Aqui vamos nós outra vez...
segunda-feira, março 31, 2008
segunda-feira, março 17, 2008
quarta-feira, março 12, 2008
Ventos de Guerra
O dia de hoje, 12 de Março de 2008, fica marcado por dois polémicos pedidos de demissão: o de Eliot Spitzer, Governador do Estado de Nova Iorque, na sequência de um escândalo envolvendo a contratação de prostitutas de luxo; e o do Admiral William Fallon, comandante das forças armadas norte-americanas no Médio Oriente e no Sul Asiático, pouco dias após ter completado apenas um ano no cargo. Embora o primeiro seja notóriamente o mais mediático, como qualquer um poderá comprovar caso tenha a oportunidade de ligar a CNN, a BBC, ou a SKY durante o dia ou até de comprar a Revista do Expresso no próximo sábado, o segundo parece-me incomensurávelmente mais relevante. Isto porque os motivos que levaram ao pedido de cessação de funções do Adm. Fallon, apelidado de “a raposa,” prende-se com questões que, se não mais cativantes, são certamente mais importantes para o futuro dos E.U.A. e do mundo. Voltemo-nos então para estas.O motivo concreto do pedido de demissão de “Jimmy” Fallon centra-se na entrevista concedida por este à revista Esquire de Abril 2008. Nesse artigo, Fallon rejeita a hipótese de intervenção militar americana no Irão para controlar um alegado programa de desenvolvimento de armas nucleares. De acordo com a publicação, o Admiral representava “the strongest man standing between the Bush administration and a war with Iran.” Porém, hoje, no seu pedido público de demissão, o Adm. Fallon referia que não acreditava existirem divergências de opinião entre ele e a Casa Branca quanto aos objectivos a atingir no Médio Oriente, mas que “the simple perception that there is makes it difficult for me to effectively serve America’s interests there.” Em seguida, o Secretário da Defesa norte-americano Robert Gates repediou as referidas alegações sobre planos de guerra como “ridículas” e, apesar de aceitar a decisão de Fallon com “reluctância e pena,” considerou-a “a opção mais acertada.” Do outro lado do espectro, a Senadora Hillary Clinton apelou a George W. Bush para perseguir a via diplomática em vez da intervenção militar, e homenageou o admiral como uma “voice of reason in an administration which has used inflamatory rhetoric against Iran.”
De um modo ou outro, tendo em conta as cartadas políticas que estão em jogo em Washington, não podemos deixar de considerar a demissão de Fallon como um mau presságio para os poucos meses que restam à administração Bush. Com efeito, não foi esta a primeira vez que o Adm. Jimmy Fallon se manisfestou contra uma possível intervenção no Irão. Em Janeiro de 2007, Fallon afirmou no Senado que os E.U.A. deveriam perseguir exaustivamente todas as opções diplomáticas nas suas disputas com a República Iraniana. No mesmo ano, Fallon disse à estação Al-Jazeera que “esperava que não houvesse guerra contra o Irão.” Na opinião de alguns observadores internacionais e “insiders” em Washington, não existem dúvidas que os comentários de Fallon tinham gerado desconforto entre a Casa Branca e os escalões mais altos das Forças Armadas. Como nota de roda-pé, a imprensa menciona que os comentários foram considerados “inaceitáveis” numa altura em que a administração Bush está a trabalhar em várias frentes para aumentar a pressão no Irão. E, acima de tudo, os comentadores temem que a eventual intervenção norte-americana no Irão seja usada como última alternativa para manter um Republicano na Casa Branca. Parece-me que já vi este filme...
terça-feira, março 11, 2008
segunda-feira, março 10, 2008
Compreender as falhas da equipa Clinton
Uma vez que tenho tido alguma dificuldade em organisar-me para escrever posts, proponho-me a publicar alguns dos artigos mais interessantes que encontro na net. Este é de Adam Nagourney, Patrick Healy and Kate Zernike do The New York Times e foi publicado a 08-03-2008:
WASHINGTON — The morning after Senator Barack Obama shook the Clinton campaign by winning five contests in one weekend, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s new campaign manager — Maggie Williams, who had taken over in a shake-up the night before — assembled the curious if demoralized staff.
