NEW AZORES STATUTE OPENS A WINDOW ON PORTUGUESE

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 LISBON 000052 SIPDIS E.O. 12958: DECL: 01/23/2019 TAGS: PGOV PREL SOCI PO SUBJECT: NEW AZORES STATUTE OPENS A WINDOW ON PORTUGUESE POLITICS Classified By: POL/ECON COUNSELOR RICHARD REITER, FOR 1.4B, D. ¶1. (C) SUMMARY. A few weeks ago the Portuguese parliament passed a new law regulating relations between mainland Portugal and the Azores islands, which are a Portuguese autonomous region. This seemingly straightforward act was a proxy for far deeper political maneuvering playing out in Lisbon and the Azores, because underlying the statute were political and constitutional battles between the President and Prime Minister and between the two main parties heading into an election year. When the dust had settled, President Cavaco Silva and his PSD party were diminished by events while Prime Minister Socrates and the Socialists remained well positioned for October elections. END SUMMARY. WHAT ARE THE AZORES? -------------- ¶2. (SBU) The nine-island Azorean archipelago, 1,000 miles west of the Portuguese mainland, is one of Portugal's two "autonomous regions" (the Madeira islands being the other). The Portuguese constitution grants political autonomy to the Azores, including a regional legislature and regional president. Americans may know the Azores best as the source of Portuguese immigrants who settled in New England and California. The US Air Force operates at Lajes Field on Terceira Island, and US Consulate Ponta Delgada is located on Sao Miguel Island. The Azorean "constitution" is formally called the "Political-Administrative Statute of the Azores". The first Statute, passed in 1980, was amended in 1987 and 1998, and changes to the Portuguese Constitution in 2004 necessitated a third amendment. So, for the past four years Carlos Cesar, the longtime Azorean regional president, has spearheaded the amendment process with a mandate to expand regional autonomy in several technical and legal areas. POLITICAL TENSIONS -------------- ¶3. (C) Portugal's two major parties are the left-of-center Socialists (PS) and the right-of-center Social Democrats (PSD). Carlos Cesar is PS, so his coordination with Lisbon became easier in 2005 when the Socialists, led by Prime Minister Jose Socrates, won a majority in Parliament. But the next year the PSD took the presidency as Anibal Cavaco Silva replaced a Socialist --and a tense relationship between president and prime minister has shaped Lisbon politics ever since. In the Portuguese system, the President more than a �0A;figurehead, so these tensions have consequences. A VERY LONG YEAR FOR THE STATUTE -------------- ¶4. (C) After two years' gestation in the Azorean legislature, the draft Statute arrived in Parliament in November 2007 and spent several months in committee. With the Azorean branches of both the PS and PSD (and all minor parties) supporting the Statute's expansion of regional autonomy, their mother parties in Lisbon gave the bill unanimous approval in its first floor vote in June 2008. Although his PSD voted in favor, on July 4 President Cavaco Silva refused to sign it, requesting instead a Constitutional Court review of thirteen of its 141 articles. In August, the high court ruled that eight of those articles were indeed unconstitutional. ¶5. (SBU) But Cavaco Silva was not finished. While parliament reworked the eight articles, the President announced that he believed Article 114 --which he had not previously complained about-- was also unconstitutional. Article 114 says "The President shall hear opinions from the regional government before dissolving the regional legislature or setting a date for regional elections". Cavaco Silva said the mandatory nature of the "shall hear" created a new presidential obligation, and thus could only be enacted with a constitutional amendment rather than a statute. But to the Socialists, the perception was of Cavaco Silva, thin-skinned in the best of times, peevishly raising new objections even after the high court had ruled; and worse, making his complaints via the press at the very moment when the PS and PSD were editing the text to meet his earlier concerns. Parliament refused to budge, and when the Statute came to its second vote on September 25, it included the changes ordered by the high court but left Article 114 untouched. It again passed unanimously and went to the President a second time. THIRD TIME A CHARM -------------- ¶6. (SBU) On October 27, predictably, Cavaco Silva vetoed the bill, citing Article 114. Azorean President Carlos Cesar LISBON 00000052 002 OF 003 called Cavaco Silva "overly dramatic" saying it was "unfair to mix up the Statute with an institutional conflict" between Cavaco Silva and PM Socrates. Without making any changes, the Socialists brought the bill to a third floor vote on December 19 and overrode the veto. Cavaco Silva's own PSD party --tugged between the President and their support for the bill-- abstained. Thus on December 29, President Cavaco Silva was forced, reluctantly, to sign the newly-amended Azores Statute into law. He may now challenge the constitutionality of specific articles, but the overall Statute is now in force. WHAT THIS MEANS TO THE AZORES -------------- ¶7. (SBU) In practical terms, the Statute expands and clarifies the powers of the regional government, granting it authority over its own institutions, as well as over key sectors such as taxation, energy, and education. Azoreans of all stripes support it, while most mainland Portuguese are indifferent, so there really is no pocket of resistance. Some Azoreans uncharitably took Cavaco Silva's