Strange Democracy (2)

The other strange democratic happening of the last few weeks has been the collapse of Lisbon City Council. How is it possible that the PSD sees fit to paralise the largest City in Portugal because its (independent) mayor was asked by the public prosecutor to make declarations about a matter that clearly is not his fault nor responsability.

So now, rather than working to manage a complicated city and clear the backlog of payments, planning decisions, etc., the politicians have six weeks to make fatuous declarations, slander each other, and generally waste everybody's time.

First off the line was Helena Roseta, with her indignant insistence that the City's accounts should be published on its website for all to see. Brilliant! How many voters could actually make sense of such accounts? Is the treasury problem the fault of Carmona Rodrigues (doubt it), or Santana Lopes (probably) or even João Soares? What will she come up with next?

My principal hope is that voters send a message to the PSD, pushing them into 4th place behind the two independents. Not that the party would take much notice - the important party representatives are almost guaranteed to be elected with this party list system: proportional representation, for the benefit of the powerful, not the voter.