A little-known Portuguese political party, barely five years old, has managed to play the role of kingmaker after national elections that failed to bring either of the two establishment parties to power, WPR reports.
Voters went to the polls in Portugal last weekend to choose all 230 members of the national parliament. On the eve of the election, polls predicted a victory for the conservative party over the ruling Socialist Party. And it wasn’t by much.
Portugal’s centre-right Democratic Alliance (AD) won 79 seats in the parliament, which will have to elect a new prime minister. The centre-left Socialist Party won 77 seats. A further four seats may be won by voters living abroad, but they are unlikely to affect the balance of power in this newly elected parliament.
Regardless of the final vote count, a third party called Chega is celebrating victory, even though it has no realistic chance of electing its flamboyant leader as Portugal’s prime minister.
To understand the nature of last weekend’s general election in Portugal, we need to take a brief dip into the past.
In 2021, after internal divisions in the ruling coalition of progressive parties failed to approve a new budget for the coming year, Portugal’s president called a general election for January 2022. Polls at the time did not foreshadow a convincing victory for either of the two main parties that have alternated in power over the past decades. However, to the surprise of many, António Costa’s Socialist Party won an absolute majority. It will not need to form a coalition and will be able to govern on its own, according to WPR.
Corruption has been Portugal’s biggest problem for years, and both main parties have been tainted by allegations of corruption and cronyism. But last November, a new case of corruption was uncovered that has exhausted the patience of Portuguese citizens.
According to Liliana Borges, a political reporter for the Portuguese newspaper Público in Lisbon, it was in November that prosecutors ordered searches of many places, including the residence of the then prime minister. The ruling Socialist Party had been in power for about eight years. Its leader, António Costa, had the perfect scenario, benefiting from the absolute majority in the National Assembly he won in last year’s general election.
Borges said prosecutors were investigating possible corruption in government-appointed energy projects and searches led to the arrest of the prime minister’s chief of staff. Investigators also found about 75,000 euros (about $82,000) between books on the chief of staff’s bookshelves. The find launched an investigation into Prime Minister António Costa’s Socialist Party-led cabinet, WPR reports.
Costa’s name was mentioned in telephone conversations recorded during the investigation, Tereixa Constenla, a correspondent for the Spanish newspaper El País in Portugal, said. Costa subsequently resigned on 7 November 2023. At that time, the president of the republic could have tried to continue the Socialist Party’s mandate by appointing an alternative prime minister. But instead, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa called for an expected general election, setting in motion a scenario that now seems more uncertain than ever before.
António Costa, a former socialist prime minister, has not actually been formally charged and may never be charged with corruption, Constenla says, adding a twist to a story that cannot be called predictable and opening the door for Costa’s return to public office in the future.
Fast-forward to today: four days after the general election, Portugal’s citizens face a great deal of uncertainty. Not only because the two main parties failed to win a convincing majority, but also because the Chega party has appeared on the scene – with shocking results, according to WPR.
According to Constenla, Chega – translated from Portuguese as “enough” – is an anti-establishment party that seeks to change the established political order. Members of this far-right party, which is only five years old and had little influence on national politics before last weekend’s elections, were hoping for an election result that would turn its leader, André Ventura, into a real player in politics.
Portuguese journalist Borges argues that Chega is a one-man party. Ventura came out of the mainstream conservative party and is a larger-than-life far-right candidate, and Borges calls Chega an “extreme populist” party that claims it can solve Portugal’s corruption problems.
However, corruption is hardly the only problem Portugal currently faces. Costa has not left behind a bad economic situation, Constenla says. In fact, Portugal’s unemployment rate is less than 7 per cent, which is good compared to the country’s previous figures. The budget deficit is now smaller than the national gross domestic product, and inflation, which has been a problem throughout Europe, seems to be under control in Portugal at less than 3 per cent.
The Portuguese have to contend with two economic problems: a housing crisis due to high rental prices and low wages for the vast majority of workers.
Lisbon is one of the most expensive cities in Europe to rent a home. And the average monthly pre-tax salary is about 1,500 euros (about $1,600), barely enough to rent a one-bedroom flat in the capital. Constenla says housing prices are pushing the middle class out of the cities, which is a difficult new reality for them. She also points to what some see as a coming crisis in the universal education and health care systems, which have traditionally been pillars of society in Portugal, WPR reports.
It is in this context that Chega is trying to break the two-party system. Before last weekend’s elections, its best electoral performance had earned it 12 seats in the national parliament two years ago. Chega had no realistic chance of winning the election last weekend, but on Sunday night the party won 48 seats in the national parliament. This means that the far-right now holds the key to forming a coalition government with the traditional conservatives.
This will happen if the conservatives change their stance. AD leader Luis Montenegro made his position known before the election and repeated it afterwards: He will not govern with Chega.
But as early as Sunday night, Chega’s Ventura was pressuring the conservatives. “This is the night that ends the two-party system in Portugal,” he said, adding that the vote had resulted in “a clear majority in parliament for Chega and the conservatives together.” In a parliamentary system, members of the national assembly elect a prime minister, who then forms a government. If the conservatives use the support of Chega to elect a prime minister, Ventura is expected to ask for something in return, and that would likely be cabinet positions in the national government, according to WPR.
Chega campaigned on controversial proposals such as the adoption of life imprisonment and chemical castration for rapists. His campaign included anti-immigrant and anti-LGBTQ rhetoric, a defence of Portuguese Catholic traditions and a melancholy about Portugal’s dictatorial past. But his main theme was the fight against corruption. Like other far-right parties in Europe, Chega claimed it would end corruption and familiar politics.
Ventura sings, dances, gathers crowds with ridiculous statements, and loyalty to him is paramount for his party members. In that sense, he could be compared to Argentine President Javier Milei or former US President Donald Trump. But this week, post-election, Ventura has shown a more moderate version of himself and his party. He says he is willing to be flexible to run the country. And he is also issuing a warning to the conservatives, “If you don’t negotiate with us, we will not support your national budget.”
Portugal’s post-election situation could hardly be more uncertain, Constenla says, El País correspondent in Lisbon. Conservative leader Montenegro may become prime minister without Chega’s support, but he won’t be able to pass a national budget later this year without the backing of the far-right or the Socialist Party. Such a scenario would likely lead Portugal to new elections, as it did in 2021.
But political positions can change and there are precedents in other European countries, such as neighbouring Spain, of regional alliances between the traditional conservative party and the right-wing to govern and, above all, to avoid a repeat election. Voters can penalise parties that prioritise personal interests over the mandate of the people at the polls to reach an agreement and govern the country.
