Today is the day for the new Government to take office here in Portugal, at a time when politics has set the agenda: for the first time in the History of Portuguese Democracy, which celebrates 50 years this month, the Assembly of the Republic will have three political forces with a lot of parliamentary representation, which will require negotiations never seen before on this side of the Atlantic.
The center-right majority that won the elections on March 10, led by Luís Montenegro (PSD) was invited to form a Government, but the 80 deputies from the PSD and CDS-PP will not arrive to guarantee a peaceful legislature. On the other side of the circle is the center-left Socialist Party (PS), led by Pedro Nuno Santos, with 78 deputies and with a message that never tires of repeating: “we will be opposition”.
And, in third place, are the 50 deputies from Chega, the far-right party, which quadrupled its presence in the plenary in the last election, and with which Luís Montenegro has stated that he does not want to negotiate, as he rejects xenophobic messages, conservative and dictatorial actions of André Venrura, its charismatic leader.
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The political environment has been quite tense in recent months, after the fall of the Government of António Costa – the prime minister who had guaranteed an absolute majority to the PS – and with the parties little prepared for new elections, less than two years after the last election. to the polls. The growth of radical movements is also worrying the population, despite it being quite clear that the votes of one million voters for a party that wants to change the Portuguese Constitution are linked to the ineffectiveness of the last rulers. Still, and as Portugal is a country where around a quarter of the population is immigrants, the future scenario we may soon face is still frightening.
For now, let’s hope that the Government of Luís Montenegro manages to calm the latent anxiety and find a way to dialogue with the deputies necessary to make a country function that needs to resolve serious problems in Justice, Education, Health and Housing. Because if we don’t achieve this, I suspect that we could follow the paths of other European countries, which will make Portugal an unrecognizable country in a very short time. And I don’t know if I want to live in it.
