Antônio Cotrim / Lusa
Aníbal Cavaco Silva
The theory of collective choices, Sá Carneiro, the reforms that Portugal needs, or the conquest of power.
Hannibal Cavaco Silva highlights that Portugal needs reforms and advises the Government not to halt its intentions to carry out these reforms.
The former prime minister begins by mentioning in a collective choice theory and the behavior of politicians and bureaucrats – which at the time showed the Francisco Sá Carneirowho was president of the PSD.
This theory argues that solutions in the public sector could be more effective if there were no “bureaucrats’ behaviors”. It is understood that “bureaucrats” are state employees with leadership positions.
Jumping to the present, and to the current Ministry of State Reform and the Government Program on State reform, Cavaco warns that the Government will have difficulties ahead.
When remembering James Buchanan, Nobel Prize winner in Economics in 1986, the former president of the Republic writes that “Politicians, being normal people, have as their main objective the conquest and stay in power” – that is, their decisions may not be focused on improving social well-being.
Cavaco reinforces “the influence of bureaucrats in the political decision-making process and the difficulties they can create for members of the Government”.
Because bureaucrats try to “satisfy their particular objectives of holding forms of power over other groups, of personal promotion, of prestige and of obtaining material compensation”.
Thus, public services are inflated, the number of their subordinates is increased, the maintenance of inefficient economic and social services, the public production of public goods and services (remember that public provision does not imply public production), intervention in the economy through regulation and its complexity so that they are monopolists of bureaucratic knowledge, “which places them in a position of superiority in relation to the affected groups”.
Cavaco Silva also warns that the same bureaucrats – a “powerful group of pressure”, by influencing many politicians – They do not like reforms in public administration. They are afraid that they are exceeded.
The former prime minister repeats that Portugal needs urgent reforms in public administration. But “there has been no shortage of resistances coming from within the State itself, which has been joined by support from opposition political forces aiming to undermine the Government”.
Cavaco Silva then attacks the Court of Auditorswho “exasperated himself as if he were a holder of bureaucratic power”, against the body’s proposed reform: a reduction in the threshold for prior inspection of public contracts – the Court of Auditors issued a “legal opinion with pamphlet content”, in a “clear manifestation of judicial corporatism”, according to constitutionalist Rui Medeiros.
To conclude, Cavaco Silva leaves advice to parties in the “possible arc of government” and particularly defends Gonçalo MatiasDeputy Minister and State Reform.
“It is essential that these (parties) have the intelligence, discernment and vision of the future to follow the determination of Minister Gonçalo Matias (of State reform), who has already revealed that he has the right ideas about reform, in order to improve the efficiency of Public Administration, truly placing it at the service of citizens, companies and institutions”.
“It’s an opportunity that shouldn’t be missed.”
