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Democratic Alliance leader must now try to form a
government but has vowed not to enter any kind of agreement with far-right
Chega party
Jon Henley
Europe correspondent
Thu 21 Mar
2024 01.51 GMT
Portugal’s
president has invited Luís Montenegro, the leader of the Democratic Alliance
(AD), to try to form a minority government after a long-awaited count of
overseas votes confirmed a narrow election victory for the centre-right bloc.
Montenegro
was summoned to the presidential palace in Lisbon shortly after midnight on
Thursday where President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, who has spent over a week
consulting party leaders, formally nominated him to head the government.
“The AD won
the election ... [so] the president ... decided to nominate Luís Montenegro as
prime minister,” the president’s office said in a statement.
Overall,
the AD won 80 seats in the 230-seat legislature, which is expected to return
next week, followed by the Socialists at 78 seats and the far-right Chega
party, which was founded just five years ago, with 50.
After
meeting Rebelo de Sousa for a first time on Wednesday afternoon, Montenegro
said that on behalf of his party he had “expressed our willingness to take on
the leadership of the government and to be appointed prime minister”.
Montenegro
has pledged not to enter a coalition or even an informal alliance with Chega –
his only route to a majority government – and must now try to agree with the
Socialist party (PS) the outline of a legislative programme the centre-left
party will back in parliament.
On Tuesday
Rebelo de Sousa met the Socialists’ new leader, Pedro Nuno Santos, who promised
the party would be a “stable, strong and solid” opposition, but also that it
would be a “responsible opposition” that was “open to agreements”.
The PS
would not back proposals with which it did not agree, he said, but nor would it
oppose “where there are common points of view”, such as on the need to boost
pay for public sector workers including teachers, health professionals and
police.
Chega,
which emerged as potential kingmaker after campaigning on a platform calling
for stricter controls on immigration and tougher measures to fight corruption,
has demanded a government role in exchange for supporting an AD-led
administration.
The
populist party’s leader, André Ventura, warned after his meeting with Rebelo de
Sousa on Monday that if AD continued to reject a coalition with Chega, voters
would inevitably blame the centre-right party for any political instability
that ensued.
“We are
continuing to put in all our efforts … to reach an agreement that will ensure
the country’s stability,” Ventura said. “If there is no government agreement,
the AD will be responsible for the instability that will result.”
António
Costa Pinto, a political scientist at the University of Lisbon, told Agence
France-Presse that a minority administration would “not necessarily” be
unstable because “none of the actors has an interest in triggering a crisis”.
Another
political scientist, José Adelino Maltez, told the Diario de Noticias newspaper
that “in political terms there is no crisis. Seventy percent of the AD
programme is 70% of the PS program. There is great stability on all the
essential objectives.”
However,
Montenegro is already coming under heavy pressure from a small but determined
group of MPs from his Social Democratic party (PSD) who argue that a stable
majority government in alliance with Chega is the only responsible course.
Without it,
Montenegro will be obliged to try to pass legislation on a case-by-case basis,
and his government could face a survival test as early as this autumn when it
tries to draw up the 2025 budget. A rejected budget could
lead to a new election.
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