position as a sign of his native rightist centralism, and Carlos Cesar blamed the President saying, "for form rather than content and egged on by his inner circle, the President foolishly overvalued his own views and then couldn't back down because he'd staked out a position for public opinion". Cesar conceded that if the high court were to strike down Article 114, there would be little real impact on the Statute, which led senior PSD official (and Azorean) Mota Amaral to criticize Cesar for raising the stakes by falsely implying that Azorean autonomy was somehow at stake. ¶8. (C) The PS's refusal to edit the relatively unimportant Article 114 in the face of the veto was a calculated snub of the President and a demonstration of its strength in Parliament. Just before the December 19 floor vote pundits, constitutional scholars, and even some Socialists conceded that Cavaco Silva's objections had merit, but relations between the PS and the President had soured, and the bill moved inexorably to a vote. Each side blamed the other for unnecessarily raising the stakes, and both seemed incredulous that a trivial article in a bill with unanimous support should have sparked such a fierce row. HOW THE PSD LOST ITS GROOVE -------------- ¶9. (C) The PSD is in disarray and Cavaco Silva's insistent opposition to Article 114 further damaged the party. The Social Democrats supported the bill, but being forced to abstain on the final vote made them look inconsistent and confused. They're on a losing streak: last summer they selected a new party president who is proving to be a weak disappointment -- which is sparking internal factionalism. She is the third party leader in the past two years, and there is speculation that she too will be swapped out before October's elections. In parliament, the PSD has proved remarkably ineffective at getting its message out to the public, and it keeps getting steamrolled by the Socialist majority. In a notable embarrassment, on December 5 the PSD lost a key floor vote on a closely-watched education bill --a vote it could have won-- because thirty of its deputies failed to show up to vote. These self-inflicted wounds could not have come at a worse time, for Portugal is gearing up for October elections, and the PSD's troubles suggest the Socialists will not have to work too hard to keep the PSD in the opposition -- recent polling gives the PS a 41-30% lead over the Social Democrats. SOCRATES AND CAVACO SILVA -------------- ¶10. (C) PM Socrates and President Cavaco Silva began their coexistence in 2006 with a self-proclaimed "strategic cooperation" --but that's all history now. The two could not be more different, in style or substance. Socrates is a bare-knuckle politico who kisses babies and counts noses and focuses on steering his party through the next election cycle. Cavaco Silva, by contrast, cultivates the patrician image of a senior statesman adhering to a moral patriotism that can transcend day-to-day politics but, as we have seen, can also be outflanked by a politician like Socrates. But Socrates does not want October's elections to become a popularity contest between himself and the President, for Cavaco Silva's staid, conservative rectitude is popular among Portuguese. Thus both may benefit from keeping the tensions boiling but without letting them boil over. LISBON 00000052 003 OF 003 THE LONGER VIEW: INSTITUTION BUILDING -------------- ¶11. (C) Sometimes lost in these squabbles is the fact that Portugal's democracy is but three decades old and its institutions are still spreading roots. The 1976 constitution is on its fifth revision and a sixth is likely within a decade, suggesting that much of the text is still being interpreted (for example, there was considerable uncertainty about whether the parliamentary votes over the Azores Statute required a simple or two-thirds majority). So debates over the balance of power between President and Parliament may sap some political energy, but they are also necessary to long-term stability. In fact, Portugal's post-dictatorship institutions purposely have these tensions built in to avoid concentrating power in any one person. Nearly every Prime Minister and President since 1976 have engaged in these duels, including the 1986-1995 decade when Cavaco Silva himself was PM and a Socialist was President. THE SCORECARD -------------- ¶12. (C) Cavaco Silva had every right to raise questions about the Statute, and the Constitutional Court partially vindicated him by striking down eight of the 141 articles. His mistakes were tactical: by not objecting to Article 114 the first time around he contributed to the overheated rhetoric, creating drama where none was necessary. Similarly, the Socialists in Parliament succeeded in wielding their political dominance, but their mistake was in bringing a bill to the floor with so many unconstitutional articles, which put their competence into question and gave the President an easy soapbox. Finally, the Azorean regional government ended up demonstrating significant leverage in national politics (some pundits are calling it extortion). Azorean President Carlos Cesar got everything he wanted from Lisbon and more. In fact, last year he had insisted that Socrates and the mainland Socialists give him his way on the Statute if they wanted him to remain as the party's standard-bearer in the Azores; they did, and he did. The lasting impression from the whole scenario of the Statute is that of Cavaco Silva churlishly standing, alone, on a point of principle, his PSD reduced to watching from the sidelines, and the Socialists taking advantage as the country heads into an election cycle. STEPHENSON