Portugal’s Public Administration Mess
First of all. Dear reader, pleae have forbearance with my Swinglish (Swedish/English)
Portugal is a wonderfull country with stunning landscapes, a characteristic beautiful arcitecture, wonderfull wines (particularly the Alentejo brands) and tasty food. People are nice and tolerant. They live and let live. The language is a living medivial latin dialect consolidated in the 12th century and it sounds beautiful. I have chosen Portugal as my country of residence after retirement. But everything has more than one side to it and Portugal has also got some disadventages. The public administration mess stands out. I will give some comments on what characterises it, what are the probable reasons for it and what can constructively be done to rectify it.
First, I will give four answers to the hypothetic comment of: “If you don’t like it, why don’t you go home to your own country”
1. A country is more than the state that dwells in it. A country can be very nice despite a not so successful state. After all you deal hundred times more with the civil society than with the authorities.
2. If you deliberately move to another country, you should accept its basic values and culture, and I do so -very much.
3. The freedom of expression is for all and it is not restricted to citizenship. It is the cornerstone of a living democracy. Critical analysis and critical comments on what the public authorities do is a necesary part of public life. Without it, the autorities in any county go lazy, power abusive, inefficient, overspending corrupt and so on. So all states should be thankfull to criticism, even if it sometimes hurts a bit. Criticism of a state is a gift to it.
4. If you live by the sea, you do not hear the rushing of the waves until it gets calm and the sund disappears. If you are born in a country, you take the way the authorities work for granted and natural. A forreigner looks upon things with fresh eyes and sea different things. Forreigners are good evaluators.
Now to the characteristics of the Portuguese public administration mess. It is not about service provision but about licences, authorisations and document issues. There is combination of OBSOLETE LAWS, DOCUMENT FETISHISM and INEFFICIENT ADMINISTRATION. Exemple: If you transport anything that is considered a “mercadoria” in your car, you are obliged to cary a “guia de transporte” stating your route, fiscal numbers of buyers and sellers, invoice details etc. This means that if you happen to have spare bag of cement and want to lend it out to friend who is doing works at home on a Sunday, you break the law by transporting it. During the drought in 2004 it was very difficult to buy straw for horses. A friend of mine offered to sell a load of bales to a reasonable price. No one dared to transport it of fear for the police. I had to give away a horse that I couldn’t feed beceause of this law. This is absurd. Law restrictions of what you may do and may not do must have an objective to protect individuals or to protect genuine common interests (such as traffic safety, environmental care etc.) Guia de transporte is a sheer state power abuse that has got no positive effect of any kind and that does not protect anybody from any evil. It does not exist outside Portugal and it does not confer to the standards of a “Estado de Direito” that the polce can stop you and ask for this paper without suspicion of crime and without a serach warrant. Guia de tranporte should just be abolished if Portugal wants to live up to European standards of governance.
An EU citizen who reside in another EU country has the right to the same public health provision as a citizen. It took for me more than a year to obtain the plastic card. For simple renovations of a house in a non sensitive arcitectural area is required paperwork that takes months and sometimes years. Untill recently, there were four different processes to go thru for legally buildning a swimming pool. To rent out a property to tourists, a licence is required in spite of allready existing laws on taxing the income, contractual law, laws on responsibilty in case of accidents etc. Why does the authorties not just issue a brochure to inform about what is required for renting out to help landlords doing it lawfully? Even worse, the municipalities that should issue the licenses are completely inefficient and don’t know how to do it. They sometimes refuse licences inventing various Catch 22 pretexts just beceause you run less risk of formal wrongdoing by saying no than by saying yes. After failiure by the municipalities to issue the licences many landlords rent out anyway (otherwise, the tourist industry would be hurt and lots of people would loose income). There are crack downs and fining of property owners who rent out without the licence that they lack just because of the lack of capacity on the part of the muncipalities. Are we in a European developed country or are we some elsewhere?
What follows from the adminstrative failiures is that people avoid the authorities. They do their business without registring a firm, they transport their goods on small roads, They build without permission. The silent contract between citizen and state gets broken. The looser is the state, that gets less tax revenue and meats avoidence and distrust. The state also looses control beceause of the avoidance. The loosers are also the citizens who cannot manage to do all they do according to the law, even if they want to, and who often have to live with some faer for authorities.
The reasons for all this is a deeply rooted attitude of not criticising and confronting. The P.M. Mr. Socrates said regarding human rights abuse in Russia: “Ninguem pretenda dar licões a ninguem” (Nobody should lecture anyone). Mr. Socrates infamous comment defines very clearly the root of Portugal’s problems. The pinciple of not lecturing others might be sympathic in private social life but it is devastating in public life and it is incompatible with a dynamic democracy. (Mais pessoas que dao licões às autoridades) More people who lecture the authoritie is what Portugal needs. The basic reason for Portugal’s backwards public administration is the reluctance to actively engage in public affairs and to act as concerned critical citizens. The gost of Salzar still casts its shaddow over the mentality formation.
What can be done? It is easy. The answer is BENCHMARKING – LEARNING FROM BEST PRACTICE. There are countries in Europe where you can register a private firm over th counter in minutes, where you do not have to drive with documents as the police can get all information from the central vehicle register by computer and never disturbs people driving if they do not do anything wrong. In some countries you can present your own drawings to get an instant permit for simple building renovations and exensions. In many countries you never have to visit a public office as all errends can be solved by post mail (since nearly a hundred years) or over the internet.
The private sector in Portugal is in par with the most developed countries in the world, for exemple the bank service and the shopping malls. The methods of work were not invented in Potugal but the companies have been wise enough to learn from benchmarking. They pick up the best of best that is practised in other countries. This could easely be done in public adminstraton too. Why not form delegations for study visits to the countries that are most effcient in the various sectors? Connect legal drafters to the delegations and let them draft sugestions for law changes deemed necessary to make it possible to adapt the most rational methods and let the legal drafters present the ideas to the ministers in charge. In the next step the minsters concerned take initiatives to propositions to the legislature. Such a project would be very simple to launch and it could have tremendous positive effects to bring Portugal’s public administrtion forwards
And remember – do never ever give the counter argument to administrative rationalisation that some civil servants would loose their jobs. That argument is like deciding not to use copiators but let a hundred civil servants write copies with goosequills. New jobs that are productive in education, health care, infrastructure etc. can be created in the public sector financed by retention of thousands of counter productive jobs,
If Portugal took this measure and arrived at a rational public adminstration and abandoned unnecessary red tape laws, it would become a lot more prosperous and dynamic and it would be the best country in the world to live in. So, Dear Madams/ Sirs heading State organs - Go on!
Good luck
Göran Linde
São Marcos da Serra
