The social contract may be in danger due to the irrationality or opportunism that moments of radical crisis, like this one, can bring. More than the pandemic, its collapse would be the real tragedy.
We live in a limit moment in which the salvation of the Portuguese people's health and the maintenance of the social contract are at stake. The virus circulating in the community is a pathogen agent that cannot become a lethal social weapon. Democratic societies are based on an order that is based on a political pact between the governors and the governed, renewed through free elections, and a contractualization between the various sectors of society of a set of duties to which so many other rights are associated. Right from the start, the duty to pay taxes as a contribution to the common good, so that the government can responsibly manage the needs of the country and its citizens; but also the duty to pay for the services provided and the products created by the economy, which will thus continue to produce wealth, creating jobs, sustaining and providing stability to the social fabric.
The social contract on which modern societies are based on is also geared towards mutualisation, towards holding citizens accountable to the most fragile fringes of society, and in assuming strategic priorities subsidized by our taxes, such as access to health or health care or access to education. This tacit contract may be in danger due to the irrationality or opportunism that moments of radical crisis, like this one, can bring. More than the pandemic, its collapse would be the real tragedy.
Read the full article by the President of Universidade Católica Portuguesa in Portuguese newspaper Expresso.
