well expressed in what he told about his decision (to accept to be Minister of Finance in 1928) to French journalist Christine Garnier, who decades later (in the 1950s) wrote a book on him, Vacances avec Salazar: “I hesitated all night. I did not know if I should accept the proposition that had been made on me. I was terribly depressed at the idea of leaving the University. […] I was afraid… naturally I was afraid. I foresaw the possibility of failure. Imagine, if I had failed to put the finances in order, what would my students have thought of me?” (trans. Hugh Kay, Salazar and Modern Portugal 41). Despite the humble tenor of Salazar’s recollections, as conveyed to Garnier, the expression “financial dictatorship” I used above to describe his governance is indeed accurate, as illustrated by the following quote from his 1928 acceptance speech: The Ministry of Finance shall be entitled to place its veto on all increases of current or ordinary expenditure, as well as on expenditure for development purposes, for which the necessary credit operations shall not be undertaken without the knowledge of the Ministry of Finance. [The future dictator then added:] I know quite well what I want and where I am going, but let no one insist that the goal should be reached in a few months. For the rest, let the country study, let it suggest, let it object, and let it discuss, but when it comes for me to give orders, I shall expect it to obey. (trans. Hugh Kay 42).
286
Intelectuals for Tyranny: Pessoa and Salazar (1928-1930)
My recurrent use of the verb “to persuade” in describing Salazar’s engagement with his fellow citizens is likewise entirely intentional. Unlike Mussolini, Hitler or Franco, Salazar was no military man and in his impeccable grey suits he did not pretend to be one; he presented himself as a college professor, a colleague of a number of us, who occasionally even wrote some bad poetry in French, and who enjoyed retaining his scholarly persona and the academic title of Professor Salazar throughout his entire political life. In fact, around 1930 Salazar was precisely trying to restrain the political influence of the military in the dictatorship. Professor Salazar’s speech “Fundamental Principles of the Political Revolution” of July 30, 1930, summarizes and stresses his peaceful naturalization of politics as a response to the dangerous fiction of the uprooted “citizen” created by nineteenth-century liberalism: “[…] We intend to build the social and corporatist State in close correspondence with the natural constitution of society. Families, towns, municipalities, and professional associations encompassing all citizens with their fundamental legal freedoms and rights are the organisms composing the Nation and, as such, they should have direct intervention in the formation of the supreme bodies of the State; this is an expression, more faithful than any other, of the representative system.” (Discursos I 87)