Portuguese vote for the third time in three years to seek an exit to political instability | International

This election Sunday in Portugal looks so much like that of a year ago that even the levels of participation are listed. Until noon, 25.56% of the voters had voted, three tenths more than in March 2024. Nothing to do with the historical lines that formed before the electoral colleges 50 years ago to choose the deputies who would have to write the Constitution, but then the Portuguese voted freely for the first time after half a century of dictatorship and now vote almost every year, at least since 2022. The fall of the government of the conservative coalition AD due to the crisis opened by a matter of political ethics of the Prime Minister, Luís Montenegro, who kept the family business, spinumviva operational, when he reached office.

To that somewhat welcome feeling to Marmota, also contributes the fact that neither the faces of the posters nor the programs have varied. The candidates of the eight forces with parliamentary representation are identical to the 2024 campaign and the main duel again faces the leader of the conservative coalition (AD), Luís Montenegro, with the socialist Pedro Nuno Santos. The only novelty of the day has been the emotion that Sporting followers still terminate, who during the previous night held their victory in the Portuguese League for irritation of Benfica’s fans. His duel is almost as mythological as those who measure Atlético de Madrid and Real Madrid.

And also unexpected was the aggression that Miguel Coelho, president of the Board of Fantage (District) of Santa Maria Maior, in Lisbon, at the hands of a Chega supporter when they found themselves in an electoral school. For the rest, normality. André Ventura, leader of Chega, voted in Lisbon, free at the end of the strips and bandages he kept after leaving Thursday from the hospital due to spasms in the esophagus, as well as Pedro Nuno Santos, who came again accompanied by his nine -year -old son. Luís Montenegro, however, did it in Espinho, where he has the family residence, also the registered office of the famous spinumviva who has led to this campaign, in the same electoral school where he voted for the first time in 1991.

The great issue is whether this redundancy will be reflected in the results and will cause a night not suitable for cardiac ailments such as March 10, 2024, when the difference of votes between AD and Socialist Party (PS) was just 50,000 votes and two seats. Until one in the morning it was not entirely clear who the winner was, although the polls at the ballothed had anticipated a comfortable victory of Montenegro.

Those elections, also anticipated by the resignation of the socialist António Costa as Prime Minister in November 2023 when he was involved in a judicial investigation that 18 months later still does not give results, marked two important milestones. On the one hand, the left shrunk its weight in the Assembly of the Republic to 40%, the third lowest percentage of all democracy. On the other, the ultra -right broke the bipartisanship that had characterized the Portuguese policy since the carnation revolution when receiving more than one million votes and obtaining 50 seats. André Ventura’s triumph, with a radical match that only had a five-year history, did not alter Luís Montenegro’s plans to keep the sanitary cord against the extreme-right.

At this time there are only unanswered questions. Will Montenegro keep the sanitary cord if your victory is insufficient to have a parliamentary majority? The leader of AD has clear his willingness to agree with liberal initiative, fourth parliamentary formation. It is a corresponding love. But if, as the polls indicate, the sum of both does not guarantee parliamentary majority, the prime minister would face a Calvary similar to that he has lived this year in the Assembly. On more than one occasion he has had to approve measures imposed by the opposition with which he disagreed. And we must not forget that, a few months after assuming the position, he had several secret meetings with André Ventura to try to get his support to approve the budgets.

If the victory is socialist, Pedro Nuno Santos would have an even more devilish scenario than Montenegro, since the polls do not foresee that the parliamentary weight of the left exceeds that of the right. The PS leader has demanded in a “reciprocity” campaign to the conservative coalition to let them govern, as they did when voting against two censorship motions, support the budgets and agree on the presidency of the Chamber.