But critics agree, it’s a “weak campaign”, heavy on insults, light on ideas
On a day that Cavaco Silva – an old grandee of PSD social democrats – gets a full page in people’s tabloid Correio da Manhã to explain “why I decided to vote Democratic Alliance”, political campaigning has continued across the country, battered as it is by wind and rain.
For anyone brave enough to step outside and seek enlightenment there doesn’t look to be very much of it. State news agency Lusa faithfully carries a cross-section of reports, but they are essentially either about ‘promises’ that very few believe will be kept (even if the party making them rises to the kind of influence it craves), or insults directed at adversaries.
PS Socialists’ leader Pedro Nuno Santos – described at the end of the week by former European Commissioner and one-time prime minister of Portugal Duarte Barroso as “the most left wing Socialist leader since Gonçalvismo” (going back to the very beginning of the Portuguese Republic) – has been hurling insults and accusations at his principal opponents ‘AD’ (Democratic Alliance) with desperate energy.
Backed in differing degrees by other left wing parties, the ‘centre right’ (AD and Iniciativa Liberal) only have to ‘stay calm’ and refrain from insults to appear the more mature.
Cavaco Silva’s withering assessment of the alternative to AD recalls the qualities and behaviour required of a prime minister, as set out in his most recent book.
“The new leader of the Socialist party does not minimally fulfill them”. This was his one and only reference to Pedro Nuno Santos.
Luís Montenegro, in the former prime minister and president’s view, “is very much closer to the qualities and behaviour of a prime minister”.
In a bizarre way, Mr Montenegro’s reaction to being pelted with green paint by ‘climate activists’ last week boosted his ‘appeal’ to the country’s voters. And the fact that he has pressed forwards with criminal charges shows he is no ‘push over’, falling over himself to appeal to everyone, in order to get elected. There is principle here – something that really has been in short supply through the last frantic week of street appearances, self-promotion, gratuitous insults and all the rest.
Says Correio da Manhã’s executive director Paulo João Santos, “this is one of the weakest campaigns. Perhaps because it has been long, perhaps because of the leaders, perhaps for the lack of ideas. All we have heard up till now have been attacks, who will govern with whom, poster promises, little else…
“We should wait to pass judgement for the end of the campaign, even though expectations are very low”, he conceded.
“More than the risks of ingovernability” that have marked this campaign (indeed, they appeared the very moment elections were called) are those of the people, Santos concludes, particularly the ‘undecided’ many of whom (as is almost a tradition) end up not deciding, and so not voting.
The coming week will see redoubled efforts by all parties to win supporters before the ‘final showdown’ on Sunday March 10.
Latest polls confirm the analysis of those that preceded them: both ‘main parties’ (PS Socialists and the PSD-led Democratic Alliance) show a ‘technical tie’, with no working majority. No combination of left-wing alliances appear to put the Socialists into the lead, and AD would have to forge some kind of agreement with CHEGA as well as Iniciativa Liberal to ‘win the day’. ND
