To me and about 99% of normal citizens, which is worth something like 9 million people, it is almost as fatal as fate to be fined, pawned, imprisoned or at least convicted, even with suspended sentence, this if the law that, for the most part, is unknown is not complied with, because of the hermetic language and because all laws have traps through which to make certain things disappear that only expensive lawyers know about.
They take our house away if there is an overdue Social Security payment, or if the tolls are not paid, with the State charging usury interest of 4,5%, when the indexation rate to Euribor does not even reach 1% .
Failure to pay a monthly fee to the Bank, or a car bill, due to unemployment or degradation of working conditions, an expression that in practice means working more for less money, ends up in a surety pledge.
The traffic police are chasing anyone who steps on a risk, they don't have a standard vest to wear in case of an accident (it can't be the one from the Chinese shop). An unpaid National Health Service user fee is charged at 100 times its value, an usury even greater than that of finance.
A citizen's card costs 30 euros, the renewal of a driving license more than 60 if we have the necessary medical examination, although you have your ID card and driving authorization within the legal deadline.
For a normal citizen, the list would no longer end with fees, taxes, fines, taxes, notifications, persecutions and constant emptying of pockets so sparsely provided.
The law requires and allows citizens to be fined, extorted by the State itself and its institutions, pursued by pledges, and sometimes imprisoned and convicted, as happened to the woman who received 15 years in jail for writing bad checks and whom the minister praised , on a visit to the overcrowded prison in Tires, for having managed to get his 9th year in prison.
Now, whoever belongs to the exclusive core of 1% of exceptional citizens (as opposed to normal), may happen to withdraw five billion for the uncertain part through one of the such traps in the law.
If they are unlucky enough to be discovered, they are obviously entitled to a Commission of Inquiry in the Assembly of the Republic, which is very popular on television. There they make up the expression, a rueful air, they blame the state of the markets, they admit pitying that they have been defeated by the crisis, despite their great dedication and great effort to save the national economy.
They declare themselves with a clear conscience and promise to collaborate with the investigation.
To newspapers, Banco de Portugal expresses doubts about whether and when to intervene and what to do. The President of the Republic comes very helpfully on television, ensuring that everything is going well and that there is no problem, in this or that bank entitled by his close friends.
Just in case, millions more have been kept cautiously in Switzerland (perhaps in real estate investments in Praia da Coelha in Albufeira). More sophisticatedly, they do business in Angola, one of those that are at a loss and with allegedly irrecoverable capital, perhaps they use a tax haven, which has something for all tastes.
With these ingredients, things will take a while to figure out, a luck that the unemployed, pensioners, or beneficiaries of the Social Insertion Income do not have, to whom they immediately cut 10% of the said pension. After all, who does 17 coins need if they live on 170 euros?
Therefore, exceptional citizens wait seated for justice. To relieve stress, they drink thirty-year-old whiskey, or very patriotically, a reserve port. And in this sweet life perfumed with exclusive aromas and branded suits, they hire lawyers offices for millions of dollars whose owners, just by chance, look what a coincidence, accumulate the defense with the functions of deputies in the Assembly of the Republic, from which laws come out according to the taste of the customer.
There is time to prepare the defense, that information leaks with breaking the secrecy of justice are very useful and appear in time to hide paperwork and make facts disappear.
They continue to live in one of their showy houses, which are never pawned, despite the million-dollar tax debts and eating what they always ate, wearing what they always wore, riding in private jets and luxury cars, claiming to be allergic to junk.
Oh gods! punish them first to them and not us!
Author: Conceição Branco is a journalist
Comments