A fable of real politics

The basic story can be told in three sentences: the Carnide Parish Council was waiting for some money owed by the Lisbon City Council for some time, thanks to a moderately demagogic scheme known as the "participatory budget" (invented to pretend that citizens control their own money, pompously referred to by the government as "public funds"). The transfer of that sum to the Parish Council's pockets was approved about a week ago in the Municipal Assembly. All the parish council presidents lamented the delay, attributing it to bureaucratic procedures—"because sometimes, as we all know, things need to be expedited; you can't wait the entire time a process takes to move through the departments"—and pleaded that the bureaucracy not be repeated now, after the transfer proposal had been approved in the Assembly.

A piece of candy. Seeing the rulers become victims of themselves, vulnerable to the absurd bureaucratic machine they themselves invented and nurtured, is priceless.

I begin by congratulating the parish of Carnide for achieving the invaluable improvement it had hoped for. Next, I'll use the anecdote, as it's difficult to find a perfect example to understand the nature and effects of bureaucracy. Bureaucracy grows on its own, needs no help, transforms into the "monster" Cavaco Silva described in a famous article in February 2000 in the late Diário de Notícias, and beyond a certain size, begins to act against citizens and society.

Bureaucracy grows whenever more rules, regulations, obligations, and prohibitions are requested; and it is fueled when more employees are requested, because there is a clear "lack of human resources"; and then it is essential to find more rules, obligations, and prohibitions to keep that army of employees busy and justify their salaries; and in this zealous manner, bureaucracy ends up operating against the citizens, since it sees itself as the State's only defense against the countless scoundrels that citizens constantly want to perpetrate.

These operations, which the zealous bureaucracy dismisses as thinly disguised trickery, are, at bottom, all change. From a certain point onward, no citizen is entitled to make a change in their life without resorting to bureaucracy. From that same point onward, the only reason a citizen submits to bureaucracy is the desire to change anything in their life. Or in their home. Or in their family. Or in their company. When the impediment of citizens to change even the small part that concerns them, without that change being previously assessed and approved by the State, becomes the norm in a society, that society is sick. Bureaucracy has turned against society.

The vicious cycle is sinister. Every time more regulation, more rules, obligations, and prohibitions are called for, violins are heard in the corridors of bureaucracy. These demands for more and more rules are a typical product of the left, and even more typical of the far left, which thrives on ruling, but they are also typical of the majority of the Portuguese political right, whose leaders uncritically embrace everything the left decides. The leaders of our beloved right draw inspiration from the left in everything, from morality to the most cunning techniques for creating and maintaining power. Moreover, the less a party or leader knows about a given subject, the more instinctively they are inclined to mandate or prohibit things, convinced that politics is a collection of imposed obligations and prohibitions, provided we know how to identify the "right" and, preferably, "disruptive" obligations and prohibitions.

All corruption passes through the labyrinths of bureaucracy. Major corruption (through the obvious need to "streamline"), medium-sized corruption, and petty corruption also pass through. This is perhaps the main truth that political parties need to grasp if they want to combat corruption: combat bureaucracy. Where there is bureaucracy, there is corruption. Where there is less bureaucracy, there will be less corruption.

All things considered, and returning to the beginning, it's sweet to contemplate a case like that of the parish of Carnide, and the finely tuned chorus of other parish council presidents before the Lisbon City Council. They nurtured the bureaucracy, always thinking it would apply to others. They never imagined it would turn against them. Those who created it now complain about its effects. They beg that the expected funds not be lost in the labyrinths receiving stamps and verifications, from department A to department B, C, and D, until the parish of Carnide receives its share. A kind of fable of real politics.