“You may not like the person next to you,” Ms. Williams told dozens of aides who ringed the conference room at the campaign’s Virginia headquarters last month, according to participants. “But you’re going to respect them. And we’re going to work together.”
Ms. Williams’s demand was dismissed as wishful thinking by some in her weary audience. But in the view of many Clinton supporters, it accurately reflected the urgent need to overhaul a campaign that at that point had set itself apart for its level of disorder and dysfunction.
The divisions in her campaign over strategy and communications — and the dislike many of her advisers had for one another — poured out into public as Mrs. Clinton struggled in February to hold off Mr. Obama in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination.
But even as Mrs. Clinton revived her fortunes last week with victories in Ohio, Rhode Island and Texas, the questions lingered about how she managed her campaign, with the internal sniping and second-guessing undermining her well-cultivated image as a steady-at-the-wheel chief executive surrounded by a phalanx of loyal and efficient aides.
“She hasn’t managed anything as complex as this before; that’s the problem with senators,” said James A. Thurber, a professor of government at American University who is an expert on presidential management. “She wasn’t as decisive as she should have been. And it’s a legitimate question to ask: Under great pressure from two different factions, can she make some hard decisions and move ahead? It seems to just fester. She doesn’t seem to know how to stop it or want to stop it.”
Over the last month, Mrs. Clinton, of New York, has become much more involved in the day-to-day operation of her campaign. In addition to Ms. Williams, she brought in two experienced political hands from her husband’s White House: Doug Sosnik, who was a political director, and Steve Ricchetti, a deputy chief of staff.
And Ms. Williams has sought to calm tensions in the headquarters through steps like opening the morning conference call to more aides to foster a greater sense of teamwork. One of her first acts, aides said, was to instruct Mark Penn, Mrs. Clinton’s chief strategist and a polarizing figure in the campaign, to stay off television.
Still, interviews with campaign aides, associates and friends suggest that Mrs. Clinton, at least until February, was a detached manager. Juggling the demands of being a candidate, she paid little attention to detail, delegated decisions large and small and deferred to advisers on critical questions. Mrs. Clinton accepted or seemed unaware of the intense factionalism and feuding that often paralyzed her campaign and that prevented her aides from reaching consensus on basic questions like what states to fight in and how to go after Mr. Obama, of Illinois.
Mrs. Clinton showed a tendency toward an insular management style, relying on a coterie of aides who have worked for her for years, her aides and associates said. Her choice of lieutenants, and her insistence on staying with them even when friends urged her to shake things up, was blamed by some associates for the campaign’s woes. Again and again, the senator was portrayed as a manager who valued loyalty and familiarity over experience and expertise.
Mrs. Clinton stood by Mr. Penn and Patti Solis Doyle, who was until last month her campaign manager, even as her campaign was at risk of letting Mr. Obama sew up the nomination. When some of her closest supporters pressed her to replace them, arguing that the two were clearly struggling with their jobs and had become divisive figures in the campaign, she responded by saying she would “think about it.”
When Mrs. Clinton finally pushed out Ms. Solis Doyle, she chose Ms. Williams, like Ms. Solis Doyle, an old friend who had never before managed a presidential campaign.
Mrs. Clinton’s ability to manage the one person with whom she spoke most often, former President Bill Clinton, was also questioned by some of her advisers and supporters. Mr. Clinton moved in his own orbit — he heatedly argued with his wife’s advisers who wanted to write off South Carolina, defying them to campaign there — and took no direction from the campaign about what to say or where to go, some of them said. (Mr. Obama defeated Mrs. Clinton in the South Carolina Democratic primary by nearly 29 percentage points.)
Several aides, donors and supporters, who requested anonymity to recount private conversations with the candidate, said they had warned Mrs. Clinton that her husband’s attacks on Mr. Obama were demeaning to her and hurting her campaign. Mrs. Clinton replied that her husband became “carried away” at times but that she did not see any real harm from his approach, they said.
