The conservative Luís Montenegro left his audience with the President of the Republic yesterday with the certainty that, despite his minority position, he will be the new Prime Minister of Portugal. Despite this, the Head of State was last night waiting for the count of the external vote to finish to formalize the appointment.
In the afternoon, while Montenegro deliberated with President Rebelo, the ultra André Ventura appeared exultant to proclaim the historic triumph outside his party, the Chega. Since 1975, only the Socialist Party (PS) and the conservative PSD had previously achieved this.
In addition, this triumph contrasts with the usual lesser strength outside the extreme right of neighboring countries. In the last Spanish generals, Vox obtained a slightly lower result than in 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 achieved a percentage thirteen times lower than the overall one. In Italy, faced with the triumph in the national territory of the coalition of the ultra Giorgia Meloni, 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 had achieved a wide victory abroad, with his message of extreme nationalism and regeneration.
The climate of discomfort in the face of impoverishment in Portugal and the cases of corruption affecting the two major parties appear in principle as the key to Chega’s triumph, which had its epicenter in the constituency of Europe, a former progressive stronghold, and especially in countries like Switzerland and Luxembourg. In the constituencies of the rest of the world, the ultras came second, behind the conservatives, thanks to their good result in Brazil, where the support of Bolsonaro became evident. In the total number of deputies, Chega got two, while socialists and conservatives were left with one.
In this way, Chega confirms himself as the moral winner of the elections, as he goes from his 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 and they drop to 78, two less than the 80 obtained by the conservative Montenegro, who, although he only added four to those obtained by his party in 2022, manages to access power to the extent that he heads the first minority, in a Parliament turned towards on the right.
Despite the fact that yesterday the ultra Ventura insisted on his call to negotiate with the conservatives a right-wing alliance that would guarantee stability, Montenegro did not give any signal that he would change his refusal to come to an understanding with the extreme right. In this way, he is only guaranteed socialist abstention to prevent Parliament from overturning him when he presents his government program and the communists force a vote to reject it.
The leader of the PS, Pedro Nuno Santos, showed himself available on Tuesday to agree with Montenegro an urgent budget modification, to attend to commitments of wage increases in the public sector. But at the same time he reiterated his refusal to support next year’s budget, the process 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 it seems to seek specific support from the socialists, who, however, maintain the his position of exercising opposition.