater than ever. Not only regarding the fulfilment of political roles, but also the exercise of functions in the different areas of Public Administration. The situation has been worsening and the resulting costs will undoubtedly be very significant.

Have the losses for the Country ever been considered if we do not have the people with the correct competences to occupy high level posts in Public Administration?

The attractiveness of the private sector, which generally provides better pay, and does not suffer the media exposure or the personal and even family distress which are often associated to the fulfilment of public office, undoubtedly contributes towards this situation.

The issue is however much wider, deriving from the lack of incentives for the exercise of public office and even from factors densifying the rejection for this option.

The exercise of offices in political or administrative areas is no longer associated with a patriotic notion of public service, of dedication to the community, of merit recognition, and is now viewed as a sign of careerism and opportunism, often associated to a path of life totally set in the midst of the political parties.

In party political activities, barriers to the admission of new players and limits placed to competition in the choice of principals in the most diverse levels have become exacerbated, inevitably benefiting those which are already installed in the political party structures.

However, if professionalism in political activity, in itself, is not reproachful or negative, it arises as a worrying phenomenon when it fetches lack of prestige and absence of merits and qualifications.

On another hand, the trend for demagoguery and populism contributes to accentuate the distancing of the better qualified professionals from the exercise of public duties.

Also in other fundamental areas for the improvement in the quality of democracy – such as is the case with the electoral system – about which studies and debates have been carried out for decades, little has been materially advanced to combat the distancing of citizens from civic life.

It is essential, as has anyway been unanimously recognized, to promote a greater approach between the electors and the elected. It is equally essential that greater transparency exists in the financing of political parties. On behalf of republican ethical values, and in order to reconcile citizens with politics, we must not easily give way to popular opportunism, nor adopt a record of systematic and inconsequent criticism. But we must be aware that there are reforms to the political system that have been debated for quite a long time, without any effective – or even necessary – changes having arisen out of such discussions.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

The Republic was conceived as a democracy of compromise and dialogue. Those that, in 1976, wrote and approved our Constitution designed a democratic model based on a balanced distribution amongst the several sovereign bodies, but very demanding with regard to the sense of responsibility of the politicians.

The proportional electoral system, such as ours, favours the representativeness of the various trends of opinion in Parliament, but brings with it a demand which the Portuguese must be aware of. To reach political governance and stability within the framework of a proportional electoral system, the several players must adopt and cultivate a culture of compromise.

The proportional electoral system only allows a stable and durable governance if it is accompanied by short and medium term party political understanding. This has been the case, for quite some time, in several European consolidated democracies, and it is thus odd that resistance still exists to establishing a culture of compromise in Portugal.

If the party political forces maintain the trend of rejection of a culture of compromise, we cannot exclude, without undue alarmism, an increase in the level of abstention to unaffordable limits, or the implosion of the Portuguese party political system such as we know it.

The persistence of tactical inducement or immediacy, the stubbornness of short sighted politics, exclusively centred on party political interests, will bring medium term costs to Portuguese democracy as a whole.

Political parties and their leadership cannot live in the illusion that all this will blow over them and that they will survive unscathed from a possible deep change in our party political system.

As I have stated on several occasions, we will only be able to reach the indispensable governance stability by way of a culture of compromise. This we must remember on the day in which we celebrate a date of happiness and hope – the 5th October 1910 -, when we cannot forget that it was the inveterate political instability that led to the fall of the I Republic, with the nefarious consequences that the Portuguese suffered during almost half a century of dictatorship.

If the existence of a culture of compromise between politicians and business people, between public decision takers and social partners has always been important for the consolidation and quality of our democracy, it is inescapable in the adverse times in which we live.

Europe is facing grievous challenges. New threats have emerged, specifically from external origins, which will test the soundness and the consistency of the European Union project.

Along with this, the demands of the integration process, namely those deriving from the Stability and Growth Pact and from the Budgetary Treaty, imply, from the several national governments, that an effort of containment of the public accounts deficits and of a strict control of expenditure is forcibly maintained.

The model of the Welfare State is not, in any way, placed at issue. On the contrary, it is exactly the need to preserve this model, within a Europe which is more than ever affected by a fall in childbirth and by the aging of the people, that we are obliged to use with extreme care the scarce public resources which are still available.

It is in this context that the politicians must assume, once and for all, a culture of responsibility and a culture of truth.

It has been constant practice in Portuguese politics, especially in the past few decades, to make promises and announce unrealistic measures in order to conquer citizen support and the electoral vote.

The failure to comply with promises made is one of the main factors of the increase in the disbelief of the Portuguese in the political class and their mistrust in the institutions.

It is time we instituted a culture of greater responsibility and realism, since the environment we are living in is not sympathetic with promises of easiness or utopic solutions.

If the difficulties are undeniable there are, however, well founded motives of hope for the future. But hope must be built, not promised. Hope is built of work and responsibility, with a feeling for national interest

Those who are unable to achieve the necessary commitments for stable governance, may attain power, but will not easily be able to guarantee it for any length of time.

The challenge of civic responsibility does not only call upon the politicians. It is addressed to all, entrepreneurs, workers and union officials, professional classes, State leaders and public servants, teachers in all grades of learning, media professionals.

The challenge of civic responsibility equally calls upon the young generations. It implies that they should be more demanding with regard to those who govern us, but that they are also demanding as regards themselves and the quality of the teaching they receive.

Young Portuguese must not take the path of pessimism or of obloquy; they must not waste energy and their vast talent to criticize all and everything, when they have so much to give to our country, to Portugal, one of the best countries in the world to live in.

In a Republic, each one’s work and effort is everybody’s patrimony. What you will do on behalf of Portugal, you will do on your own behalf.

Thank you very much.