The counting of the foreign vote began yesterday in Lisbon just when the president of the Republic of Portugal, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, was facing the final stretch of the consultations with the political leaders, yesterday with the ultra André Ventura, today with the socialist Pedro Nuno Santos and tomorrow with the conservative Luís Montenegro. Against this landscape of apparent normality, he plans a possible return to the polls around the first half of 2025, since a governance solution is not in sight.
Nothing has moved in the aftermath of the electoral earthquake of the 10th, when the extreme right of Chega rose from 12 to 48 seats. The classic two-party system fell to historic lows, with 79 conservative deputies and 77 socialist deputies.
Tomorrow the four seats reserved for the Portuguese diaspora must be awarded. If the 2022 result were repeated, 3 to 1 in favor of the PS, the two major parties would tie in deputies, which would further complicate the puzzle of governability, especially if the PS prevailed in votes. However, the forecasts point to a 2 to 2 or that the PS will only win one deputy.
Thus, in a Parliament turned to the right by the most extreme path, with up to 138 deputies from this ideological spectrum out of 230, the first minority would be that of the conservative Luís Montenegro, which would make it easier for President Rebelo to name him prime minister, to replace him. of the socialist António Costa.
Since Portugal has a semi-presidential system, there is no investiture like the Spanish one. But Parliament can overthrow the head of the government by withdrawing confidence in him. Although the communists have already announced that they are going to try, their initiative is doomed to failure as it does not have the support of the socialist Santos.
In application of the cordon sanitaire to prevent the extreme right from having the key to the government, the socialists stick to their commitment to facilitate Montenegro’s access to power, and then act as opposition. There appears the dead end in which Portuguese politics finds itself, because without the abstention of the socialists, Montenegro only has one governability solution, the right-wing coalition that the ultra Ventura insistently demands, to which the conservative leader responds with a “no means no”.
They are rocky positions for now, but subject to great pressure, since there are already voices in the socialist ranks that advocate making life easier for the government of Montenegro, an option not to the liking of Santos, representative of the left wing of the party. In the conservative camp, former Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho leads those pushing towards the pact with a Ventura who claims his million plus votes to negotiate an alliance with Luís Montenegro, while showing a constructive attitude.
With the added complication of the European elections involved, the only way out of this labyrinth that can be seen for now would be new elections, which could only be called in the autumn, six months after the constitution of the new Parliament, and before September 2025, when the president will enter his last semester in office and will not be able to call the polls. In this tight calendar, next year’s budget appears to be the great test for Montenegro, although it could do a trial trying to modify the 2024 budget. If it manages to approve the accounts with the abstention of the PS or a pact with Chega, it will have oxygen to gain a foothold in power. Otherwise, the option of returning to the polls will gain strength. In reality, even before the elections the parties were working with the idea of ??an eventual repetition in the first half of next year.