Foreign Direct Investment in Portugal

During the pre-election campaign, Cavaco Silva suggested that there should be a minister responsible for foreign direct investment. Only one week after Cavaco was elected, Manuel Pinho, economy minister, has shown that such a move is unnecessary.

He didn't call a press conference, preferring to let RTP do the work of presenting details of committed and promised investments. As it happened, the minister was available to confirm everything positive that the journalists had said, live on prime-time TV, in RTP1's most viewed programme of the week, which happened to coincide with a football match on TVI, thus boosting audience numbers even more.

The most unbelievable exchange was a "yes" response to Judith de Sousa's innocent question: "Are all these investments enough to offset all the job losses we have been hearing about?" He has to be joking!

Maybe it's the similarity with Gary Sinise that makes me unable to believe anything he says. In CSI-NY, Gary Sinise is a sinister character who manages to solve unfathomable cases with apparent ease. In Snake Eyes, he is determined and unstoppable, rather like the Minister's public image.

It remains to be seen whether this evening was a signal that the government intends to implement the president(-elect)'s suggestions or whether this was a pre-emptive move to show that those suggestions are not needed.

New colour for BES

During the presidential election coverage, after annoucning the projected results, SIC showed what seemed like 20 minutes of adverts with numerous repetitions of the "What colour is the new BES" adverts. I have always been against the habit of repeating the same spot in a block of advertising, and these repetitions were clearly excessive.

Quite frankly, if the colour of a bank's logo made any difference, Millennium BCP would have closed its doors shortly after unveiling its new pink logo. Fortunately for BCP, the bank and services survived, and its customers persisted, though they had to learn how to write "milénio" in English.

My guess for BES is "snot green" (verde ranho). We will see.

We have a winner

So the presidential elections are over, thank goodness. Cavaco came a close second to the abstention block, a reasonable achievement in itself.

The high point of the night was Manuel Alegre routing Mario Soares and the PS establishment - congratulations to him. What is he going to do now? Would he make a good Culture or Education Minister? Possibly not, but with 1.1 million supporters, Socrates would be pushed to turn him down if he asked for a cabinet post.

The low point had to be shared by Jose Socrates and the media. If Socrates didn't know that Alegre was already speaking live, his team is more incompetent than anybody imagined. To start a speech just after Alegre is an obvious dirty trick. To add insult to injury, all TV channels cut to Socrates, leaving Alegre recording for later transmission. Hold on a minute! Which one was a candidate? Socrates was only speaking as chairman of the Socialist Party.

What were the news directors thinking? Ah! Of course! They know which side their bread is buttered. The PS chairman just happens to be Prime Minister, emphasized by the PM's office later issuing an apology. Has Socrates no idea of protocol? As for decency and ethics, there's no point even asking - he has none.

The comedy prize goes to Garcia Pereira for achieving fewer votes than either spoiled ballots or abstentions. As he said, it must have been due to the media failing to cover his campaign....

Just one doubt remains: What am I going to write about from now on.

Soares: dancing politician

A very good article by Peter Wise, Financial Times' Lisbon correspondent.

Land of Hope and Glory

It's irrelevant whether I'm for or against Mário Soares. As an Englishman, I object to his using Land of Hope and Glory in his campaign spots for television. Whoever chose it doesn't know its significance - hardly left-wing sentiments being expressed here.

Presidential Campaign Under Way

I'm glad that the presidential campaign finally got under way yesterday.

Makes me wonder what the fuss of the last six months' "pré-campanha" was all about...

Mário Soares Advertising

While most of the presidential campaign posters are wasted space, the worst have to be Mário Soares' "Sempre Presente" and "MP3" posters. Neither of them say anything positive about the candidate, implying that persistence is a quality required of a president. The latter is particularly sad, trying to appeal to voters too young to have voted for him 15 years ago.

Let's just hope there is a clear winner in the first round of voting, to get the presidential circus out of the way as quickly as possible.

Office 2003 Irritation

Latest irritation from Microsoft:

• when opening Word attachments in Outlook 2003, Word 2003 shows a preview style which is complete rubbish, showing nonsense in all documents opened over the last 2 months. I have to switch views to be able to read the documents and can't find a way of turning this option off!

Thanks Bill!