Mrs. Clinton’s top advisers said that while her management style might be untidy, it showed her to be comfortable with conflicting ideas among her aides. They said she had pronounced herself “ready to learn” from her mistakes and was resistant to placing too much power in the hands of a single political adviser in the mold of Karl Rove in President Bush’s two campaigns for the White House.
“She thinks the way to manage effectively is to get a lot of smart people around who don’t agree and let them work out their differences creatively,” said Howard Wolfson, her communications director. “Let them hash through things, and as a result, you come up with the best process.”
A senior adviser, Harold Ickes, joined the campaign full-time in January as Mrs. Clinton’s aides began to realize that the contest was not going the way they had planned. Mr. Ickes cautioned about drawing firm conclusions about her from this period, when she faced the demands of being a candidate.
“It’s hard to draw conclusions about her management style,” he said, “because she is, in fact, not the manager of her campaign.”
Still, some of her senior advisers said Mrs. Clinton was left with little option but to become more assertive in getting her campaign back on track, a shift highlighted by her decision to push out Ms. Solis Doyle, one of her closest and longest-serving aides. Her husband changed his advisers at regular intervals as he faced various troubles and shifting political demands while president; Mrs. Clinton, in contrast, has relied on a relatively unchanging cast since she was first lady.
For all her years on the public stage, Mrs. Clinton has never come close to assembling and running an enterprise like the 700-person, $170 million-and-counting campaign organization that she has created. At times, her aides made assumptions about tactics and voters that turned out to be wrong. They nearly ran out of money at all the wrong times, like just after Mrs. Clinton’s victory in the New Hampshire primary and right before the 22 state nominating contests on Feb. 5.
The day after her loss in the Iowa caucuses, Mrs. Clinton took command of a long meeting in New Hampshire. “I’ll do whatever you guys need me to do,” she said, a participant recalled. “I get the message.”
But a month later, she described herself as stunned to learn the campaign was nearly broke — notwithstanding financial reports sent to her every week by e-mail — and was all but conceding the 11 contests that were to come over the next month.
Unlike Mr. Bush, Mrs. Clinton has shown no interest in having one strong person running all aspects of the campaign operation. And unlike her husband during the early part of his 1992 bid for the presidency, she does not try to keep a hand in everything, with lines of communications all through the campaign.
Instead, she talked daily to a few people: Mr. Penn, Ms. Solis Doyle and, now, Ms. Williams. Even Mr. Ickes, her longtime friend and adviser, says he speaks with her infrequently.
This approach, many of her associates said, had the effect of breeding resentment at campaign headquarters. Since there was no one person in charge, they said, it was hard to make decisions, and Mr. Penn would frequently use his personal connection with Mrs. Clinton to block the campaign from moving in directions he opposed, like putting an increased emphasis on trying to present a human side of Mrs. Clinton.
Ms. Williams had been among those who lobbied Mrs. Clinton to remove Ms. Solis Doyle, arguing that the campaign lacked a plan or a message despite starting out with an overwhelming advantage in money and name recognition, campaign officials said. After resisting for much of the winter, Mrs. Clinton, before the vote in Iowa, told aides that she would replace Ms. Solis Doyle but that she wanted to wait until after New Hampshire.
But when Mrs. Clinton won the New Hampshire contest, the decision was pulled back. Ms. Williams was brought in to work alongside Ms. Solis Doyle, but without an obvious portfolio. The move was widely seen at campaign headquarters as a slap at Ms. Solis Doyle.
Offended, she threatened to leave and had to be courted to return, agreeing to do so only on the condition that she would be in charge. She was finally dismissed after more losses and the news that the campaign was running out of money.
“You may not like the person next to you,” Ms. Williams told dozens of aides who ringed the conference room at the campaign’s Virginia headquarters last month, according to participants. “But you’re going to respect them. And we’re going to work together.”
Ms. Williams’s demand was dismissed as wishful thinking by some in her weary audience. But in the view of many Clinton supporters, it accurately reflected the urgent need to overhaul a campaign that at that point had set itself apart for its level of disorder and dysfunction.
