Popularity vs. Utopia. How Mayan forced Marcelo to go to the game – Observer

If in Saturday’s debate, against Marisa Matias, Marcelo wanted to wink at the left-wing electorate, in tonight’s debate against Tiago Mayan Gonçalves, Marcelo wanted to distinguish himself. First, to distinguish the social right from the liberal right, from the “dream and utopia”, which votes against the states of exception but, in the time of H, when he is called to govern in other countries, ends up approving the same restrictions; and then distinguish the (in) experience of one from the experience of “20 years in the field” of the other.

But the rival who faced him, although with less experience, did not stay and fought. Tiago Mayan Gonçalves put his finger on all the wounds, accused Marcelo of passing “blank checks” to the Government and of having “failed” as a PR. Forced him to go to the game. “What drives the president is his popularity. This is what always puts him on the side of the government, except when he feels that his popularity is threatened ”.said the candidate supported by the Liberal Initiative, pointing out that a third of Marcelo’s vetoes were made in the summer, when he felt his “decline in popularity.”

Marcelo felt harassed and was forced to respond: “The largest number of my vetoes was until 2019, it was not in 2020,” he said, rejecting that it is a question of popularity and electoral campaign. And he said more: “If there is one thing that is very evident to me, it is that I am indifferent to popularity: totally indifferent,” he said, giving the example of the moment when he vetoed the party financing law “against the entire Parliament.”

Tiago Mayan Gonçalves challenged the criticism of Marcelo – from the “pact of silence” in the case of the SEF, to the non-renewal of Joana Marques Vidal in the PGR, through the fact that Marcelo was “president of a Government” – , forcing Marcelo to play defense, until the incumbent president had to change course and attack: “Tell me then what would you have vetoed me from not doing?”

It was there that the candidate supported by the Liberal Initiative chose the issue of decentralization and elections for the CCDR, which in his opinion were a “simulation of democracy”, accusing the President of the Republic of representing the installed powers, and of being “The candidate of the Dueños Disto Tudo”, in an implicit reference to Ricardo Salgado, of whom Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa was a friend. Marcelo did not answer.

So far, Mayan has been on the attack, pointing out, case by case, the various “flaws” of the term that now ends. Marcelo would still admit that it was like this: New candidates are fresh and have a blank page, while re-candidates have a full term to be tried and criticized, but then he realized that it was time to strike. “Have you seen that he is so vague about your ideas?” -. deconstruct the “utopia” of liberal politics.

If Mayan was strong in the attack, it was when he was asked to explain his ideas of liberal politics (in the context of a pandemic) that Marcelo tried to score more points. On several occasions Marcelo substituted for the moderator to ask his opponent specific questions: “How would liberal policies help a state in a pandemic context?” He asked and replied: “All the most liberal countries, when the pandemic hit, what they did was inject money into the economy, into social policies. How are poverty and crisis resolved without social policies? Do you think mere economic freedom solves poverty? “, I ask.

But Tiago Mayan did not disarm and bet everything to criticize the decrees of Marcelo’s state of emergency, which, in his opinion, are responsible for the “social destruction” of the country. The debate was an ideology abroad, with Marcelo insisting on the idea that without a state of emergency, everything had been worse. “It is very easy to propose ideas about the liberal state, the dream, the utopia and then vote against the state of emergency. All the countries that were against the state of emergency ended up adopting it, ”he said.

Note: At the time of president of the debate (there is always a moment when Marcelo does not seem to undress), the President of the Republic was concerned about the evolution of the pandemic in Portugal, about the new variant coming from the United Kingdom, and about the ” laxism “. What he considers happened during the holidays. He said again that he will renew the state of emergency for 8 days and then he will make a more detailed analysis of the numbers in relation to Christmas and New Years and, yes, then he will define new measures for the following month. More confinements in sight? Marcelo hopes not, but you have to listen to the experts.