Welcome to Circo Chega, which now comes to the city every fortnight and pitches its tent at the Parliament to tear down the statues and disorient the compasses. The election of the president of the Assembly of the Republic was the very first riddle of a hilarious new era for political understanding. After so much pepper spray for so little, the next question is obvious: how – but how?! – can this parliament approve a State Budget in half a dozen months?
It will be difficult to rationalize in these times. Not because Chega doesn’t play with the whole deck – but because, by playing, you are spilling the beans on the rules written by those against whom you assert yourself. The mythical one million and two hundred thousand gave them 50 deputies for this very reason – to disrupt, to take away control, to challenge positions and disfigure composure. There is even a certain transgressive boldness in these subversive practices. The problem is that, by using this to destroy, it proposes nothing more than… just destroying.
It would be said that, the day after the presentation of the deputies and the day before the presentation of the ministers, this government was born as a poor candidate, sandwiched between two parties competing for the leadership of the opposition.
The PS – which destroyed part of the center’s secret balance with the creation of the contraption in 2015 – decided in 2024 to be the leader of the united left, a negative pole unavailable to the center. By announcing that you are going to vote against a State Budget that you are not yet familiar with, made by a government that does not yet exist, you are saying that you are against it, you are announcing that the only chance for the government to get out of its gestation period is to negotiate with the Enough – and then hyperventilate that on the other side of the equator is the extreme right. Polarized.
Chega – who until today never knew nor wanted to know how to build a balance – decided to pretend to govern with the AD and block a hysterical pregnancy of the united right, another negative pole unavailable to the center. By creating the circus act, possibly premeditated, with which he undid the election process of José Pedro Aguiar-Branco, he is saying that either the AD gives him victories that he will amplify loudly or he will have to go and ask for alms from the PS – and then hyperventilate that on the side of power is the regime of interests. Polarized.
There is no intersection in this to make AD viable unless Luís Montenegro gives in to create it. But give in for what, if even if the AD wanted to say no to “no, no”, if you know that with Chega every bridge today will be blown up tomorrow? These three parties are unavailable for love, they do not trust each other, and between them a Bermuda triangle will be created where everything that appears will disappear.
Montenegro maintains the Cavaquist silence but we probably already know that the AD will remain single, that the PS does not want to get married in the open and that Chega does not want to romance secretly. Parliament will therefore be a place more of opposition than of governance, of exercising counterpower rather than power.
The only way for Montenegro to survive is to present a strong government, which engages and creates its own narrative, freeing itself from the two parties that want to hinder it – and which will form two oppositions, one to the AD, the other to each other. The chaos is as gentle as aquaculture for Chega, who will always say that he wanted to lend a hand but he was thrown with his feet, which is actually true. There will be 50 deputies on one side fighting against the wind that will spread among the other 180. To say in the end that they won.
Well, the important thing now is not Chega, the important thing is to govern. You don’t see how. Maybe Montenegro will see it. Or maybe you go forward with your eyes closed and then you see yourself. Or perhaps you will be surprised by a government that draws strength from its own qualities. If not, we can start thinking about the next two elections: the European ones in June and the legislative ones after the OE.
It is the home of democracy.
