Party with 4 MPs holds out for results of emigré constituencies
LIVRE – the upwardly moving left-wing party that quadrupled its representation in parliament in Sunday’s legislative elections – is supporting the generalised left-wing pressure for a left-wing government.
If President Marcelo thought his early meetings this week with the smallest parties in parliament would be ‘easy’, he has discovered the opposite.
PAN came out of its hearing, complaining that the meeting should never have taken place, bearing in mind the results from emigré constituencies (which elect four MPs to parliament) have not yet come in. LIVRE did much the same – but went a little further, expanding on Bloco de Esquerda’s strategy that the left should ‘unite’ and trounce a centre right government, on the basis of its number of votes.
The ‘imbroglio’ traced on Sunday night, in the media at least, just seems to be deepening. Or does it? A late night debate on SIC Notícias last night saw commentators admit that this is just ‘noise to have been expected, given the results’: it is highly unlikely that AD (the democratic alliance, bringing together PSD/ CDS-PP and PPM) will not form a government, possibly as early as next week. It is also highly unlikely that left-wing parties will ‘bring it down’ if in doing so the electorate can see that they were simply doing it for being ‘poor losers’. Much more important are the measures this new government intends to implement – and by all accounts these will be populist, at least to start with.
But LIVRE, coming out of its meeting with Marcelo yesterday, has been hugely buoyed by the fact that it is a ‘political group’ now, not just one man (Rui Tavares), and, in the mindset of Tavares’ (whose campaign was seen as very convincing), there should be new audiences with Marcelo once the votes from emigrés are known.
Tavares’ calls it “a matter of respect for our Portuguese citizens abroad” – and clearly he is hoping that these citizens ‘change the voting mix’, which is ‘precarious’ to say the least: AD only has TWO more MPs than PS. If the four emigré votes come through as PS, technically PS will have won the elections.
But that argument is purely technical. There would then have to be a totting up of all votes cast – and as CHEGA leader André Ventura has stressed, any decisions to change the result, could not ignore that 1.1 million voters also voted CHEGA…
On the face of it, the president faces an enormous uphill struggle over the next few days. In reality, he will probably not be seeing the situation the way the media and some of the political parties like to present it.
The confusion has not been helped by PCP communists (who continued to lose MPs in these latest elections) declaring they will be presenting a motion of censure of the new government’s programme, before the government has even been sworn into office.
The PCP position is “putting the cart before the horse”, admitted Rui Tavares.
Today, the party due to discuss the political situation with President Marcelo is CDU (the PCP communist alliance), which like LIVRE has four MPs; used to have six, and was brought down from 12 in the 2022 elections.
natasha.donn@portugalresident.com
