Luis Angel Sanz

Updated Thursday, March 21, 2024-00:02

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Luís Montenegro

will be named prime minister of Portugal on the night of Wednesday to Thursday, once the final count of the foreign vote has closed, which has distributed the last four deputies of the

Assembly

and ended after 11:00 p.m. :00 in Spain).

The President of the Republic,

Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa

, concluded his round of consultations with all the leaders precisely with Montenegro, who went twice to the Belém palace, the residence of the head of state.

The first, at 5:00 p.m., for his interview with the president.

The second, after 11:00 p.m., to be named prime minister.

Montenegro will lead

a very unstable Executive

with the only support of its

80 deputies in a Parliament with 230

(the absolute majority is 116).

Even so, this Wednesday he conveyed to Rebelo de Sousa that he has a "majority to govern."

Furthermore, he will do so with a radical right-wing party,

Chega

, which is very large and continues to demand entry into the Government.

This Wednesday it was confirmed that Chega has won the elections abroad, taking two of the four deputies that were still in play.

André Ventura

will finally have 50 parliamentarians, while

the Democratic Alliance

(AD) and the

Socialist Party

(PS) get one more each, bringing them up to 80 and 78 seats.

The majority game does not change, but Ventura comes out stronger.

The final result represents a disaster for the PS.

He has not only lost half a million votes.

This Wednesday, it became known that the current president of Parliament and former Foreign Minister,

Augusto Santos Silva

, who was the

number one

of the PS for the Outside Europe constituency, has come third after AD and Chega and will not even be a deputy.

This week, Chega has continued to pressure to enter the Government.

On Monday, André Ventura, after his interview with the President of the Republic, said that Rebelo had informed him that he does not reject Chega's entry into the Executive.

And he threatened to bring down the Government in a few months by knocking down its budgets if he does not enter the cabinet.

"If he wants to rush the country towards another election, it will be his choice," he said.

"In the face of Montenegro's

no is no

" - which he insists on his veto of agreeing with the populist right - "we say

yes is yes

to build an alternative," he insisted.

Montenegro will have to govern as a minority with specific support from the Socialist Party and Chega.

The first obstacle that will be encountered will be that the Assembly of the Republic does not overthrow its government program, which is already guaranteed because the socialist leader,

Pedro Nuno Santos

, committed on election night to "not hinder the formation of the government."

The Socialist Party (PS) will hold its National Committee on Saturday - the highest body of training between congresses.

In that conclave, he will decide his strategy.

On Tuesday, after the interview that Pedro Nuno Santos had with Rebelo de Sousa, he was open to closing specific pacts with the minority government of AD: "In matters where there is a possibility of understanding, we will be available; there is no reason to drag our feet ", he claimed.

The socialists will let the new minority government of Montenegro get going by not voting against its government program - the abstention of the PS is enough - and will open itself to negotiating what in Portugal they call "a corrective budget": specific modifications of the 2024 accounts to improve, for example, the salaries of police officers, teachers and health workers, one of the country's main problems.

This Wednesday, Chega sources also said that his party will be able to do so.

The socialists and Chega would thus bet on approving popular measures long awaited by Portuguese society to get those medals.

Another thing will be the

2025 budgets

.

In that case, Montenegro may have much more difficulty in achieving the necessary absolute majority.