The Socialist Party, in power since 2015, won Portugal’s legislative elections this Sunday (30) and secured a result considered surprising.
With more than 95% of votes counted, Prime Minister António Costa’s party won almost 42% of the votes, which puts him close to securing an absolute majority among the 230 deputies in the Assembly of the Republic.
Polls of voting intentions released in the last week of the campaign projected a technical tie between the PS and the largest opposition party, the PSD (Social Democratic Party).
The Social Democrats appear with 28.7% of the votes and have guaranteed, for the time being, a bench of 44 deputies.
A major change in the composition of Parliament will be on account of the significant increase in the bench of the far-right Enough party, which has assumed the post of third largest political force in the country.
The legend, which was created and entered the Assembly of the Republic in 2019, had 7.12% of the votes. With this, Chega, which currently has only one deputy, can now have up to eight representatives in Parliament at the end of the count.
The party presents itself as anti-system and accumulates controversial proposals, such as the return of the death penalty and the chemical castration of pedophiles. He also lived with members linked to neo-Nazi organizations and is often accused of discriminatory speech against Roma communities.
Leader of the acronym and its only representative in Parliament until the elections this Sunday, deputy André Ventura has already been convicted of “offenses to the right to honor” after having called bandits, during a debate on TV, the members of a black family and resident of a housing project. The decision was confirmed in December by the Portuguese Supreme Court of Justice. The populist was third in the presidential election a year ago, with 11.9% of the vote.
“Each racist elected in the Portuguese Parliament is one more deputy. And we will be there to fight them every day”, said, in a harsh speech, Catarina Martins, leader of the Left Bloc (BE), referring to the parliamentarians elected by the He arrives.
The results of the election were particularly bad for the parties more to the left, former partners of the socialists in supporting the government. In the opinion of analysts, the parties in this political field seem to have been held responsible at the polls for the early elections.
The Bloco de Esquerda and the Portuguese Communist Party (PCP) voted against the 2022 State Budget presented by the Executive, which ended up leading to the rejection of the proposal and a crisis that shook the structures of the contraption, nickname given to the alliance between the traditionally divided parties of the Portuguese left.
With the result in the Budget vote, the President of the Republic, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, decreed the dissolution of Parliament and the convening of new elections.
During the campaign, Prime Minister António Costa insisted on the political accountability speech of former partners on the left. The strategy seems to have worked, as polls indicate a large transfer of votes, especially from the Left Bloc to the Socialists.
Upon assuming the defeat, Pedro Filipe Soares, number two of BE in Lisbon, accused the PS of blackmail and of provoking a forced bipolarization of the country.
The communists, in turn, lost representatives in some of their traditional strongholds, such as Alentejo, in the south of the country. Parliamentary leader of the party and one of the faces of the campaign, João Oliveira was unable to be reelected in Évora. It was the first time since the redemocratization of Portugal that the PCP did not elect anyone in the Alentejo city.
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Source: Folha
