The conservative Luís Montenegro was named Prime Minister of Portugal in the early hours of this Thursday by the President of the Republic, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, once the counting of the foreign vote was completed. He comes to office in a situation of clear minority, with only 80 deputies out of 230, while he maintains his refusal to agree with the extreme right and the socialists remain firm in their commitment to acting as opposition.
In the afternoon, while Montenegro deliberated with Rebelo, the ultra André Ventura appeared exultant to proclaim the historic victory abroad of his party, Chega. Since 1975 only the Socialist Party (PS) and the conservative PSD had achieved it.
Furthermore, this victory contrasts with the usual lower strength abroad of the extreme right in nearby countries. In the last Spanish general elections, Vox obtained a slightly lower result than the interior and finished behind Sumar. In the first round of the French presidential elections, Marine Le Pen came fifth and in the second round she obtained a percentage thirteen times lower than the overall one. In Italy, compared to the triumph in the national territory of the ultra Giorgia Meloni coalition, the progressives won abroad. And in the last Brazilian presidential elections, the leftist Lula da Silva prevailed over the ultra Jair Bolsonaro with a result similar to that of the interior. But in the previous ones, in 2018, Bolsonaro achieved a broad victory abroad, with his message of extreme nationalism and regeneration.
The climate of exhaustion in the face of impoverishment in Portugal and the cases of corruption that affect the two major parties appears in principle as the key to Chega’s triumph, which had its epicenter in the Europa constituency, a former progressive fiefdom, and above all in countries like Switzerland and Luxembourg. In the rest of the world constituency, the ultras came second, behind the conservatives, thanks to their good results in Brazil, where the support of Bolsonarism was evident. In the total number of deputies, Chega won two, while the socialists and conservatives kept one.
In this way, Chega is confirmed as the moral winner of the elections, going from its 12 seats in 2022 to 50. The biggest losers are the socialists, who after the eight long years of António Costa’s mandate, lose 39 deputies to drop to 78, two less than the 80 achieved by the conservative Montenegro, which although it only added four to those obtained by its party in 2022, manages to access power by leading the first minority, in a Parliament tilted to the right.
Despite the fact that yesterday the ultra Ventura insisted on its call to negotiate with the conservatives a right-wing alliance that guarantees stability, Montenegro did not emit any sign that it would modify its refusal to reach an agreement with the extreme right. In this way, he is only assured of socialist abstention to prevent Parliament from overthrowing him when he presents his government program and the communists force a vote to reject him.
The leader of the PS, Pedro Nuno Santos, showed himself available on Tuesday to agree with Montenegro on an urgent budget modification, to meet commitments for salary increases in the public sector. But at the same time he reiterated his refusal to support next year’s budget, the processing of which constitutes the great litmus test for the new government. Montenegro insisted yesterday that the conservatives constitute the largest parliamentary group and that, despite their minority position, this will be the basis of their government, from which they seem to intend to seek specific support from the socialists, who, however, maintain their position of exercise opposition.
