Letter from a Loule Lawyer 'protest and vote!'
- Written by Paul Rees
Response to the letter from Lord Blore published on the 29th Sept
Dear Sirs, my name is Nelson Ramos, I am lawyer in Loulé, apart from being a lawyer I have an LLM degree in NYC, and I am writing to you in reference to a letter of Lord Blore published by on the 29th Sept. and forwarded to me by a friend.
I start by the last paragraph of the said letter:
“OK, so will the Government dare to do any of the above? NO, because no one, especially someone who is not Portuguese, can tell the Portuguese how to do things, no matter how much they have their interest at heart. They will do it their way, right or wrong, but one can only keep trying.”
This is in my view totally wrong, everyone should tell the Portuguese authorities what to do, even more so if they live here and often have their businesses or jobs here, Portugal is their home not UK, or Ireland or anywhere else.
It is wrong also because as the recent world crisis shows, partisan positions are useless. I note that often the foreign community refers to “the Portuguese”, as different. We are all a community, and prejudice or boundaries can only harm us all.
All prejudice is based in ignorance, I was born in South Africa, raised in the Algarve, studied in the US and am married to Brazilian. What I have learned is that an English hooligan is not smarter than a Portuguese bureaucrat, or a Brazilian person selling coconuts on the beach.
Portugal was the most developed country in world in the 16th century by far, as England in the Victorian age, or probably Brazil and China will be in the second half of our century. Their people are not smarter, or more stupid, they are just in a different level of development, as different regions always are in different moments of history.
I have sued the Portuguese public administration successfully many times, my difficulty is to convince my clients mainly foreigners to do it. If you do not actively demand your rights, how can you protest that they are being violated?
Furthermore, do you know that EU citizens as well as other foreigners are entitled to vote in local elections? And even in national elections? How many foreigners are actually involved in local politics?
An English person who lives in Algarve, and/or has business in the Algarve or Portugal, should be more interested in voting for the local Câmara, than voting for number 10, Downing Street. Just think if all foreign people voted, and got involved in local politics, with their knowledge, money and backgrounds, how different would the Algarve be?
This a long time battle of mine, my appeal is get involved! Vote! Sue the local authorities for your rights. Our office won 7 out of 8 cases against the local Câmara in court. So courts will uphold the law, just recently the local court decided in favour on of our clients applying EU law.
What you should not do is sitting around a table surround by foreigners, complaining about a country which is in fact your country, defining its nationals as lower people and do nothing to change it.
Nelson Ramos
