By Mario de Queiroz
LISBON, Nov 7 2003 (IPS)

An ongoing investigation of a paedophilia scandal in Portugal, in which prominent public figures have been arrested, has undermined the state’s credibility in the eyes of a society increasingly sceptical of the justice system, at a time of discouragement regarding the performance of the economy.

The initial shock as the public watched politicians, diplomats and media personalities led away to preventive detention has died down, giving way to an all-out ratings war between the country’s four TV channels, with news programmes on the issue lasting up to an hour and a half in a mini-series-style format where nothing is off-limits.

Political and economic issues as well as major cultural questions have been shoved to the backburner, and only football has been able to compete somewhat with the coverage, which has included interviews with anonymous young victims who talk about being sexually abused and receiving money in exchange for their silence.

Local writer Baptista Bastos said the phenomenon is the result of Portugal’s ”political and cultural lethargy.”

”This is the country of ‘the 10 stadiums’ (a reference to the installations being built for Eurocup 2004, despite the modest size of the Portuguese economy), where 62 percent of citizens have never read a book – a country that is condemned to losing its role and its identity,” he said.

Analysts say that in political, economic and social terms, Portugal is no longer that ”garden planted on the shores of the sea,” as a popular song describes it, and for the second year in a row it is plagued by negative indicators.

According to statistics published a week ago, the Portuguese economy has dislodged Greece from the lowest rung on the European Union ladder.

Conservative Prime Minister José Manuel Durao Barroso finds himself cornered by the negative economic indicators and growing labour and student movements opposed to his government.

Portugal is the member of the bloc whose economy shrunk the most last year (2.3 percent), and unemployment is climbing fast, from 4.5 percent in 2002 to 7.3 percent this year.

As if these figures weren’t depressing enough, Portugal’s reputation around the world was dealt a blow two weeks ago by Time magazine.

In the third week of October, the European edition of Time dedicated its cover and eight pages to a report on Brazilian sex workers in Bragança, labelling the northern Portuguese city ”Europe’s new red light district.”

In his weekly column in the Lisbon daily Publico, Miguel Sousa Tavares wrote that Portugal’s economic woes and the paedophilia scandal were turning the country ”into a demoralised country, which does not believe in itself or its abilities.”

Last month, the courts moved former government minister and socialist parliamentarian Paulo Pedroso from preventive detention to house arrest. Pedroso was arrested in May in connection with charges in 15 cases of child sex abuse that form part of a scandal over a paedophile ring run out of the state- run Casa Pia, Portugal’s leading refuge for orphans and abandoned children.

The opposition Socialist Party (PS) claims Pedroso is the target of a ”political plot” against the party, and has made it clear that it will not give up until it finds the sources of the ”slander”, who, it says, must be identified and brought to justice.

PS secretary-general Eduardo Ferro Rodrígues insists that Pedroso is innocent. ”This might be the last battle of my life, but I warn that I will put up a tremendous fight against the fabricated pieces of evidence,” he said when Pedroso, one of the PS’s most prominent members, was arrested.

According to the information that has emerged since the scandal first came to light in late November 2002, the child sex exploitation network that operated for two decades in Casa Pia was purportedly covered up with the complicity of the state.

Politicians, doctors, lawyers, journalists and local and foreign diplomats have been implicated in the scandal.

Between 1999 and 2000, the administration of Casa Pia answered directly to Pedroso, who was secretary of state (deputy minister) of social security during that period.

Other well-known public figures arrested in connection with the case are Carlos Cruz, Portugal’s most famous TV presenter, and distinguished diplomat Jorge Ritto whose last two assignments before he retired in 2000 were as Portugal’s ambassador to South Africa and to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) in Paris.

Attorney-General Antonio de Souto Moura, who is responsible for the legal proceedings that are still in the phase of judicial inquiry, was accused by the head of the Bar Association, José Miguel Júdice, of failing to control information leaks.

In late October, a private TV station aired the transcript of a recorded telephone conversation in which Ferro Rodrígues lashed out at a classified document that could only have come out of the Attorney-General’s Office.

The arrests occurred after 700 children in one of the Casa Pia homes, which house and educate 3,500 orphans and abandoned children around the country, provided testimony.

After the scandal emerged, the director of Casa Pia was sacked and a team of doctors and psychologists was set up to assist the victims and their families.

The editorials in the country’s leading newspapers take different stances regarding the Casa Pia scandal. However, they all agree that in the end, the Portuguese state will be the big loser, because it will have a hard time recuperating its credibility.

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