By IPS Correspondents
LISBON, Jan 12 2001 (IPS)

The controversy triggered in Portugal by the use of missiles containing depleted uranium in the 1999 bombings of Yugoslavia has spiced up an otherwise dull campaign on the road to Sunday’s presidential elections.

The electoral campaign drew to a close Friday with predictions based on several opinion polls that the winner will be current President Jorge Sampaio, supported by the governing Socialist Party, with nearly 60 percent of the vote, and that abstention will run high.

In his double role as candidate and acting president, Sampaio found himself in a tight spot in the debate over the use of depleted uranium (DU) in the Balkans, especially following the death of a Portuguese soldier from leukaemia after returning home from the Serbian province of Kosovo.

Sampaio refuted statements by the army commander, Gen. Jose Martins Barrento, that the father of corporal Hugo Paulino, who died last March, was working for “shady Serbian interests,” but the president did not give in to pressures to remove the general from his post.

Martins Barrento, following the announcement by the soldier’s father that he would file a lawsuit charging defamation, said that most Portuguese journalists lack interest in the truth, and take a sensationalist approach instead.

The military chief commented that reporters, “in the Portuguese case, possibly for genetic reasons, have an enormous tendency towards self-flagellation.” His statements met with unanimous condemnation by politicians and the media on Friday, and led to Martins Barrento’s silence.

The scandal erupting in Europe about soldiers who served in Kosovo and Bosnia-Herzegovina dying from leukaemia, a cancer apparently caused by contact with DU radiation from anti-tank missiles, had immediate repercussions for the Portuguese presidential campaign.

Opinion polls indicated in 1999 that the majority of the Portuguese public was opposed to their country’s participation in the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) attacks on Yugoslavia, and to sending their troops to Kosovo following the peace accord.

But while most politicians – from both the left and the right – demanded immediate investigations and steps to be taken, the Defence Council agreed to maintain the Portuguese contingent in Kosovo, with Sampaio’s approval.

The right-wing presidential candidate, Joaquim Ferreira do Amaral, an active supporter of NATO intervention in Yugoslavia, has now said that no new soldiers should be sent to Kosovo, but proposed that those who are already there should remain.

Meanwhile, the media disseminated statements by a commander of a military training centre who said the Portuguese armed forces lack the appropriate equipment to protect their troops from uranium radiation.

The scandal reached a high point when all public, civilian, and military organisations refused to recognise the existence of a July 2000 NATO document that warns about the dangers of depleted uranium.

Politicians opposed to the socialist government of Prime Minister Antonio Guterres, as well as scientists, have stressed that the consequences of DU missiles have been known since the 1991 Gulf War, and have been extensively documented in scientific journals.

Guterres, without comment, ordered an investigation, but his government became the target of criticisms, which were only fuelled by the polemical statements made by military commander Martins Barrento.

Local analysts say the apparently contradictory positions and attitudes of the country’s leaders on the uranium issue – condemn but do not act – reflects the extent of decadence in Portuguese politics and in the presidency itself.

“The times belong to the smiling politicians who try not to offend anyone,” wrote Jose Manuel Fernandes, an editorialist for ‘Publico’ newspaper in Lisbon.

Fernandes pointed out that voters had hoped the candidates would talk about “the difficult things that must be done so that the country is not further distanced from Europe and to reverse the pessimism that has taken hold.”

Portugal, according to European Union data, is in last place among the bloc’s 15 members as far as standard of living, having recently fallen behind Ireland and Greece.

As in the Italian and German political systems, the presidential post in Portugal entails representing the country’s democratic institutions and protecting them from attacks from the political sphere.

But the presidency is widely perceived as a purely ceremonial post. Sunday marks the sixth presidential elections since the 1974 democratic revolution that put an end to 48 years of dictatorship.

Portugal’s presidents since 1976 are former army officer Antonio Ramalho Eanes and veteran socialist leader Mario Soares, both serving two terms, and Sampaio, a socialist who was the mayor of Lisbon.

Following front-runner Sampaio for the presidency this time around is right-winger Ferreira do Amaral, and three leftist candidates: Antonio Abreu of the Communist Party (PCP), Fernando Rosas of the Leftist Block and Joao Garcia Pereira of the Portuguese People’s Revolutionary Movement.

One of the big question marks of the elections is whether Rosas, a former communist and former Sampaio advisor, will be able to win more communist votes than Abreu, the PCP’s official candidate, who was expected to withdraw in order to benefit Sampaio’s chances of re-election.

Though polls indicate that a scant 2.4 percent of the respondents intend to vote communist, political analysts point out that the same predictions were made in the past, but the PCP has commanded a solid nine percent of the Portuguese vote.

While it was expected that the communist candidate would withdraw, as in past elections, in order to ensure a victory for Sampaio, the surprise decision of the PCP this week to keep Abreu in the running has prompted speculation that there will be a runoff vote.

The possibility, however, remains remote because, in this lacklustre electoral landscape that has no profound proposals or debates, Sampaio continues to be the most clear-cut and upstanding option for a post that, in reality, does not matter that much.

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