Luis Ángel SanzSpecial envoy Lisbon

Special Envoy Lisbon

Updated Monday, March 11, 2024-16:08

  • Legislative Portugal, in a technical tie: and now, what?

Bitter victory for the center-right

in Portugal, which will form a government, but will hardly be able to govern.

Bittersweet defeat of a Socialist Party

(PS) that loses the absolute majority, sinks and drops half a million votes and a third of its deputies (from 120 to 77), but that resists with possibilities even after the count of the external vote of the tie.

And unmitigated triumph of the

radical right of

Chega

, which skyrocketed in two years from the 385,543 votes of 2022 to the

more than one million

it obtained on Sunday, and which multiplied its deputies in the Assembly of the Republic by four: from 12 to 48.

The elections in Portugal leave an ungovernable scenario.

The leader of the center-right,

Luís Montenegro

(51 years old) will be prime minister and the Assembly of the Republic will not reject his government program, probably thanks to the abstention of the PS.

Otherwise, Parliament would overthrow the Government, which would have to resign.

Starting in April, Montenegro

will have its hands tied

when it comes to carrying out

reforms

or

approving its budgets

.

As the mayor of Cascais, Carlos Carreiras, a relevant figure in the party, summarized on Sunday, "if I had to summarize, we are in a mess."

The night began with enthusiasm at the EPIC SANA hotel in Lisbon, the five-star hotel that always serves as the electoral headquarters of the Social Democratic Party (PSD).

But as the count progressed, the joy cooled until almost the final disappointment.

Democratic Alternative (AD, the coalition formed around the historic PSD) was deflating and the PS was hot on its heels, even winning at some point in the count.

The final result at 100% and only in the absence of the outside vote, was shocking: AD only surpasses the PS by 50,934 votes.

In seats, AD obtains 79 and the PS, 77.

Voters abroad will distribute another four deputies, which are traditionally: two for the PS and two for AD.

This time, the fourth parliamentarian could go to Chega's populist right, according to some analysts.

Despite the poor result of the two main parties, the leader of the PS,

Pedro Nuno Santos

(46 years old) was quick to congratulate Montenegro, to

establish himself as "leader of the opposition"

and to confirm that

he will not block the formation of the Government

.

But later, he will not guarantee the approval of the budgets either.

"We don't know what will happen in the coming months," he said.

minority government

As soon as the Assembly of the Republic is constituted at the beginning of April - the deputies of the external vote will be official on March 28 - the president of Portugal,

Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa

,

will call the leaders of the main parties

: Luís Montenegro will declare himself willing to govern as a minority;

Pedro Nuno Santos will tell you that he is willing to let the new center-right Government get going;

and the leader of Chega, André Ventura, will convey to him that after the "end of the two-party system" the mandate of the voters is to "build a Government with the two forces [of the right] and that is what I will try to do," as he advanced same in the early hours of Monday.

With these in mind and given that there is no viable alternative on the left, the Portuguese head of state

will most likely appoint

the conservative leader

Luís Montenegro

as prime minister .

The question on election night was whether the leader of the center-right maintained his public commitment not to close agreements with the radical right.

And that was the first question he had to answer around 1:00 in the morning: "I would never do

such evil

to myself, my party, or my country as

failing to fulfill my commitment to Chega

," he responded.

The main center-right party

maintains its cordon sanitaire

around a party that defends racist, xenophobic and populist positions, as Montenegro itself has denounced, becoming one of the few exceptions in Europe that refuses to agree with the radical and Eurosceptic right.

Important voices within the Democratic Alliance have advocated even during the campaign, although discreetly, that this pact is necessary to guarantee governability, but Montenegro has always settled the debate at its roots.

And in this way she has managed to capture part of the useful vote that otherwise could have gone to abstention or to Chega.

From the socialist headquarters, sources from this party advance a "tough opposition."

But Pedro Nuno Santos himself ruled out any attempt at a coalition with the forces to the left of the PS.

Socialists, Left Bloc, Communist Party and Livre (green) could add up to 92 seats, very far from the absolute majority - situated at 116 - but they could be more than those of AD and Liberal Initiative (89).

Even so, Santos was realistic: "If the alternative were presented by this left [the PS and its potential partners], it would be rejected by the entire right [AD, IL and Chega], let's not get complicated," he stated emphatically, "we don't have most".

The socialist leader, who has been at the head of the party for less than two months after the resignation of António Costa, appeared to acknowledge his defeat, but

was received with applause

for having

resisted over 1.7 million votes

, achieving better results than Costa. in 2015.

The feeling in the Portuguese socialist ranks is one of dejection, but also of having saved the furniture thanks to their tie with AD.

Despite the result, Pedro Nuno, as he is called in Portugal, is reinforced in the General Secretariat and as leader of the opposition, since the entire party recognizes that he has not even had time to make himself known in the territory.

The third in contention and leader of Chega,

André Ventura

(41 years old), made the same act of contrition as the leader of the Dutch extreme right, Geert Wilders:

he promised to moderate and "make concessions"

to Democratic Alternative out of "responsibility" and because He considers that the Portuguese want a Government of both forces.

But he was not successful.

The main analysts and the Portuguese press speculated this Monday with the possibility of a weak Government that will not be able to last even two years before the Portuguese have to return to the polls.

Everything will depend on the relationship between AD and Chega and the aggressiveness that the radicals display against the Executive in response to its cordon sanitaire.

Political instability is already threatening to take its toll on Portugal.

The financial rating agency DBRS warns in an internal note to which the Lusa agency had access of the risk that a deadlocked Parliament and an unstable Government will make the application of the Recovery and Resistance Plan difficult, without ruling out new early elections.

A confusion of acronyms

THE.

S.

National Democratic Alternative

(ADN) is a small moderate Eurosceptic group unknown to the vast majority of Portuguese people.

In fact, in the 2022 elections he obtained 10,935 votes.

It is one of many alphabet soups that can be found in polling stations around the world, but without the possibility of obtaining a seat.

In Sunday's elections, however, ADN

shot up to 100,044 votes

, 1.63% of the census.

And according to some analysts, he was

close to getting a seat in Lisbon

(the PAN animalists had him with 18,000 more votes).

The cause of this curious result may be that thousands of voters

confused ADN with Democratic Alliance (AD)

and voted for it wanting to bet on Luís Montenegro, as the center-right formation has denounced.

On the Portuguese ballot, which contains all the candidacies, AD appears with the following confusing soup of acronyms: PSD-CDS-PP-PPM, being a coalition.

And DNA only appears with its three letters, unknown to most.

From AD - the original - they denounce that thousands of voters who made a mistake later realized and tried to change their vote, but it was no longer possible to do so.

Sources familiar with the Portuguese electoral system add that AD had access to the ballots many days before the vote and did not notice the possible confusion... Until he began to receive calls from his supporters.

With several tens of thousands more votes, AD would have gained a greater advantage over the PS and would have escaped the final technical tie.