WRITTEN ON September 30th, 2009 BY kiwivera AND STORED IN kiwiland, politics, portugal

Tags: elections, expat, new zealand, politics, portugal, voting

When I turned 18, my country gave me the right to do a bunch of stuff, including drinking, driving, travelling without needing my parents authorisation, etc. Oh, that’s right, and voting. They basically assumed that, from that day on, I was mature enough to help decide what was best for the country. For years (I can’t believe that was already seven years ago), I fulfilled my duty (and my right) as best as I could. Then one fine day I decided to go try out life in a different country. For one and a half years now (holy shit, time does fly!), I’ve been hanging out down here with the Kiwis, but still having my daily intake of news from Portugal. I can honestly say, without any chance of being wrong, that I know more about what’s going on in Portugal than some of the people that live there.

Reading/listening/seeing the news every day meant that I followed the political campaign of all parties and knew exactly what was going on (well, as much as any citizen is allowed to know). About a month before the election, I called the consul and asked him what I needed to do in order to exercise my right and my duty to vote. His answer: you would have had to have registered yourself to vote with the embassy in Sydney before June.

SAY WHAT?

I didn’t actually know what to tell him at the time, I was just really in shock that this election would pass and I wouldn’t be able to make a difference, for the first time.

And then I started wondering: maybe it was partly my fault but was I really supposed to know this? Was I supposed to guess that the deadline to register would be so far away from election day?

I even talked to the consul in June, during a lunch with other Portuguese people. Could he not have brought that up during his speech? Was it not important information? Should I assume I’m the only one that had no idea about it?

So that’s it. The election is gone and I didn’t have a say. I’ve promised myself this is never to happen again and next time, no matter which country in the world I am, I’ll ensure that I’m registered at least one year in advance (because apparently, no matter how good their intentions are and how much they desperately want to allow you to vote, you can’t register two months before the election).

I’ll stop moaning now, I promise. There’s really nothing that can be done except hope that things get better for Portuguese people in New Zealand (we’re certainly trying to). Right now - and this is something that might be changing soon but until something else is announced I’ll continue to assume it’s still the case - a Portuguese person living in New Zealand that needs to renew his/her passport, needs to fly to Australia to do so. The Portuguese consulate in Sydney, for example, has a website (that doesn’t deserve to be linked to, sorry). The embassy in Australia represents the Portuguese community in New Zealand too (since we don’t have an embassy here). But you would never guess that from the sort of information they provide you with. Would it hurt to put up information like the deadline to enroll to vote there?

Oh and finally, I know I said I’d stop moaning but seriously, the next time someone says to me “I think people that don’t live in the country shouldn’t be allowed to vote anyway”, I’ll hear “Please punch me in the nose because I’m such an idiot I deserve nothing less than that.”