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The President of the Republic decided not to send the traditional New Year’s message to the country this year, one of the highlights of the political calendar. In this way, he follows the examples of his presidential repredecessors Mário Soares and Jorge Sampaio (the exception was Cavaco Silva). The reason invoked by the current Head of State is the electoral campaign for the presidential elections of January 24, in which he is re-elected, more precisely the televised debates.
If broadcast, the presidential message would air a few hours after Marcelo recorded the first televised duel with Marisa Matias, the candidate supported by the Bloco de Esquerda. In fact, part of the campaign for these elections will take place in televised debates, and these moments take on more weight given the restrictions imposed by the covid-19 pandemic and the health crisis.
In the official note, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa explained that “in 2021 the elections are scheduled for January 24, so that day 1 is long before the start of the electoral campaign on January 10. However, the President of the Republic decided not to address the traditional New Year’s message to the Portuguese, since he participates, as a candidate for the presidential elections, in debates with other candidates in the immediate days. In other words, the president realized that sticking the message to television debates with his opponents would be an added risk. What’s more, Marcelo even took the message for granted and said it with all the letters last Sunday at me: Yes, I will do the New Years message. But then he had to look at the calendar.
The Chief of State even admitted that the presidential debates scheduled for New Year’s weekend, scheduled for January 2 and 3, could be postponed due to the restrictions imposed. In addition, there will be mandatory curfews, defined by the Government within the framework of the State of Emergency, starting at 1 pm. Therefore, debates 2 and 3 will be recorded in the morning (and broadcast in the evening), in order to comply with the regulations.
In this context, the Head of State would be speaking with the country at 9:00 p.m. on January 1, 2021 and the next day, in the morning, he would have recorded a pre-campaign confrontation with the candidate Marisa Matias, as a candidate. There was no going back. Marcelo changed his mind to avoid any kind of criticism for acting in his double role.
But it was not the first. The risks derived from this dual condition have also been assessed by other predecessors.
Mário Soares, elected for the first time in 1986, also decided not to send the traditional message to the country in the New Year of 1991. After all, he was running for a new term and even had the support of Cavaco Silva’s PSD, he did not need take no risk. Allow reading and confusion about the two roles. With the elections scheduled for January 13, 1991, Soares was already in the official campaign period (unlike Marcelo, since the campaign only begins on the 10th). The margin would be short so as not to mix functions. In that election, the founder of the PS and also former prime minister achieved a unique result, which even today is unparalleled: 70.35%, something like about three and a half million votes.
At that time, it was anticipated that the second term of Soares would be more difficult for Cavaco Silva, to govern by an absolute majority. And went. The open presidencies of Mário Soares continued for the next term, serving, according to some socialists and many social democrats, as a way of wearing down the Cavaco Silva executive by the way the Head of State displayed the country’s problems.
Years later, when the also socialist Jorge Sampaio advanced to a new term, between 2001 and 2006, the issue of the electoral campaign was decisive in making decisions about whether or not to make the New Year’s message. Sampaio opted for silence on January 1, 2001, because he was going to vote on January 14 and was already on the electoral campaign. At that time, he got 56% for another five years in Belém. In 2001, Sampaio ended the year with the resignation of the prime minister, the socialist António Guterres. Who resigned in the early morning of December 18, 2001, after an electoral catastrophe in which the PS lost the main chambers, including Lisbon and Porto.
Scraps for Socrates
Cavaco Silva was in the same situation as Marcelo, in 2011, but he made a different decision: he chose to do the traditional New Year’s message. The country was governed by José Sócrates and signs of a serious economic crisis were beginning to appear.
The message was surrounded by messages for the socialist government. “What for some was already proof, of what the Portuguese warned at the time, was finally recognized by all, beginning with political decision makers,” said the then President of the Republic.
Cavaco advised the Government not to “deceive reality”, because that would be “the first step to change course and correct the trajectory.”
The then Prime Minister, José Sócrates, had announced, a few months earlier, cuts in the salaries of public servants and an increase in VAT to 23%. Cavaco warned, in the New Year’s message, that “the times we are going through are of great difficulties” and “the truth would be lacking to say that these difficulties will disappear in the year that now begins.” In between, Cavaco warned that poverty reaches “intolerable levels.”
On January 1, 2011, the President of the Republic pointed out paths for the new year and asked that “the sacrifices” be “equally distributed among all, without exceptions or privileges.” The messages to São Bento anticipated a very difficult year. But the presidential campaign was not easy either. Immediately after the New Year’s message from the President of the Republic, Bloco de Esquerda pointed a finger at him for conducting an electoral campaign from the office. «In this electoral campaign period, this New Year’s message is not part of the regime’s obligation and to choose to bring it as close to the elections as possible, it shows how Cavaco Silva continues to prefer to use the presidency as a place for his electoral campaign and not to respect the distance that would be imposed in his position at this moment, ”said BE leader Jorge Costa (today with greater responsibilities in the party led by Catarina Martins). Forty-eight hours after the presidential message, the BE deputy added that “Cavaco Silva has taken advantage of all the opportunities offered by the Presidency of the Republic to carry out an electoral campaign.”
Now, Cavaco was reelected, in the first round, with almost 53% of the votes. In that election, Manuel Alegre was in second place with about 25% and Fernando Nobre in third with 14%. Abstention was high, with more than half of voters staying at home.
The inauguration speech, on March 9, 2011, went down in history as one of the most violent against the Government of the day.
The then President of the Republic called for “a civic clash” and stressed that “political agents do not know the real country, they only know a virtual and media country.” It was the beginning of the end of the Government of José Sócrates, who resigned a few weeks later due to the failure of the Stability and Growth Plan (PEC 4) in the Assembly of the Republic.
Short message from Eanes
Ramalho Eanes addressed the Portuguese on the first day of 1981, but had already been reelected on December 7, 1980 with more than 56% of the votes. The election was marked by the death of Sá Carneiro, Prime Minister, and Amaro da Costa, Minister of Defense, when they were going to a rally in Porto. The campaign was interrupted, but the participation of the Portuguese remained high, with only 15% abstention.
Ramalho Eanes’ message was brief, according to the report prepared by the Lisbon newspaper, and served to take stock of the first legislature, between 1976 and 1980. «Despite the political crises, understandable in the historical context of transition and democratic consolidation, institutional continuity, democratic legality and indispensable solidarity between the sovereign bodies in the full exercise of its specific competences ”, he said.
The first Head of State elected after the 1976 Constitution warned that the country should be prepared to respond to the “worsening of the international economic crisis” and called for a combination of “efforts and wishes for the tasks of modernization and development.” Two weeks later, Ramalho Eanes took office with a speech in which he promised that “the President of the Republic will exercise his mandate without exceeding his powers or usurping the powers of others”, but “will never do without the exercise of his constitutional authority, according to the circumstances and circumstances “. needs’.
