There is no certainty that country will be thrown into (another) snap election
Today sees two meetings described by the national press as “crucial” for Portugal’s ridiculous political crisis (ridiculous, because if one analyses everything being said “no one wants elections”, ergo: why are we at risk of having them?)
While satirical Sunday programme Isto é Gozar com Quem Trabalha highlighted the lunacy at play, PS political heavyweight (and possible candidate for Presidency of the Republic) António Vitorino has stressed that what worries him is not really the prospect of another election but where the country will find itself ‘the day after’…
Thus, today is widely seen as the ‘almost last moment in which politicians can row back’: the government is having one of its ‘extraordinary meetings of the Council of Ministers’, while PS Socialists (who insist they do not want a new election) are convening a meeting of the national political committee.
The first meeting is taking place as we write this text; the second, at 9pm this evening.
In simple terms, the government is vacillating massively on whether it will, or will not, stick with its plan for a vote of confidence (which no other party wants to endorse), while PS Socialists are appealing to it to drop it.
Put that way, it sounds simple – but then there are the nuances: Luís Montenegro has said the equivalent of ‘we can’t go on like this, being second-guessed at every turn’; while the minister for territorial cohesion has said to drop the ‘motion of confidence’, the government would want the PS to drop its commission of inquiry… and so the wrangling goes on.
Yesterday, parliamentary speaker José Pedro Aguiar-Branco tried another tack: calling for the government’s motion of confidence to be approved, in the name of ‘the national interest’. This is not ‘simple enough’: all parties have already said they have no confidence in the government, thus it is a call that tries to persuade everyone to change their attitudes, not just the PS.
And in between all these ‘calls’ and possible scenarios, politicians have been muddying the waters by insulting each other and blaming each other for the gathering morass.
Commentators, however, seem relatively agreed: had the prime minister explained everything clearly from the start (answering journalists’ questions instead of making announcements that did not allow questions), much of this current drama might have been avoided.
So, where are we now? This all depends on what comes out of the two crucial meetings. If they result in ‘more of the same’, it looks like there will be a vote of confidence in the government, in all likelihood tomorrow, and in all likelihood the precarious administration with no working majority will ‘fall’. A flurry of meetings and hearings with the president of the Republic will then take place, with the closest date given for a new general election being May 11, possibly May 18.
All this came ‘very much out of the blue’, with stories broken by tabloid Correio da Manhã about the prime minister’s family business, Spinumviva, which at the time was owned by the PM’s wife and children, raising doubts about compliance with the regime of incompatibilities and impediments for holders of public and political office.
The PM’s subsequent announcement (allowing no questions) that his wife was no longer a shareholder in the business did nothing to mollify critics or the press – and subsequent reports in other newspapers only made matters worse, leading to two motions of censure, which the government managed to survive.
As Isto é Gozar com Quem Trabalha’s host Ricardo Araújo Pereira stressed last night, the government survives two motions of censure and then decides to tempt fate a third time by calling for a motion of confidence that all parties have said they cannot approve. He likened it to someone who has avoided certain death twice, deciding to take a bath with an electric toaster.
Ridiculous, in other words. The polar opposite of that old British advertising slogan: “We won’t make a drama out of a crisis” – and what is even worse, say commentators/ Euro MP João Cotrim de Figueiredo, is the very possible outcome of new elections: another government without a working majority.
Comment by Natasha Donn
