Political twist in Portugal. The voters gave the lie to the polls which on the eve of the legislative election on Sunday January 30 gave the two major political parties, the Socialist Party (PS) and the Social Democratic Party (PSD) neck and neck. After an evening of suspense, voters gave an absolute majority to Socialist Prime Minister Antonio Costa. He won the elections hands down, obtaining the absolute majority he had demanded throughout the campaign.
“Increased responsibility”
“An absolute majority is not absolute power, (…) it is an increased responsibility”, said Antonio Costa in front of his supporters. “It is the victory of humility, confidence and for stability”.
→ TO REREAD. Portugal at the polls for an uncertain ballot
According to partial results covering all constituencies except those abroad, which elect four deputies, the Socialist Party (PS) comes out on top with 41.7% of the vote and at least 117 seats out of a total of 230. First consequence , the Prime Minister will no longer need alliances to govern as before when he had to negotiate with the Left Bloc and the Communist Party. Refusing to vote for the 2022 finance law which they did not consider ambitious enough, these last two parties caused the dissolution of the National Assembly and early elections at the beginning of November 2021.
The 60-year-old former mayor of Lisbon came to power in 2015 by sealing a union of the left unprecedented since the Carnation Revolution of 1974, when he had not even won these elections. On Sunday, he offered the Socialist Party the second absolute majority in its history.
Chega, third political party
The Portuguese clearly sent the message that they wanted political and economic stability, giving this majority a pledge of confidence in the Prime Minister, which enabled them to “turning the page on the pandemic” thanks to record vaccination coverage and the European post-Covid recovery plan (16 billion euros).
During his first mandate, concluded before the health crisis, his government took advantage of a favorable economic situation to remove the wage cuts of the time of the “Troika”, while posting the first budget surplus in Portugal’s recent history.
The other major opposition party, the centre-right Social Democratic Party (PSD) of Rui Rio, the former mayor of Porto, comes second with only 29.3% of the vote.
The other observation of this election is the confirmation of the strong progress of the far-right Chega (Enough) party of André Ventura, which has succeeded in its bet, that of raising its formation to the rank of third force in the country, with 7.15% of the votes and 12 elected, while he had only one deputy in the outgoing Parliament. Portugal has long been an exception in Europe because since the end of the dictatorship in 1974 and until the last election in 2019, this country of 10 million inhabitants had no representative of the far right in Parliament.
Disappointment on the left
“People understood our message”, rejoiced the president of Chega, André Ventura, who judged “bad for the country that Antonio Costa continues to be prime minister”. The Liberals, who entered Parliament in 2019 with only one MP, also confirm the strong progress predicted by the polls, with nearly 5% of the vote and eight elected.
On the other hand on the left, it is the disappointment. The two formations of the radical left, the Left Bloc and the Communist-Green coalition, were severely punished following having provoked this early election. The Communist Party thus continued its slow decline.
