Possibly of interest to some (and no, I don’t think the Leonor in the article is Cipriano before one of you wise guys says it):
From today’s Times-
Portugal’s political stability put to the test in knife-edge election
“I’m a single mother and as I can’t find a job I take what I can,” said the 36-year-old unemployed estate agent, who prefers not to giver her surname. “But it’s very difficult in Portugal as the economy is stagnant. So I must ask for help to eat. Can you imagine what this means?”
The snap election is a critical test of Portugal’s political stability; perhaps, some commentators argue, the biggest it has faced since the country’s return to democracy in 1974. The crisis began in October when the minority Socialist government of Antonio Costa, the prime minister, failed to pass a budget. It was the first time that had occurred since the 1974 “Revolution of Carnations”, a left-wing coup that overthrew the authoritarian regime, which had ruled since 1928, and restored democracy.
The budget’s failure signalled the end of Costa’s idiosyncratic government, known as the geringonça, or “odd contraption”, which functioned with the support of the anti-capitalist Left Bloc and the hardline Communist Party. Unable to reconcile EU fiscal rules with Marxist-Leninism, the two far-left parties sided with right-wing adversaries to reject the bill.
Portugal is confronting for the first time the rise of a far-right party, as well as increasing poverty, high levels of youth emigration, low wages and economic growth. Experts warn it urgently needs a stable government — not least to unlock billions of euros of EU pandemic funds.
The two main parties, the centre-left Socialist Party and the centre-right Social Democratic Party, are neck-and-neck in the polls, but both fall short of a majority and face complicated challenges to form a coalition.
“Fortunately for Portugal the two main moderate parties have provided the country with stability for decades but now the prospect of coalitions having to be built on the right or the left will be a huge challenge,” said Francisco Pedro Balsemão, the head of Impresa, a powerful media conglomerate, and the son of a former Social Democrat prime minister. “What I fear is that there will not be a strong government and this will again lead to instability, a further failure to pass the budget and yet more elections this year, which is very probable.”
The rise of the right-wing populist party Chega, which translates as “Enough”, has put paid to the prized notion that the country was immune to such a movement. With only one seat in parliament at present, the party, founded in 2019 by André Ventura, a former football television pundit, is polling to take a dozen seats, which would make it the third-largest party and a possible kingmaker.
Standing on an anti-corruption, anti-establishment ticket Ventura has called for life imprisonment for violent crimes, chemical castration for paedophiles and verbally attacked the country’s small Roma community.
Antonio Costa has been acknowledged as a safe pair of hands but his minority government was unable to pass a budget in October, precipitating the snap election
Antonio Costa has been acknowledged as a safe pair of hands but his minority government was unable to pass a budget in October, precipitating the snap election
PATRICIA DE MELO MOREIRA/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
Costa’s six years in office revealed him to be an efficient guardian of fiscal discipline. Before the pandemic hit unemployment was at its lowest since 2004 and the budget was in surplus for the first time in 45 years. But low growth persisted and low wages have brought many to the brink of poverty.
Portugal’s dependence on tourism, the sector that helped o drive the country’s recovery from the global economic crisis of 2008 and accounts for about 15 per cent of national output and 9 per cent of employment, has made it especially susceptible to its impact.
“In Portugal we have a very high poverty rate that has increased a lot during the pandemic,” said Isabel Jonet, an economist who runs the country’s largest network of food banks, which distributes 100 tonnes of food daily.
“We have one million people who live on less than €250 per month and two million people who live on less than €450.” Two million people are estimated to be at risk of poverty in Portugal and 4 per cent of its ten million population are believed to be reliant on food banks.
For centre-right voters Costa’s tenure has brought the country to a crossroads. “These six years have been totally lost. No progress has been made in terms of reducing public debt and developing the country. That state is involved in every aspect of Portuguese economic life and is paralysing it. This is the price of a central-left party having to bargain with the extreme left,” said a civil engineer who declined to give his name. “The current economic model is catastrophic.”
For some observers the economic hardships are real but the political crisis is artificial. The failure to pass a budget, according to José Santana Pereira, a politics professor at Lisbon University, was due to political parties putting their own agendas first. “The Socialists were aiming for an absolute majority, the far-left allies reacted to negative results in municipal or presidential elections, linking them to having abandoned their stance as protest parties to support the government,” he said.
Santana Pereira believes the parties will make efforts to form stable coalitions after the poll. “Further irresponsible behaviour after the election — that is, not contributing to a stable governmental result — will create further discontent among the population in such a delicate moment,” he added.
But the country’s political fragmentation, although less marked than that of neighbouring Spain, poses a threat to coalition-building efforts. Elections in 2019 led to a greater fragmentation of parliament, with three new parties taking one seat each and a small left-leaning environmentalist and animal-rights group winning four.
The post-election parliamentary arithmetic makes it very challenging for a stable government to emerge. Ricardo Pereira, a comedian and political commentator who hosts a daily television show, warned that the future is uncertain. “In 47 years only three times has a single party won a majority and now it is even more difficult,” he said. “We have a political crisis, a health crisis and an economic crisis. If we don’t have some political stability it’s difficult to know how we will escape these troubles.”
For Leonor her trips to the food banks look set to continue. “Nothing will change because the policies are the same, left or right,” she said. “Portuguese politicians don’t care about the people or the future of the country. We go from bad to worse.”
