Marcelo remembers that the country chose to give victory to the “moderate” and not to the “radicals”

“Where we don’t have problems we shouldn’t create them”, said the head of state, at Palácio da Ajuda, in Lisbon, moments after the inauguration of Luís Montenegro as prime minister, as well as the remaining 17 ministers.

This inauguration takes place two years and two days after the last Government of António Costa. At the time, remember, Marcelo warned the prime minister, elected with an absolute majority, that a possible departure for a European position would mean the fall of the Executive.

On that occasion, the head of state did not spare Costa in his messages: “Now that he has won – and won for four and a half years –, I am sure that Your Excellency knows that it will not be politically easy for this guy who won in an indisputable and notable that the elections could be replaced by another halfway through”, he warned. He added that this was “the price of great victories”.

The ministers of António Costa’s government, who are out of office, attended the inauguration of their successors in the front rows of the Palácio da Ajuda room. Costa sat next to Luís Montenegro’s wife. The PS leader, Pedro Nuno Santos, was not present, having been represented by Alexandra Leitão.

Neither BE nor PCP were at the ceremony. The former made it known to Lusa that, “as happened in the past”, they are not witnessing the inauguration of “a Right-wing Government”. The communists recalled that they are not in the habit of attending Executive inaugurations; They only broke tradition in 2015 – the year the contraption was created – to make a stand against then-president Cavaco Silva.