Many Portuguese went to vote this Sunday, crossed by the same question that keeps many Brazilians awake at night: how to ensure the alliance of democratic forces against the extreme right?
Would the long-awaited rise of Chega be enough to put the PSD, a traditional center-right party, in the face of the dilemma that has devoured the souls of conservatives around the world? That is: to ally with the new, xenophobic, denialist and anti-republican right, or to seek the preservation of the democratic pact through an alliance with the center-left? The anguish of the conservatives was visible today on the face of Rui Rio, the apathetic leader of the PSD, who spent the campaign promising everything and the opposite.
On the other hand, the socialist António Costa seemed to have neither the will nor the conditions to reissue the contraption, as the alliance of the left that governed Portugal is known, combining fiscal discipline and international insertion between 2015 and 2019.
Despite the success of the endeavor, the Communist Party and the Left Bloc broke away from the Socialist Party in 2019 and, at the end of last year, helped to overthrow its minority government. During the campaign, Costa seemed tired and out of ideas, pressured by new leaders in his party and weakened by the dismantling of a power project that he had designed from start to finish.
In this lengthy context, no one expected the triumphant victory of the Socialists this Sunday and Costa’s best result in three elections. Even if the socialists did not win an absolute majority in the Assembly of the Republic, Costa only needs, in principle, specific agreements with allies to remain in command of Portugal at a decisive moment in its history: it will be up to the next government to administer the so-called “Bazooka”, the voluminous European funds destined to the recovery of the economy.
The result in Portugal also reinforces some general impressions about the dynamics of politics in the post-pandemic era. First, the experience of the health crisis and the awareness of the climate crisis are bringing voters back together with parties committed to the welfare state.
Second, what everyone has come to call a crisis of democracy may actually be a crisis of the right. With the confirmation of Chega as the third political force, it is impossible for the Portuguese democratic right to compete in elections against the center-left. An underlying situation in the United States in the midst of the Republican Party, wide open in France, where the right-wing split is even deeper, and, to some extent, in Brazil, where the emergence of Sergio Moro and Jair Bolsonaro has placed the democratic right in a minority within from the conservative camp.
Finally, it is impossible not to highlight the performance of Rui Tavares, candidate for deputy for Livre. Known in Brazil for his podcast “Now, now and more now”, he showed that the best way to combat the verbal lowliness of candidates more used to social networks than to electoral debates is republican rectitude, innovative proposals and optimism with the future. An inspiration for all Brazilian progressives.
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Source: Folha
