The hard defeat of the ruling socialists in the Portuguese elections

According to the report of the international group Tasnim news agency quoting “De Sight” publication, in the early parliamentary elections in Portugal, the ruling socialists lost their absolute majority and the right-wing populists of the Chega party gained significant votes.

After Sunday’s vote, early results show that the conservative coalition will oust the Democratic Alliance (AD) of the Socialists (PS), which has been in power for about eight years. But how this process is formed is still questionable. Considering the conditions of the majority, it is likely to be difficult to form a future government coalition in this country. Before the election, the major parties had rejected the possibility of the right-wing populists participating in the government.

After more than 99 percent of the votes were counted, with about 29.5 percent, AD only slightly It was ahead of PS, which reached 28.7 percent. However, the main candidate of the coalition, Luis Montenegro, who is an experienced lawyer, claimed victory last night. Socialist challenger Pedro Nuno Santos conceded defeat and announced that he would go into opposition.

According to preliminary election results, the far-right party Chega (“Enough is Enough”) ), founded just in 2019 by former TV sports commentator Andre Ventura, remained the third-strongest party, but significantly expanded its lead over smaller parties and managed to more than double its vote share. The vote of about seven percent of this party in the previous elections reached about 18 percent at the beginning of 2022.

In this way, this party in the Parliament of Lisbon, which has 230 seats, is likely to Instead of 12 seats, it will have at least 48 representatives, which means four times before. After almost all votes were counted, the AD won at least 79 seats, and the Socialists won 77.

The election was preceded by international criticism, especially European authorities have been concerned about the possible outcome of this election. Jens Geyer, the head of the representatives of the Social Democratic Party in the European Union Parliament, warned against cooperation with right-wing populists in this country. One of the biggest threats to the European Union today is that Democrats are helping anti-democrats gain power, Geyer said. According to him, the right-wing populist Chega party is a one-man party without a real program that incites against minorities.” Ventura and other Chega representatives in the election campaign. They scored points with anti-immigrant slogans.

The last national elections in Portugal were held in January 2022. The fact that after two years the elections will be held again in this country was due to a corruption scandal within the government under the rule of the socialists. Socialist Prime Minister Antonio Costa was forced to resign in November over the corruption scandal, and ended up serving only in an acting role. Marcelo Rebello D’Souza, the president of this country at that time, officially dissolved the parliament and announced early elections.

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