The bewildered socialists

It was truly surprising to witness the complete disarray of the Socialist Party this past week.

After having gone through a process of destroying an absolute majority that gave them a comfortable acceptance among the Portuguese electorate, the socialists have been traveling, in a mad rush, like an out-of-control bicycle down a hill, a disoriented path, without any vision of strategy and increasing their level of loss in a very sharp way.

The choice of Pedro Nuno Santos was, for anyone with a modicum of common sense, a gamble on error, on the defocusing of the majority of the electorate that had given them the majority and the creation of a pseudo-project of ideological radicalization that was brutally penalized by the electorate and which resulted in the socialist party becoming the third political force in our country.

Faced with this clear electoral warning, the Socialist Party seemed to have learned its lesson and resumed its more moderate line – even adopting a posture of public humility to which we were not accustomed – electing José Luís Carneiro as its general secretary and thus giving new hope to its own electorate that they could one day improve their position in national politics.

All the rhetoric used for the appointment of José Luís Carneiro was based on moderation and the perspective that, in order to recover the party, it would be necessary to accept allowing the government to govern, in order to regain political stability that clearly pleases the majority.

Of course, at the same time, more or less clear messages were being sent that this stance should be recognized by the government in order to make the socialist party the alleged preferred party for conducting its policies.

And it must be acknowledged that Luís Montenegro's government was even convinced that, given Chega's less than trustworthy behavior in the previous legislature, this would somehow be inevitable.

It is another thing to believe that the government would always be dependent on the support given to it by the Socialist Party, thus making that party the true driver of Portugal's governance.

But so far everything is legitimate and within what is expected of political discussion and negotiation.

No one can criticize a party, whether it won or lost the elections, for trying to establish its position and trying to influence the country's political conduct as much as possible.

What I can no longer understand is, after realizing that they lost the first battle of this influence, on an issue where it was clear that this was going to happen and that was the issue of immigration, the socialist party immediately returns to a speech without humility, of absurd dramatization of political reality, assuming that the population, which voted in a majority of 70% for the parties that proposed what was decided now, is being disregarded and making its speech once again radical, intolerant and ideological.

Could it be that José Luís Carneiro is not moderate after all, is intolerant and ideological, or could it be that the structures of the socialist party, despite having accepted José Luís Carneiro, continue to believe that Pedro Nuno Santos's policies should continue?

We have already seen a very strong stance taken against the mayor of Loures for enforcing the law.

What does this PS want after all?

It seems to me that he wants to follow the example of his French comrades who, with enormous arrogance, managed to practically extinguish socialism in their land.