If the westernmost nation of mainland Europe was once seen as a paragon of sensible governance, it is now set for months or even years of political instability. Neither Portugal’s outgoing Socialists (PS) nor the centre-right Social Democratic party (PSD) were able to garner a majority in Sunday’s elections, ending the night barely one point apart and with a two-seat difference in the Assembleia da República. All eyes are now on the third force, the far-right party Chega (“Enough”), which quadrupled its parliamentarians from 12 to 48. Here is the real headline: an unprecedented victory for the far right in Portugal’s democratic history.
Snap elections were called last November after the Socialist prime minister, António Costa, resigned after the launch of an investigation into alleged illegalities in his administration’s handling of large green investment projects. (Costa was not accused of any crime, saying that while his conscience was clear, he felt he had no choice but to step down.) After more than eight years of eventful but unwavering leadership, the nation was left adrift. The opposition leader, Luis Montenegro, had been in place for just over a year when the government fell. The Socialists quickly, yet overwhelmingly, elected former infrastructure minister Pedro Nuno Santos to be their new leader.
On the campaign trail, both men proved similarly unimpressive, bordering on dull. Santos, known as a boisterous character, played the part of young but sensible leader. Montenegro wavered between platitudes and the inescapable shadow of Chega. Poll after poll, Sunday’s gridlock was long foretold.
It was one of those great ironies of history. Just short of 50 days before the 50th anniversary of the Portuguese revolution, which toppled an almost 50-year dictatorship, the nation woke up to nearly 50 newly elected far-right lawmakers in parliament. To give you a sense of Chega’s politics, it ran on a platform advocating the creation of a new crime of “illegal residence” on Portuguese soil and “reviewing” police regulations on the use of force. Pundits are now struggling to envision a governmental combination that does not include Chega. Montenegro has so far explicitly ruled out any deals with Chega because of what he calls the party leader’s “often xenophobic, racist, populist and excessively demagogic” views – the question is now how much strength is left in that cordon sanitaire.
Many supporters of PS hoped for a repeat of 2015, when the Socialists came second in the election but successfully formed a government through a confidence and supply agreement with other parties. But this gangly coalition, aptly nicknamed the “contraption”, would be hard to reproduce today. The Communist party is weakened, with just four MPs now where it had 17 at the time. The anti-capitalist Left Bloc, which peaked in 2015 at 19 seats, now clasps on to the five it has had since 2022. The pro-EU Livre had more luck, going from one to four MPs. But, in total, the left fared badly, with just under 40% of the vote share.
The Chega founder and leader, André Ventura, branded the night “the end of the two-party system”. A catchy slogan, for sure, evocative not only of the party’s power as kingmaker, but also of the fact that Portuguese people have indeed grown tired of the two parties that have, alternately, governed the country since 1974.
PS was not only fighting a war of attrition after eight years in power (marred by a series of influence-peddling and mismanagement scandals), but also fell short on its promises. Despite winning an absolute majority in 2022, the Socialists did little that could truly be called socialist. Between 2015 and 2019, PS conceded on a handful of simple social and economic demands from its far-left partners, while bolstering a limping economy with tourism revenues that injected much-needed cash but caused rents to spike, triggering an ongoing housing crisis.
Since 2019, with two comfortable majorities, Costa successfully steered the ship during the pandemic but was unable to meet the demands of the economic aftermath of Covid. Minimum wage increases were never able to meet spiralling prices; rent controls were always out of the question. In a country where 12% are living in food poverty, people felt plundered, and while Costa’s replacement, Santos, led his campaign with a sort of mea culpa approach, to the electorate it felt like too little, too late.
Conversely, voters have also not forgotten about PSD’s last administration, from 2011 to 2015, which wrought hardship through a series of austerity measures that went from cutting pensions to abolishing bank holidays. Indeed, sightings of the former Conservative prime minister Pedro Passos Coelho on the campaign trail were received with frostiness and even heckling.
Chega’s success is the result of letting the beast of social discontent grow, feeding on the rapidly deteriorating living and working conditions. In a Portugal where incomes are the sixth lowest in the EU but “non-habitual residents” (read: expats) enjoy various tax exemptions, the most vulnerable are easy prey to an ultra-nationalist political project that promises higher wages and public spending but also lower taxes.
A mere three months ahead of the European elections, democrats in Brussels should take notes from Portugal’s change in fortune. But maybe it is too late. The paradigmatic shift isn’t so much the end of the two-party system, but the end of the electorate’s faith in a socioeconomic model that has for many decades failed to sustainably deliver for the average working Jane and Joe. Last night, Chega was receiving messages of congratulation from far-right parties in Hungary, Spain, France and Germany. Democracies that fail to learn this lesson are doomed to open the door to the Chegas of the world.
Joana Ramiro is a freelance journalist based in London and a contributor to the Portuguese news platform Setenta e Quatro
