Latest news with #PortugalElections
Reuters
28-05-2025
- Business
- Reuters
Portugal's far-right Chega becomes main opposition party
LISBON, May 28 (Reuters) - Portugal's far-right, anti-establishment party Chega overtook the centre-left Socialists to become the main opposition party for the first time on Wednesday after the final tally of ballots from abroad in a May 18 snap parliamentary election. The centre-right Democratic Alliance of Prime Minister Luis Montenegro won 91 seats in the 230-seat single-chamber parliament, including two from out-of-country voting. While it garnered more seats than in 2024, it again fell short of a majority needed to end a long period of instability. On the election night, the Socialist Party (PS) emerged slightly ahead of Chega in terms of the share of the vote but with the same 58 seats. The final tally, published by the Interior Ministry on Wednesday, took Chega's parliamentary representation to 60 while the PS was left with 58. Founded just six years ago, Chega, thus ended five decades of dominance by Portugal's two mainstream parties after the end of a fascist dictatorship in 1974, chiming with similar advances for the hard right across Europe. Chega has allied with anti-immigration parties, such as Marine le Pen's National Rally in France and Germany's AfD. It has long campaigned accusing the country's political establishment of perpetuating corruption, while also calling for an end to "open doors" immigration and tougher sentences for criminals, including chemical castration for repeat rapists. Montenegro has refused to make deals with Chega and said he would form a new minority government. President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa will meet the leaders of the three main parties on Thursday and is then widely expected to name Montenegro as the prime minister.
News.com.au
19-05-2025
- Politics
- News.com.au
Portugal's far-right party gains as premier holds on
Portugal's Prime Minister Luis Montenegro prepared Monday to lead a new minority government after the upstart far-right Chega party tied for second place in snap elections, posing a major challenge to his centre-right alliance. Nearly complete official results showed that Montenegro's Democratic Alliance (AD) had boosted its tally in the 230-seat parliament to 89 in the Sunday election, short of the 116 seats required for a majority. Chega, led by the former television sports commentator Andre Ventura, won eight additional seats to reach 58, putting it on par in second place with the Socialist Party that also obtained 58. There are still four seats left to be assigned representing Portuguese who live abroad. Ventura said he was confident Chega would pick up a couple of those seats, as it did in the previous election last year, and would overtake the PS to become Portugal's main opposition party for the first time. "We didn't win these elections but we made history," Ventura told supporters who chanted "Portugal is ours and it always will be" shortly after midnight on Monday. "The system of two-party rule in Portugal is over," he said. Even with the backing of the recently formed business-friendly party Liberal Initiative (IL), which won nine seats, Montenegro's AD would still need the support of Chega or the PS to pass legislation. But Montenegro, 52, a lawyer by profession, has refused any alliance with the anti-establishment Chega, saying it was "unreliable" and "not suited to governing". - More elections ahead - His previous minority government was able to pass a budget because the PS abstained in key votes in parliament. But relations between Portugal's two mainstream parties have soured during the campaign, and it is unclear if a weakened PS -- which had its lowest score in decades, losing 20 seats -- will be willing to allow the centre-right to govern this time around. Montenegro said he expected a "sense of state, a sense of responsibility" from other parties so he could "continue to work". But Portugal will remain in campaign mode ahead of local elections this year and a presidential election set for January 2026. The coming contests are likely to reduce the incentive for parties to cooperate as they focus on highlighting their differences to sway voters. Antonio Costa Pinto, a political scientist at the University of Lisbon, predicted that Chega would take a "hardline stance against the AD". "The main challenge, without a doubt, for Luis Montenegro's government will come from his right," he said. - 'Step backward' - Sunday's election -- Portugal's third in three years -- was triggered when Montenegro lost a parliamentary vote of confidence in March after less than a year in power. He called the confidence vote following allegations of conflicts of interest related to his family's consultancy business, which has several clients holding government contracts. Montenegro has denied any wrongdoing, saying he was not involved in the day-to-day operations of the firm. Support for Chega meanwhile has grown in every general election since the party was founded in 2019 by Ventura, with calls for tougher sentences for criminals and restrictions on immigration. It won just one seat in parliament in 2019, but it was the first time an extreme-right party was represented in Portugal's parliament since a coup in 1974 toppled a decades-long far-right dictatorship. Since then its popularity has soared and it won 50 seats in last year's election, cementing its place in Portugal's political landscape and mirroring gains by extreme-right parties in other parts of Europe. "We're on slippery ground, and we've made this mistake before in our history. It's a step backward," Sergio Sales, a 44-year-old tuk-tuk driver in Lisbon, told AFP of Chega's rise.
