Former Portuguese President’s biographic revelations on Macau

The second volume of the memoirs of Jorge Sampaio, the 18th President of Portugal who led the country for a decade between 1996 and 2006, arrive at the bookstands this week.

In the biographic book written by José Pedro Castanheira, one chapter of 45 pages is dedicated to Macau and to the way Sampaio, the president during the Macau handover period, saw many of the aspects and events occurring during those years. It is also considered to be a reply to the last Portuguese governor of Macau, Rocha Vieira.

Titled “The goodbye to Macau or the end of the empire” the chapter focuses on the state of mind of the former president and on his views.

“I liked a lot to know the Macanese but I didn’t like Macau,” said Sampaio in the book, explaining that “in 500 years we didn’t even manage to teach the Portuguese language and only created the reputation of people going there to get rich,” according to an article by João Paulo Menezes in Ponto Final newspaper.

The chapter continues with the former President expressing a feeling of unfulfilled duty; “[I] always had the feeling that we have failed completely our mission.”

In the book Sampaio puts the blame on Rocha Vieira, the last Portuguese governor of the territory.

“In the first years he [the governor] did whatever he felt like doing, made use of it [his position] to make a huge self-promotion and – everybody says – [with] the goal of reaching Belém [a reference to the official residence of the Portuguese President].”

Sampaio accuses Vieira of populism and self-promotion in all his actions that included the “lowering of the flag” at the Praia Grande Palace, which the former President claims to have been intentionally done at a specific time that other Portuguese officials, including him, could not be present.

Another of the interesting notes concerns the topic of the “Portuguese School”, which although he appears deeply dissatisfied with it, Sampaio clears the responsibility of Vieira.

“I wanted a serious International School, not a school for minorities which it eventually become,” Sampaio says, pointing this time the finger at premier António Guterres’s government that “paid little attention to Macau.”

In one of his last narratives, Sampaio addresses the creation of the Jorge Álvares Foundation. The writer of the book notes only that the comments of the former president are so harsh that they could not even be transcribed.

The book contains many condemnations and revelations of political life in Macau, but it also adresses other issues, like relations with China and fighting of crime. RM