Devil of a Time for Portugal

The Japanese came up with a system called just-in-time, a way of getting parts to factories only at the moment they’re needed, avoiding costly warehousing and handling. In Portugal, just-in-time is less an efficient production system than a philosophy of life — and politics.

The Prime Minister for the past six years, António Guterres, quit in December after his Socialist Party (PS) was trounced in municipal elections by its main rival, the Social Democratic Party (PSD). Guterres had two years left in his term but felt bound to step down after such a huge slap, the worst part of which was that the Social Democrats captured the City Hall in Lisbon for the first time since the 1974 revolution that ended decades of dictatorship. With general elections on March 17, many Portuguese commentators think Guterres stepped aside just in time for the country to have a chance to avoid becoming the European Union’s basket case.

Guterres had 115 of the 230 seats in parliament, which left him having to horse-trade with the Popular Party — whose slogan this campaign is “Portugal Needs a Right Arm” — and with the Communist Party, each of which has 15 seats in the outgoing parliament. The center-right Social Democrats have 81. Polls say the man most likely to replace Guterres is José Manuel Durão Barroso, a 45-year-old lawyer who became PSD leader in 1999. He insists he has arrived, well, just in time. “In the context of Europe, the country is in an almost emergency situation,” he said last week.

Portugal’s official 2001 budget deficit was 2.2%, enough to stir the ire of the European Commission. Durão Barroso says wryly that this was “only a slight variation of 100%” on the government’s 1.1% prediction and that it’s probably higher because of trick accounting. He won’t say where he would wield the ax but claims he will be tough on the state-funded institutions that grow around Portuguese governments like suckerfish around the mouth of a whale. “There were 130 of these six years ago,” he says. “The Guterres government added another 78. Most are to give jobs to the boys.”

Durão Barroso is certain he will win on March 17; “the question is by how much.” It is a vital question. If he cannot pass the 115-seat mark — and that would require the PSD to score another 35 seats — he could be in a similar fix to the one that led Guterres to bow out.

Portugal’s press sometimes depicts Durão Barroso as having built a career on the luck of being in the right place at the right time. He bristles at this: “I was the top law student in my year. Surely because I was lucky. I did a master’s in Geneva, and scored the best results ever. Of course, I was lucky. I was a member of the government of Anibal Cavaco Silva when I was 29. Surely because I was lucky. At 36 I was one of the youngest Foreign Ministers ever in Europe. Once again, lucky. I think the country desperately needs some good luck.”

The man in the unlucky position of having to persuade the Portuguese to instal another Socialist Prime Minister is Eduardo Ferro Rodrigues, sometimes called Mr. Minimum Wage for having introduced one under Guterres. He and Durão Barroso faced off in a TV debate last week, continually talking over each other and not saying where they would rein in spending. This despite a manifesto calling for just that clarity — plus a long list of fiscal reforms — signed by eight prominent Portuguese, economists and a lawyer, of varying political persuasions. The lawyer, Vasco Vieira de Almeida, insisted after the debate that “quick action is needed, with streamlining of the administration and financial discipline.”

One voter who has witnessed the gamut of governments in Portugal is Carlos Patrone, 82, a retired industrial chemist in the town of Carnaxide, outside Lisbon. He says he has never towed any party’s line. Who will he mark his card for? “I’m so fed up,” he smiles, “I’m almost ready to vote for the Devil.” Between now and March 17, someone may be just in time to persuade him otherwise.