Statement by the President of the Assembleia da República, Augusto Santos Silva, at the Plenary Sitting on 29 March 2022
Ladies and gentlemen, dear colleagues,
Without forgetting the "thank you very much!" I owe the Socialist Party Parliamentary Group, the proponent of my candidacy, I am addressing you all because I will be everyone's President.
Thank you for the trust you have just placed in me, electing me to be the President of the Assembleia da República, i.e., choosing me for the prestigious and demanding position of the first among peers. I will strive to be deserving of the honour you have thus bestowed upon me, holding an impartial, moderate and unifying presidency, preserving the individuality of each Member of the Assembleia da República, respecting the independence and agenda of all parliamentary groups, defending the role and image of the Parliament and ensuring everyone the best conditions for the full and productive exercise of their respective mandates, be it in plenary, committees and working groups, or in the essential direct and permanent contact with voters.
I would like to greet the staff of the Assembleia da República and the members of the security forces serving here. I also wish to guarantee them a fair and effective presidency so that professional fulfilment remains the best path to organisational performance.
I would like to greet the journalists, whose information and mediation work is so important for the awareness and scrutiny of what we do.
I would also like to greet the regulatory bodies, councils, commissions, and committees working within the Assembleia da República and promise them the best collaboration.
Finally, I would like to greet the Presidency of the Republic, the Government, and the Courts, with which the Parliament will pursue a relationship of harmony and mutual respect, in full compliance with the constitutional requirements and the Portuguese democratic tradition. I would also like to greet the Autonomous Regions and their Assemblies and Governments, local authorities and their associations, the armed forces, the security forces and services, social partners, all religious beliefs in Portugal, educational, scientific, cultural and innovation institutions, non‑governmental organisations, and other civil society structures; and I would particularly like to greet all political parties, without which there is no pluralist democracy.
Dear colleagues,
It is an honour, which certainly exceeds personal merit, the one you place upon me, to occupy the same seat where, after the liberating dawn, Henrique de Barros sat; and to follow individuals such as Almeida Santos, Mota Amaral, Jaime Gama, Assunção Esteves and Ferro Rodrigues, just to name those who presided over this house in the last quarter of a century. Allow me to particularly mention the latter, not only because he is the person I am directly succeeding, but above all, because Eduardo Ferro Rodrigues, with whom I share a political path of more than four decades, is, for me and so many others, a great inspiration in terms of civic engagement, political coherence, ethical demand, and personal integrity – a living example of Ricardo Reis's saying, "to be great, be whole".
The fact that you chose me, and in my circumstance, has a political significance that goes beyond me and on which I must focus. As far as I know, I will be the first President of Parliament originating from and having a permanent place of business and residence in the city of Porto; that would already be worth mentioning because it is also a way of demonstrating that the whole of the nation and its territory is represented here. However, much more relevant from a political and symbolic point of view is the fact that today is the inaugural day that this seat is occupied by a Member of the Assembleia da República elected by an emigrant constituency.
Thus, the parliamentary representation of the two million and three hundred thousand Portuguese identity card holders living abroad (and of the more than five million people who, when we add their descendants, we estimate to form our communities) reaches its plenitude because it is also taken over by someone who, in addition to being a Member of the Assembleia da República, is the President of Parliament.
The personal dimension of this process is irrelevant. I am only the first blow of a wind that will last. But the institutional and symbolic dimension is absolutely decisive. Today's act expresses, better than any other, the truly national representation that the Assembleia da República constitutes, both in the diversity of ideas and in the variety of territories: it is one of the best ways to tell those compatriots who live and work abroad, on all continents and in almost all nations, that we listen to them, we think of them, we care for them, that Portugal is also made of them.
Ladies and gentlemen,
By electing a community-elected Member of the Assembleia da República as your President, you not only strengthen national unity but also strengthen our capacity for international projection and global influence.
Regardless of the positions I occupied, I have always said, over the years, that the explanation for why Portugal's influence went far beyond what would result from the mechanical effect of its demographic, territorial, economic, or military dimension was, of course, in its history, the contemporary profile of a democratic, peaceful, cohesive, and developed country, and in the permanence of a foreign policy open to the world and championing multilateralism and international law. However, it went beyond that because it had two fantastic resources of "soft power" or influence: the communities and the language. The communities that signal our presence worldwide and show what we are about, what we want and how others see us worldwide. And the language, the language we share with other peoples, the most widely spoken language in the Southern Hemisphere, one of the most growing languages, the language that is the daily tool of over 260 million people, serving to express multiple cultures, the language that, being our homeland, is the homeland of others, each people making it their homeland in their own way so that Portuguese is today, at the same time, the building factor of different nations and the strongest and perennial link between those nations.
And why is this mentioned in a parliamentary speech? Well, for two fundamental reasons.
The first one is that just by looking at the multi-centric nature of the language in which we express ourselves – each individual in their variety, where the relationship between these varieties results in the strength of the common language – we understand that patriotism can only thrive in the constant fight against all excesses of nationalism. Patriots, because they love their homeland, praise the love of others for their homelands and understand that it is only in the plurality of nations that theirs truly flourishes. Nationalists, however, hate the homeland of others, want to close their own homeland to contact with others, discriminate against those who are different and, rather than hospitality, promise ostracism. Therefore, we just have to think for a minute of the incredible strength of this language of so many nations, which is Portuguese, to understand in the most profound way that the correct requirement to be patriotic is not to be nationalistic – it is to not be afraid of opening borders, integrating migrants, welcoming refugees, engaging in trade and cultural exchanges.