Arab News
19-05-2025
- Politics
- Arab News
Ruling party tops Portugal polls marked by far-right surge
LISBON: Portugal's incumbent center-right party won the most seats in the country's third general election in three years on Sunday but again fell short of a parliamentary majority, while support for the far-right Chega rose. The outcome threatens to extend political instability in the NATO and European Union member state as the bloc faces growing global trade tensions and works to strengthen its defenses. Near complete official results showed that Prime Minister Luis Montenegro's Democratic Alliance (AD) captured 32.7 percent of the vote in Sunday's poll with the Socialist Party (PS) and Chega virtually tied in second place. That would boost the AD's seat tally in the 230-seat parliament to 89, short of the 116 seats required for a ruling majority. The Socialists had 23.4 percent, their worst result in decades, trailed closely by Chega ('Enough') with 22.6 percent wich would give each party 58 seats. Even with the backing of upstart business-friendly party Liberal Initiative (IL) which won nine seats, the AD would still need the support of Chega to reach a majority to pass legislation. But Montenegro, 52, a lawyer by profession, has refused any alliance with Chega, saying it is 'unreliable' and 'not suited to governing.' 'It is not clear that there will be increased governability following these results,' University of Lisbon political scientist Marina Costa Lobo told AFP, calling Chega 'the big winner of the night.' Support for Chega has grown in every general election since the party was founded in 2019 by Andre Ventura, a former trainee priest who later became a television football commentator. It won 1.3 percent of the vote in a general election in 2019, the year it was founded, giving it a seat in parliament — the first time a far-right party had won representation in Portugal's parliament since a coup in 1974 toppled a decades-long rightist dictatorship. Chega became the third-largest force in parliament in the next general election in 2022 and quadrupled its parliamentary seats last year to 50, cementing its place in Portugal's political landscape. Like other far-right parties that have gained ground across Europe, Chega has tapped into hostility to immigration and concerns over crime. There are still four seats left to be assigned representing Portuguese who live abroad, but those results will not be known for days. Sunday's election was triggered after Montenegro lost a parliamentary vote of confidence in March after less than a year in power. He called for the vote following allegations of conflicts of interest related to his family's consultancy business, which has several clients holding government contracts. Montenegro denied any wrongdoing, saying he was not involved in the day-to-day operations of the firm. The AD formed a minority government after the last election. It passed a budget that raises pensions and public sector wages, and slashes income taxes for young people, because the PS abstained in key votes in parliament. But relations between the two main parties soured after the confidence vote, and it is unclear if a weakened PS will be willing to allow the center-right to govern this time around. Socialist leader Pedro Nuno Santos, a 48-year-old economist, had accused Montenegro of engineering the election 'to avoid explaining himself' about the firm's activities to a parliamentary enquiry. After the results were announced, he said he would call an internal party election to pick a new leader. Montenegro has criticized the immigration policies of the previous Socialist government, accusing it of leaving Portugal in 'bedlam.' Under the Socialist Party, Portugal became one of Europe's most open countries for immigrants. Between 2017 and 2024, the number of foreigners living in Portugal quadrupled, reaching about 15 percent of the total population. Montenegro has since toughened immigration policy, and during the campaign his government announced the expulsion of some 18,000 irregular migrants, leading critics to accuse it of pandering to far-right voters.
