Goodbye, “Relvas law”: smaller parishes “will suffer more” or “has justice been served”?

Replacement of 302 parishes approved by Parliament this Friday with IL alone against the reversal of the law created 11 years ago by the government of Passos Coelho. Junta presidents begin to race against time.

Parliament approved this Friday the replacement of 302 parishes due to the disaggregation of parish unions created by the 2013 administrative reform, better known as the “Relvas law”.

The Bill was voted in favor by the proponents PSD, PS, BE, PCP, Livre and PAN, and also by the CDS-PP. THE single vote against was from the Liberal Initiative and Chega abstained.

In the parliament galleries and in the Senate Room, around two hundred parish mayors watched the vote.

“Hypocrisy” of the PSD, CDS and Chega

A Liberal Initiative (IL) was the only party to announce a vote against the replacement of parishes, considering that more municipalities represent “more positions” and “more public expenditure”.

“It’s incredible how all the parties want to go back to 2013 and create more State. IL is against this setback”, said liberal deputy Mariana Leitão, considering that “‘more parishes’ means more positions, more public spending” and, therefore, “IL votes strongly against” the proposal.

“I wanted to highlight the hypocrisy of this process”, said the party president, Rui Rocha: “and to name the parties, the hypocrisy of PSD, CDS and Chega”.

Regarding the PSD, Rui Rocha considered that the party, by voting in favor of the desegregation of parishes, “contradicts what they proposed and approved during the Passos Coelho Government”.

It is “Luís Montenegro’s PSD voting against Pedro Passos Coelho’s PSD”reinforced Rui Rocha — without forgetting Chega’s abstention.

The IL leader accused André Ventura’s party of making “big proclamations every day about fewer political positions” and, “at the first opportunity, facilitating the increase in political positions in Portugal”. Chega, “with its right hand, proclaims that it no longer wants political positions and, with its left, makes new positions viable”, says the liberal.

Race against time

Many presidents of the junta are also showing their concern and warning of a race against time to complete the equity shares before the next local elections.

The distribution of workers, equipment and contracts in force are yet to be decided, warns Duarte Veiga, president of the Union of Parishes of Ruivães and Novais.

According to the mayor, the allocation of employees will give “problems“, since Ruivães has two workers and Novais none. “But each one must have an employee. From what I found out, no one wants to go to Novais”, he confessed. The situation worsens in parishes with a smaller population, where smaller budgets further limit hiring possibilities.

The division of assets is a headache in the Union of Parishes of Matosinhos and Leça da Palmeira, where the most complicated thing is to make the financial division, says the president of the board Paulo Carvalho: “there will be a management balance, which is duly budgeted . How will this division be done?”.

Deadlines tighten, budgets ‘shrink’

Deadlines for completing the updated asset inventory are tight. According to the law, the working groups responsible for sharing have up to May 31 to complete the updated inventory of assets.

Manuel Azevedo, from Sandim, Olival, Lever and Crestuma, consider the deadline unrealistic, given the number of tasks to be carried out and the overlap with vacation periods and electoral campaigns. The National Association of Parishes (Anafre) simply recognizes the difficulties and trusts in the parishes’ commitment to meeting the deadlines.

In addition to deadlines, with the separation of funds allocated to each parish will be reduced, which could compromise essential services. In smaller parishes, budgets could be consumed almost entirely by personnel costs, as smaller parishes have a smaller budget.

“The smallest parishes are the ones that will suffer the most”believes José Carlos Martins, from the Union of Parishes of Caldas de São Jorge and Pigeiros.

“Justice was done” today in Parliament

Others were happy that Parliament approved the reversal this Friday. The president of the National Association of Parishes (Anafre), Jorge Veloso, celebrated the restoration: “justice was done”he said in statements to Lusa.

According to the official, it was about doing justice to a law that “was poorly done in 2013, not listening to the population, not listening to the mayors and making [as uniões de freguesia] in the offices the rule and square, dividing the country”.

Jorge Veloso gave the example of, in 2013, a parish union was created in Alcácer do Sal, which “was bigger than the island of Madeira” because it brought together four parishes and, when an elderly person needed to provide “proof of life or something like, he had to walk 20 kilometers because his old parish had been closed.”

The official also stressed that it is not true when “some people” say that the desegregations will increase costs for the public treasury and recalled that nowadays “there are many people” in the aggregated parishes “who have no connection to the world, nor it’s just for the country.”

“They don’t have an ATM, they don’t have a health center, they don’t have other skills that they should have and they don’t haveand it is the president of the council himself who, sometimes, takes them and walks 20 kilometers to help make a move at the ATM”, he explained.

In this sense, he believes that now the quality of life of those populations “will increase a lot”highlighting that “proximity is a very important factor for people to feel good and supported”.

“There are a lot of parishes that will do it, I am convinced of that”, he also highlighted.

These parishes that will now be restored were aggregated into 135 parish unions or extinguished and their territories distributed among other municipalities during the administrative reform that in 2013 reduced 1,168 parishes on the continentfrom 4,260 to the current 3,092, as imposed by the ‘troika’.