The divisions in her campaign over strategy and communications — and the dislike many of her advisers had for one another — poured out into public as Mrs. Clinton struggled in February to hold off Mr. Obama in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination.
But even as Mrs. Clinton revived her fortunes last week with victories in Ohio, Rhode Island and Texas, the questions lingered about how she managed her campaign, with the internal sniping and second-guessing undermining her well-cultivated image as a steady-at-the-wheel chief executive surrounded by a phalanx of loyal and efficient aides.
“She hasn’t managed anything as complex as this before; that’s the problem with senators,” said James A. Thurber, a professor of government at American University who is an expert on presidential management. “She wasn’t as decisive as she should have been. And it’s a legitimate question to ask: Under great pressure from two different factions, can she make some hard decisions and move ahead? It seems to just fester. She doesn’t seem to know how to stop it or want to stop it.”
Over the last month, Mrs. Clinton, of New York, has become much more involved in the day-to-day operation of her campaign. In addition to Ms. Williams, she brought in two experienced political hands from her husband’s White House: Doug Sosnik, who was a political director, and Steve Ricchetti, a deputy chief of staff.
And Ms. Williams has sought to calm tensions in the headquarters through steps like opening the morning conference call to more aides to foster a greater sense of teamwork. One of her first acts, aides said, was to instruct Mark Penn, Mrs. Clinton’s chief strategist and a polarizing figure in the campaign, to stay off television.
Still, interviews with campaign aides, associates and friends suggest that Mrs. Clinton, at least until February, was a detached manager. Juggling the demands of being a candidate, she paid little attention to detail, delegated decisions large and small and deferred to advisers on critical questions. Mrs. Clinton accepted or seemed unaware of the intense factionalism and feuding that often paralyzed her campaign and that prevented her aides from reaching consensus on basic questions like what states to fight in and how to go after Mr. Obama, of Illinois.
Mrs. Clinton showed a tendency toward an insular management style, relying on a coterie of aides who have worked for her for years, her aides and associates said. Her choice of lieutenants, and her insistence on staying with them even when friends urged her to shake things up, was blamed by some associates for the campaign’s woes. Again and again, the senator was portrayed as a manager who valued loyalty and familiarity over experience and expertise.
Mrs. Clinton stood by Mr. Penn and Patti Solis Doyle, who was until last month her campaign manager, even as her campaign was at risk of letting Mr. Obama sew up the nomination. When some of her closest supporters pressed her to replace them, arguing that the two were clearly struggling with their jobs and had become divisive figures in the campaign, she responded by saying she would “think about it.”
When Mrs. Clinton finally pushed out Ms. Solis Doyle, she chose Ms. Williams, like Ms. Solis Doyle, an old friend who had never before managed a presidential campaign.
Mrs. Clinton’s ability to manage the one person with whom she spoke most often, former President Bill Clinton, was also questioned by some of her advisers and supporters. Mr. Clinton moved in his own orbit — he heatedly argued with his wife’s advisers who wanted to write off South Carolina, defying them to campaign there — and took no direction from the campaign about what to say or where to go, some of them said. (Mr. Obama defeated Mrs. Clinton in the South Carolina Democratic primary by nearly 29 percentage points.)
Several aides, donors and supporters, who requested anonymity to recount private conversations with the candidate, said they had warned Mrs. Clinton that her husband’s attacks on Mr. Obama were demeaning to her and hurting her campaign. Mrs. Clinton replied that her husband became “carried away” at times but that she did not see any real harm from his approach, they said.
Mrs. Clinton’s top advisers said that while her management style might be untidy, it showed her to be comfortable with conflicting ideas among her aides. They said she had pronounced herself “ready to learn” from her mistakes and was resistant to placing too much power in the hands of a single political adviser in the mold of Karl Rove in President Bush’s two campaigns for the White House.
“She thinks the way to manage effectively is to get a lot of smart people around who don’t agree and let them work out their differences creatively,” said Howard Wolfson, her communications director. “Let them hash through things, and as a result, you come up with the best process.”
