“There are more than a million of us in Portugal!”

In front of his jubilant supporters, André Ventura exults.

The leader of the populist Chega party welcomed, during a rally on Sunday evening, the good results of his camp, which collected 18% of the votes during these early legislative elections on March 10.

After counting almost all the ballots, Chega - which means "Enough" in Portuguese - was placed third in the ballot.

The far-right party should obtain at least 48 seats in Parliament which has 230. A spectacular surge since it quadruples its score compared to the previous election in 2022 (7.2% of the votes).

This election gives it “considerable” weight, notes Yves Léonard, historian, teacher at Science-Po and specialist in contemporary Portugal.

“This result raises many questions a few weeks before the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Carnation Revolution which put an end to the Salazar dictatorship, and of which Chega takes up a certain number of themes”.

A few months after founding Chega, in 2019, André Ventura entered Parliament as a deputy after leading a campaign under the Salazarist slogan of “God, homeland, family and work”.

References that the leader tried to erase during this new election.

06:03

Xenophobia, anti-gypsy and anti-migrant remarks

“Chega wants to embody a kind of national story, which has its roots in very ancient times, in the Middle Ages, underlines Yves Léonard. It is a story that the Salazar dictatorship had used in its time”.

Admirer of Donald Trump, Jair Bolsonaro, and Matteo Salvini, André Ventura, who readily appears alongside Marine le Pen, refuses to be classified as far right.

He sought to police his speech during this campaign, putting aside the xenophobic, anti-Roma and anti-migrant remarks that characterized him in recent years.

In 2020, the parliamentarian attacked a black MP, Joacine Katar Moreira, asking that she "be returned to her country of origin", Guinea-Bissau.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, he caused an outcry after declaring that Roma should be sent to camps for their alleged lack of hygiene, a vector of disease.

Corruption scandals propelled Chega

“Until recently, Portugal was one of the few European countries without a successful far-right party,” notes Marta Lorimer, researcher in European politics at the European Institute London School of Economics.

Chega's breakthrough surprised everyone, marking the end of Portuguese exceptionalism.

An economic success to be attributed, according to her, “to the corruption scandals which have affected other political parties”.

Perceived by many voters as an endemic problem, corruption emerged as one of the major themes of this election.

A predictable phenomenon since these early legislative elections were called after a series of corruption scandals leading to the resignation of former socialist Prime Minister Antonio Costa.

Read also Elections in Portugal: the vote parasitized by corruption scandals

Promising to "clean up", Chega, surfed on this anti-corruption dynamic to position itself "as a white knight of democracy and in a very anti-system rhetoric", explains Yves Leonard.

Football and social networks

The Portuguese far right also owes its meteoric rise to its leader, who has managed over the years to occupy the media space and social networks.

Professor of law, André Ventura became famous as a polemicist on television sets devoted to football, notably by commenting on Benfica matches.

A large part of Chega's electorate is made up of young people, aged under 34, according to Yves Leonard.

“An electorate is seduced by the unbridled use of social networks that the party manipulates with great know-how,” he explains.

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Added to this is a “normalization of far-right discourse”, which has led a certain number of voters to take the plunge to vote for Chega, while they had until now taken refuge in abstention.

According to official figures, 66.24% of Portuguese people registered on the lists went to the polls on Sunday, which represents the lowest abstention rate since 2005.

Chega at the gates of power

In front of Chega, the center-right Democratic Alliance (AD) won 29.5% of the vote with 79 seats, while the PS obtained 28.7% of the vote and 77 deputies.

Almost all of the ballots have been counted but four seats still have to be allocated after the counting of ballots from abroad.

For the moment, this result does not allow the winner to form a majority and Chega could have a role to play in the formation of the government.

André Ventura has already said he is "available" to "give a stable government to Portugal" within "a strong majority on the right", which the leader of the AD, Luis Montenegro, refused until here.

Managing to form a government without calling on Chega will be the challenge in the weeks to come.

With AFP

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