A new moderate right-wing government was inaugurated on Tuesday in Portugal, but its room for maneuver will be as limited as its parliamentary majority, caught between the outgoing socialists and a rapidly growing far right. Luis Montenegro, who narrowly won the legislative elections on March 10, and his 17 ministers were sworn in early in the evening under the gaze of the President of the Republic, the conservative Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa.
His Democratic Alliance (AD) obtained a narrow victory, with 28.9% of the votes and 80 seats, against 28% and 78 elected for the Socialist Party (PS). Far from an absolute majority of at least 116 deputies, he decided to form a minority government in order to keep his promise not to seek the support of the anti-system Chega (Enough) party, which has strengthened its rank as the third political force in the country by going from 12 to 50 deputies with 18.1% of the votes.
The president of Chega, André Ventura, said he was ready to discuss a
“government agreement”
guaranteeing the stability of the new executive, while threatening to obstruct it if Mr. Montenegro refused to begin discussions in this direction .
“This government is here to govern the four and a half years of the legislature
,” assured the new Prime Minister on Tuesday, appealing to the sense of responsibility of the entire opposition, and the PS in particular.
“Sterile exercises”
“We are not interested in sterile political exercises. (...) This government is not there to ensure a shift, nor to do the easiest thing
,” underlined this trained lawyer and 51-year-old seasoned parliamentarian. The entry into office of the new executive marks the end of eight years of socialist governments led by Antonio Costa, who resigned in early November and gave up running for another mandate after being cited in an investigation for influence peddling.
Mr. Montenegro revealed on Thursday the composition of his team, for which he placed seasoned political leaders, but without government experience, like himself, in key positions. The fragmentation of the new Parliament nevertheless almost caused an impasse last week, during the election of its president: after an about-face from Chega, the AD had to turn to the PS to place its candidate in the perch.
The next bump in Mr Montenegro's road will be the presentation of his government program, a document which will be submitted and debated in Parliament next week. Its rejection would imply the fall of the executive, but this scenario has already been ruled out by the new boss of the Socialists, Pedro Nuno Santos.
Mr. Montenegro “chose the PS as his interlocutor”
“Not rejecting the government program does not represent a blank check, but it should not represent a bad check either
,” the new prime minister said on Tuesday, suggesting that he is counting more on the cooperation of the PS only on support from the extreme right. Mr. Montenegro
“chose the PS as his interlocutor and it is with the PS that he will have to come to an agreement
,” reacted far-right leader André Ventura after the Prime Minister's speech.
Describing the challenges facing Portugal, President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa cited
"the international panorama"
and
"internal economic and social governance"
, but he also recalled that Mr. Montenegro's executive
"does not have the majority support of the Assembly and will have to build it
. While inheriting a historic budget surplus of 1.2% of GDP, the government could start by accepting the salary demands of certain categories of civil servants, such as law enforcement or teachers, in order to take the advantage over the opposition and dissuade the socialists and the far right from making common cause to provoke new elections.
If the president cannot dissolve Parliament before September, Mr. Montenegro has still not explained how he then intends to adopt the state budget for 2025, essential to the implementation of his program.