A senior adviser, Harold Ickes, joined the campaign full-time in January as Mrs. Clinton’s aides began to realize that the contest was not going the way they had planned. Mr. Ickes cautioned about drawing firm conclusions about her from this period, when she faced the demands of being a candidate.
“It’s hard to draw conclusions about her management style,” he said, “because she is, in fact, not the manager of her campaign.”
Still, some of her senior advisers said Mrs. Clinton was left with little option but to become more assertive in getting her campaign back on track, a shift highlighted by her decision to push out Ms. Solis Doyle, one of her closest and longest-serving aides. Her husband changed his advisers at regular intervals as he faced various troubles and shifting political demands while president; Mrs. Clinton, in contrast, has relied on a relatively unchanging cast since she was first lady.
For all her years on the public stage, Mrs. Clinton has never come close to assembling and running an enterprise like the 700-person, $170 million-and-counting campaign organization that she has created. At times, her aides made assumptions about tactics and voters that turned out to be wrong. They nearly ran out of money at all the wrong times, like just after Mrs. Clinton’s victory in the New Hampshire primary and right before the 22 state nominating contests on Feb. 5.
The day after her loss in the Iowa caucuses, Mrs. Clinton took command of a long meeting in New Hampshire. “I’ll do whatever you guys need me to do,” she said, a participant recalled. “I get the message.”
But a month later, she described herself as stunned to learn the campaign was nearly broke — notwithstanding financial reports sent to her every week by e-mail — and was all but conceding the 11 contests that were to come over the next month.
Unlike Mr. Bush, Mrs. Clinton has shown no interest in having one strong person running all aspects of the campaign operation. And unlike her husband during the early part of his 1992 bid for the presidency, she does not try to keep a hand in everything, with lines of communications all through the campaign.
Instead, she talked daily to a few people: Mr. Penn, Ms. Solis Doyle and, now, Ms. Williams. Even Mr. Ickes, her longtime friend and adviser, says he speaks with her infrequently.
This approach, many of her associates said, had the effect of breeding resentment at campaign headquarters. Since there was no one person in charge, they said, it was hard to make decisions, and Mr. Penn would frequently use his personal connection with Mrs. Clinton to block the campaign from moving in directions he opposed, like putting an increased emphasis on trying to present a human side of Mrs. Clinton.
Ms. Williams had been among those who lobbied Mrs. Clinton to remove Ms. Solis Doyle, arguing that the campaign lacked a plan or a message despite starting out with an overwhelming advantage in money and name recognition, campaign officials said. After resisting for much of the winter, Mrs. Clinton, before the vote in Iowa, told aides that she would replace Ms. Solis Doyle but that she wanted to wait until after New Hampshire.
But when Mrs. Clinton won the New Hampshire contest, the decision was pulled back. Ms. Williams was brought in to work alongside Ms. Solis Doyle, but without an obvious portfolio. The move was widely seen at campaign headquarters as a slap at Ms. Solis Doyle.
Offended, she threatened to leave and had to be courted to return, agreeing to do so only on the condition that she would be in charge. She was finally dismissed after more losses and the news that the campaign was running out of money.
segunda-feira, janeiro 07, 2008
Colherezinhas Assassinas
O café da minha rua vai passar a servir colherezinhas de plástico. As de metal representam um perigo para a saúde pública e serão sumariamente substituídas por colherezinhas branquinhas, perfeitinhas, hermeticamente fechadas dentro de saquinhos de plástico transparente. Desprezando as óbvias consequências ambientais e económicas de tal decisão, o que mais custa a aceitar é o grau de perigosidade das tradicionais colherezinhas. Ora vejamos: depois da vaga de violência nas noites do Porto e de Lisboa, e da subjacente proliferação das chamadas armas “brancas”; após a morte de uma idosa de 84 anos no Serviço de Urgências do Hospital de Aveiro, onde desesperou em vão mais de quatro horas para ser atendida (o tempo médio de espera nessa noite era de seis horas); e depois de todos os escândalos e casos dúbios sobre o funcionamento das forcas de segurança pública e da justiça nacional, o presente governo concluiu que o povo português precisaria ser salvo. Mas não das pistolas, nem das metralhadoras, nem dos traficantes de droga, nem das urgências e centros de saúde em processo de encerramento, nem sequer do desemprego ou da pobreza. Os portugueses carecem, isso sim, de protecção contra as terríveis colherezinhas de café. As colherezinhas assassinas.
