The commitment of some journalists to devalue the effects of the strike and the insistence on highlighting its “harmful” consequences is an exercise in submission that sincerely surpasses me.
I've already gone on strike. I will go on strike as often as necessary and whenever I see fit. However, I see colleagues of mine referring to today's protest – as they did before – in a jocular, almost sarcastic tone, as if what is going on is not socially relevant.
People have the right to strike or not to strike. And they have the right to be respected in this option.
I know that many of those who do not go to work today do so conditioned by the non-functioning of public transport networks. But I also know – or at least suspect – that among those who don't go on strike are a large percentage of people who, terrified by out-of-school bosses – those who still think that an employee is an enemy – or with a noose around their necks, choose to let that this be a normal day.
The situation in the country is the one we all know. Times are the toughest for many decades. It's a matter of managing expectations. We created illusions in our head. The State created illusions in its own “head” and with this it contributed to the collective numbness that took us for years.
When I said here last week that we have to adjust, that was exactly what I was talking about: a return to reality.
We screwed up. And now, of necessity, we will have to resolve it (and discuss how to do it).
We have been and are poorly governed by top 10 politicians who have never needed to manage a low-digit household budget, who in the supermarket don't need to bend over to pick up products from the lower shelves.
For me, who am not an economist (despite thinking that economists are the least aware of economics), the path is wrong. It is wrong because a state that does not think about people first is not thinking well.
The State is not so for itself, to be so only for the citizens who shape it. Citizens, not taxpayers.
We live in the dictatorship of numbers. The unemployment numbers, the deficit numbers, the debt numbers, the tax numbers. We have a number ourselves. And we reduce everything to that, as if it were possible for us to be just that.
Am I being demagogic? A little. But dammit, it's a necessary demagoguery, one that's worth it.
I'm neither right nor left. I'm not for the government, for Gaspar or for Portas.
I am for myself and I am for Portugal (and with this I would make a campaign slogan). And I'm not for charity. I'm for solidarity. Between each other and between the State and all of us, whenever we need it.
But I'm also for the possible. You can't ask for more than what can be given to us, because to think otherwise is to perpetuate the lie that we were sold and that we, with some ingenuity, bought.
Today is the day of a general strike. If I were in Portugal (and I'm not because I'm one of the many thousands of Portuguese people who chose – or were forced to choose – to live in a place where they can, in fact, live) I would turn off my computer.
Our country's problem is itself and it's us. Let's adjust, yes. But first, before we 'adjust', we have to think and answer the question that no one has the courage to ask, perhaps because we don't know the answer: What Portugal do we want?
Author Nuno Andrade Ferreirajournalist
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