Moderate right-wing leader Luis Montenegro was appointed Prime Minister of Portugal on the night of Thursday March 21 but, due to his narrow victory in the legislative elections on March 10, he will have to form a minority government and deal with an extreme right in clear progress.
This 51-year-old trained lawyer and seasoned parliamentarian will succeed the socialist Antonio Costa, in power since the end of 2015.
The Democratic Alliance (AD) candidate will present the composition of his government next Wednesday, and it should take office on April 2, he told the press in a brief statement afterward. of a meeting with the President of the Republic, the conservative Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa.
This meeting marked the end of the consultations that the head of state was to hold with the political parties represented in Parliament before inviting the winner of the elections to form the new government.
“A relative majority”
According to the full results announced at the same time, which made it possible to allocate the four seats in the foreign constituencies, the AD won the elections by a very narrow margin over the Socialist Party (PS).
Luis Montenegro's party won 28.8% of the vote and 80 deputies out of a total of 230. It will therefore remain far from the threshold of 116 elected representatives, synonymous with an absolute majority, but its head of the list had already said it was ready to form a minority government.
“It’s a relative majority.
(...) It is on the basis of this majority that, if the President of the Republic hears it, we will present our government
,” he underlined on Wednesday at the end of the day, after a first audience with the president.
Surprised by the resignation of outgoing Prime Minister Antonio Costa, who did not seek a new mandate after being cited in an investigation for influence peddling, the PS finished second with 28% of the votes and 78 seats.
The far-right Chega (Enough) party, for its part, clearly strengthened its status as the third political force in the country, going from 12 to 50 deputies, with a score of 18.1%.