O Sr. José Sócrates, agora auto-proclamado grande líder europeu (Mahatma Sócrates?), deve ouvir, quando ouve, estas críticas e enquadrá-las como resquícios da falta de cosmopolitismo do povo português. Ele que conhece restaurantes e cafés de Londres, Paris, Berlim, Helsínquia (ai, Helsínquia!), conhece o caminho da modernidade e tem fé, acredita mesmo, que Portugal possa vir a ser como os outros. Uma nação asseada, jovem, que não fuma nem bebe, que corre todas as manhãs, gosta do que faz mas tem tempo para tudo, para si próprio e para os filhos, que controla a linha e que se pudesse convertia-se ao Protestantismo, abandonando as amarras da Igreja Católica. Afinal, um pouco como ele próprio, o Sr. Sócrates.
Infelizmente, ao elaborar esta equação Sócrates ignora dois aspectos fundamentais que deveriam ser de conhecimento obrigatório para desempenhar as funções de Primeiro-Ministro. Em primeiríssimo lugar, impõem-se afirmar, já, agora e em voz bem alta, que nem todos os portugueses ambicionam ser como o Sr. José Sócrates e que o direito dos cidadãos à escolha é inalienável. O Primeiro-Ministro e o Governo têm, é claro, o poder de influenciar e até orientar a população para certas atitudes individuais, como é o caso do respeito pelo ambiente, da educação sexual ou dos princípios da ética cívica, comportamentos dos quais decorre o bem-estar social. Porém, mesmo nesses casos numeráveis e excepcionais, a função do Estado reduz-se a uma posição meramente conselheira, através do ensino escolar básico e de campanhas informativas que raramente ultrapassam essas fronteiras com complementos legislativos. O que o Governo do Sr. Sócrates pretende agora fazer é tomar as diversas opções, desde a quantidade de gordura que desejamos ingerir com as batatas fritas até à matéria da insignificante colher com que misturamos o açúcar no café, que até agora foram apanágio do cidadão individual. Impõem-nos um modelo, o do Sr. Sócrates, e nem sequer nos chegam a explicar porquê esse. Se calhar, não há bom motivo.
Pior, não só está em causa a liberdade individual de escolha, mas também o particularismo de um dos ambientes e hábitos mais orgulhosamente português – o café. Preparem-se, pois em breve deixaremos de comer sardinhas assadas na rua e de levar uma boa martelada por alturas dos Santos Populares em nome dos perigos que tais hábitos possam apresentar ao corpo humano. E assim, de proibição em proibição, o Governo retira-nos a única riqueza que realmente sempre existiu e que pertence a todos os Portugueses, que é o sal do Mar, desta Terra e das suas gentes. Acaba-se a nação e fica-se com um país estéril habitado por dez milhões de Srs. Sócrates.
É esta desfaçatez do Primeiro-Ministro em prole de comportamentos externos e superficiais provenientes de um cosmopolitismo bacoco que nos leva até ao segundo aspecto. Como bem ilustra a substituição das tradicionais colherezinhas de metal pelas de plástico, o Primeiro-Ministro continua a seguir a máxima política, desleixada e mesquinha, de levar a cabo reformas de forma e não de conteúdo. Para o Governo de Sócrates, ser moderno e europeu permanece uma questão de parecer e não de efectivamente ser. Se esse último fosse o seu objectivo, o Sr. Sócrates teria então de lidar seriamente com áreas incómodas e complexas, como a educação, a justiça, e as instituições políticas, que até agora tem apenas extenuado em função das estatísticas. Como diz Pacheco Pereira, José Sócrates é um homem que não gosta de problemas e num país como o nosso, em que os problemas estão na ordem do dia, podemos apenas esperar a substituição das questões fundamentais por uma espécie de surrealismo despótico. Só assim se poderá compreender porque serão tão perigosas as colherezinhas do café.
