José Pedro Zúquete considers that “a good part of the people on the left, whether more popular, patriotic, rooted, do not recognize the demographic changes in their communities and value social and community cohesion”. “When they don’t recognize themselves among their elites, these people change ship”, says the researcher, justifying that this change is “visible” in the results of the legislative elections in May this year.
“People feel insecure, threatened, disoriented”
At the presentation of the book by Miguel Morgado (who was a political advisor to Passos Coelho), the former social democratic leader made an intervention about liberalism. According to this political ideology, “there should be no problem with people feeling like foreigners in their own land”, then ironizing that they would be considered “cosmopolitan”, which “was great”. There is however a problem: “People feel insecure, threatened, somewhat disoriented, suspicious… Everything that is very human characteristics and that, under normal circumstances, is not worth much, in environments like these, things can go wrong.”
With this he took the opportunity to criticize former Prime Minister António Costa, saying that the socialist governments led by the now president of the European Council had a principle: “Let it in. This is supposed to be like this and I don’t ask anyone anything.”
According to Passos, this was the speech that Costa had for the “senior staff” of the Foreigners and Borders Service (SEF), now extinct. When these positions warned that “they were losing control” over immigration, that “a lot of people were coming in” who didn’t even know “who they were” and without being asked for a “criminal certificate”, António Costa would say (according to Passos Coelho): “That’s really how it is, do you understand? Don’t think it’s a coincidence. That’s what it’s for, it’s to get these people in. This is to continue.”