“we are nurturing a monster”

The report that follows belongs to the long story that happened in the extravagant Mobutu’s regime during the Zaire period of Congo. This is a limit and an extreme case of power and public money abuse that can also be seen, in its soft and dissimulated form, in Portuguese state and in different degrees in all other politics regimes.

“Via the ruling MPR, Mobutu had at least 400 attractive posts, ranging from positions in the party’s central committee, executive council, regional administration and state enterprises, to offer as sweeteners. On top of that, and apparently endless succession of cabinet reshuffles prevented ministers from becoming overconfident while allowing a great number of favourites their turn at the national trough, between 1965 and 1990, when the one- party system come to an end, Zaire saw fifty-one government teams come and go, an average of two a year. Each contained an average of forty ministers and deputy ministers. “

“On ministerial fittings alone, rich pickings were to be had. Each minister had the right to two cars –usually a black Mercedes, Peugeot 605 or all- terrain jeep- while his deputy was entitled to one. Somehow, the cars and furniture were never to be found when the new incumbent moved into his predecessor’s strangely depleted offices. “


“No wonder that by the 1990s’ Zaire had more than 600,000 names on its civil service payroll, nationally responsible for tasks the World Bank estimated could be carried out by a mere 50,000. A perfect example of over manning was the central bank, which by the 1990s had 3,000 people to shuffle paperwork, more than the 2,000 employed in the country’s entire private banking sector. “

In: Wrong, Michela, in the footsteps of Mr Kurts


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The situation in Portugal is getting worse nowadays. The unemployment is getting higher and some individuals seem to be kind of the favourites of the state. The state has too many functionaries and it stills burocratic and inefficient. Portuguese state expends a higher percentage of the GIP (gross internal product) than the other countries in educational and healthy systems without providing them with quality.

In Portugal while some people work the other just stay at home letting their money grow by the speculation or just assume themselves as poor and stay at home getting money from the state. The Portuguese state gives money to the following people:
People who had lost his job: by working 6 months they get 8 months of unemployment subsidy. The amount of this subsidy is similar to the minimal salary guaranteed by the state.

People who assumes themselves as poor individual or family. This is an extreme easy to get this status. People just have to say that they cannot find a job or to have too many children and allege that have to take care of them. In these cases the state gives money to people just for them to stay at home nurturing them offspring.


In conclusion, for people with low ambition it seems much more efficient stay at home doing theyr favourite hobbies than wake up early every day to go to work, because once people works they spend money in transportation (that is getting more and more expensive ) and spend money in food. So the system is mutating in a giant host to an increasing number of parasites .

In Portugal there are tree classes of workers
The worker with boss. Is the low rank that just has a few rights. “Happily” this people have access to a precarious health system and an equally precarious educational system. When they finish their career they are rewarded with a very low pension of withdrawing.
The worker that has it's own business- this people is in the second rank just because having the same rights of the workers above with the same precarious health and educational system and the extremely poor withdrawing’s pension but At least some of theme can hide some gains just to pay few taxes to the state
And the state workers. This is the top class. They have automatic promotions, no supervision, special health system that allows them to get into the private doctor offices for extremely low prices. They have a different system of withdrawing’s pension that gives them 3 or more times the money that the other workers will earn in the standard system.


The ex. prime minister Anibal Cavaco silva said by his own words: “we are nurturing a monster” in an obvious analogy to the weight the public functionalism was becoming.



Like the neo-patrimonial African state the Portuguese system shows us an extremely bad economical management as well as a bad public administration. Both countries seem to have a special tendency to patrimonialism, that is “when you want a job, when you want a auto-promotional, no bosses, effective and endless job just get it from the state, (the pack comes with other prerogatives) not from the private sector”. Due to this, the private sector, the truly “wealth maker” are kind of abandoned.
Portugal has this situation, getting a non-sustainable economy, the social security system is almost bank-rupting and the economy only maintains with the help of the European structural fund. In 2013 this subsides will end,
and the country doesn’t have the strenght to mantain it's economical growing without getting into a critical impoverishment of the population and institutions.

The Portuguese population have some characteristics that are in some ways similar to the African naive psychology. In Zaire, when Mobutu declared in 1974 the “autenticity”, “zaireization” and the “cleptocratic” state the natives started to assimilate all the business and propertyus of the European investors. It was obvious that they didn’t know how to run the money and its responsibility. Some weeks later, after they get hold of those stores and consume all the stuff in there they started to ask when the Europeans will come to fill them up again.
Like this the Portuguese people have the same type of naiveness. Nowadays people takes credits even to pay other credits. And just take credits to buy even food. People took as they life guideline consuming, buying. The one who sows more gets more prestige and they seem to prefer getting some expensive shoes in their feet than having a good meal in their stomach. As a result of that the family’s depths reach 117% of the available income.




03-05-2005