O Sr. José Sócrates, agora auto-proclamado grande líder europeu (Mahatma Sócrates?), deve ouvir, quando ouve, estas críticas e enquadrá-las como resquícios da falta de cosmopolitismo do povo português. Ele que conhece restaurantes e cafés de Londres, Paris, Berlim, Helsínquia (ai, Helsínquia!), conhece o caminho da modernidade e tem fé, acredita mesmo, que Portugal possa vir a ser como os outros. Uma nação asseada, jovem, que não fuma nem bebe, que corre todas as manhãs, gosta do que faz mas tem tempo para tudo, para si próprio e para os filhos, que controla a linha e que se pudesse convertia-se ao Protestantismo, abandonando as amarras da Igreja Católica. Afinal, um pouco como ele próprio, o Sr. Sócrates.
Infelizmente, ao elaborar esta equação Sócrates ignora dois aspectos fundamentais que deveriam ser de conhecimento obrigatório para desempenhar as funções de Primeiro-Ministro. Em primeiríssimo lugar, impõem-se afirmar, já, agora e em voz bem alta, que nem todos os portugueses ambicionam ser como o Sr. José Sócrates e que o direito dos cidadãos à escolha é inalienável. O Primeiro-Ministro e o Governo têm, é claro, o poder de influenciar e até orientar a população para certas atitudes individuais, como é o caso do respeito pelo ambiente, da educação sexual ou dos princípios da ética cívica, comportamentos dos quais decorre o bem-estar social. Porém, mesmo nesses casos numeráveis e excepcionais, a função do Estado reduz-se a uma posição meramente conselheira, através do ensino escolar básico e de campanhas informativas que raramente ultrapassam essas fronteiras com complementos legislativos. O que o Governo do Sr. Sócrates pretende agora fazer é tomar as diversas opções, desde a quantidade de gordura que desejamos ingerir com as batatas fritas até à matéria da insignificante colher com que misturamos o açúcar no café, que até agora foram apanágio do cidadão individual. Impõem-nos um modelo, o do Sr. Sócrates, e nem sequer nos chegam a explicar porquê esse. Se calhar, não há bom motivo.
Pior, não só está em causa a liberdade individual de escolha, mas também o particularismo de um dos ambientes e hábitos mais orgulhosamente português – o café. Preparem-se, pois em breve deixaremos de comer sardinhas assadas na rua e de levar uma boa martelada por alturas dos Santos Populares em nome dos perigos que tais hábitos possam apresentar ao corpo humano. E assim, de proibição em proibição, o Governo retira-nos a única riqueza que realmente sempre existiu e que pertence a todos os Portugueses, que é o sal do Mar, desta Terra e das suas gentes. Acaba-se a nação e fica-se com um país estéril habitado por dez milhões de Srs. Sócrates.
É esta desfaçatez do Primeiro-Ministro em prole de comportamentos externos e superficiais provenientes de um cosmopolitismo bacoco que nos leva até ao segundo aspecto. Como bem ilustra a substituição das tradicionais colherezinhas de metal pelas de plástico, o Primeiro-Ministro continua a seguir a máxima política, desleixada e mesquinha, de levar a cabo reformas de forma e não de conteúdo. Para o Governo de Sócrates, ser moderno e europeu permanece uma questão de parecer e não de efectivamente ser. Se esse último fosse o seu objectivo, o Sr. Sócrates teria então de lidar seriamente com áreas incómodas e complexas, como a educação, a justiça, e as instituições políticas, que até agora tem apenas extenuado em função das estatísticas. Como diz Pacheco Pereira, José Sócrates é um homem que não gosta de problemas e num país como o nosso, em que os problemas estão na ordem do dia, podemos apenas esperar a substituição das questões fundamentais por uma espécie de surrealismo despótico. Só assim se poderá compreender porque serão tão perigosas as colherezinhas do café.
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