The second reason why I invoke our language here is that it is naturally the context in which we conceive and express our thinking. The limits of language are the limits of thought, as is generally known, which also means that language resources are powerful resources of thought. This President you have chosen, who believes his noblest duty is that, simply, to give the floor to those who request it, would like for the freedom of those who are thus vested with the power to speak to be adorned with care for the language in which the word is expressed.
Certainly, what I will mention next could be said of other languages, but I speak of Portuguese here, and I speak Portuguese: our language, which (to invoke Virgílio Ferreira and Sophia or Eugénio de Andrade) has the vastness of the sea and the clarity of light, the language of Vieira, Eça, Drummond de Andrade, Lispector, Luandino, Mia Couto, Saramago and so many others, this language of ours is not meant to shout empty formulae. It is a language that was made and has transformed and evolved in meetings, in discoveries, in miscegenations. It is a poetic language, which opens itself to others and does not confine itself to evidence, a language that inquires and imagines, and in which, therefore, clichés that throw stones rather than arguments and that blind rather than illuminate sound fake.
The punctuation mark democracy needs the most is the question mark. The punctuation mark it needs the least is the exclamation mark, which, unlike what happens with fanaticisms of all sorts (as Amos Oz has shown so well), democracy should use sparingly. Let us leave certainties to fools and let us cultivate our ability to question and inquire without fear. Questioning rattles prejudices, opens paths, invites you to listen to the various answers, halts dogmatism and intolerance.
I often heard Mário Soares say that his only weapon, as a politician, was the word. Nothing is more accurate. Words create and express ideas, share ideas, make it possible to argue, communicate, understand, interpret, convince, motivate. The Parliament is the house of the word, the free word, so often uncomfortable, harsh, hard. Of the necessary word and with the measure of necessity the circumstance requires. All ideas can be raised, even those that challenge democracy, because that is the obvious advantage of democracy over dictatorship.
As much as they are or appear to be eccentric, the expression of ideas by others should be welcomed with courtesy since it is not because others are prevented from expressing themselves that someone is right. And own ideas do not need to be shouted because the quality of arguments is not measured in decibels.
The only speech that has no place here is hate speech, that is to say, speeches that deny human dignity to anyone, speeches that insult others only because they are different, speeches discriminating, whatever the ground for discrimination, speeches inciting violence and persecution. Freedom and equality cost too much for us now to accept to go back to new times of barbarity.
Ladies and gentlemen,
The 15th legislature begins, as far as Portugal is concerned, at a bright moment: that in which the democratic system finally has more days than the longest dictatorship in Europe in the 20th century. In 2024, we will mark the 50th anniversary of the Carnation Revolution and, in 2026, the 50th anniversary of the Constitution of the Republic. Already in 2022 is the bicentenary of the first Portuguese Constitution. All these steps in democratic history will be duly marked in the Parliament.
But the times we live in, in Europe and the world, are very difficult times. Russia's war against Ukraine and its strategic, economic, and social consequences deeply trouble our conscience, but they also call for a reaffirmation of our geopolitical position and the development and implementation of public policies that safeguard the economy, employment, and social cohesion. We have high responsibilities, both nationally and internationally, namely as members of the United Nations, the European Union, and the Atlantic Alliance. I would particularly like to greet the armed forces, now called upon to carry out new tasks, which, if necessary, they will carry out with the dedication and expertise that have characterised their intervention in peace missions and other external operations.
The Assembleia da República, which is the area of excellence for representing the nation in all its diversity and plurality of opinions, in addition to the matrix functions of drafting legislation and monitoring and scrutinising the Government and the Administration, is the real centre of political debate. All relevant topics are raised and discussed here.
But parliamentary debate requires compliance with two basic rules. One is respect for all the mandates resulting from the Portuguese people's free vote, whatever the electoral representativeness and their programme proposals. The other rule is respect for the will of the people, as it materialises in the aggregate sum of individual votes and is expressed in the relative size of the different parliamentary groups.
On the one hand, the number of Members in a group is not a sufficient reason to even cast doubt on the free exercise of each mandate, with the necessary means and under the conditions of the Rules of Procedure. On the other hand, the rights of each Member of the Assembleia da República cannot be used as a pretext for seeking to impose distortion or disregard for the majorities that the sovereign people have formed. That is the view I will take, as President, confident that that is also the view taken by the Chamber.
These difficult, complex times, where some of the basic assumptions of life in Europe were suddenly questioned and where uncertainty seems to be the defining feature of the economic and strategic environment, are times conducive to all kinds of manipulation, prejudice and messianism. Times where populism can flourish, with its abusive simplifications, summary exclusions, denial of pluralism and diversity, stigmatisation of vulnerable people and victim blaming, invention of enemies and the replacement of debate with insults.
Portuguese society is not immune to this virus and, therefore, the Parliament is not as well. However, the best way to fight it is to not give it more relevance than the Portuguese people wanted to attribute to it; and it is to counter the excluding violence of its obsessive exclamation marks with the firm serenity of those who know they have the support of people and the comfort of reason. A reason that problematises, questions, listens, assesses, corrects – and that is why it is the democratic reason.
That critical, tolerant, and enlightened reason to which it will, henceforth, by your choice, be my honour to give the floor.
Thank you very much.