CHEGA leader advised by doctors to miss final day after recent collapses
The final day of the campaign for legislative elections on Sunday has seen all parties reinforcing their messages in the hope of added successes at the ballot box.
PS Socialists are “singing victory in Santa Catarina, Porto”, writes Lusa – while the other parties are showing they too have high hopes.
Iniciativa Liberal’s leader Rui Rocha has said he hopes his party will become “the light that illuminates Europe”; LIVRE has said it is hoping to ‘double its parliamentary bench’; CDU/ PCP communists have already said they hope to recover the MPs they lost in the last elections; PAN too is hoping to grow from the current one member of parliament – and the continuing lack of realistic policies coming out of this latest race is now fully-recognised.
CHEGA perhaps is at a disadvantage today because its leader André Ventura has been ordered back to ‘rest’ by doctors, after another high-profile collapse on the campaign trail in Odemira yesterday.
Adding perhaps to the surreality of the times, in Madeira, the PSD leader/regional governor facing corruption charges has said he will continue in place even if he is formally accused. That ‘kind of sets a precedent’ for the leaders of Portugal’s two main parties, Luís Montenegro and Pedro Nuno Santos – both facing investigations into complaints about potential conflicts of interest.
President Marcelo meantime has put the whole election performance into perspective by saying his job after Sunday’s result will be to choose “the least bad option”.
Saturday should see very little in the press: it is the traditional ‘day of reflection’, for the electorate to be able to think without the noise and distractions of the campaign trail playing over national television. It is also, coincidentally, the day of ‘the final matches’ to decide who wins Portugal’s national league: Benfica is playing in Braga; Sporting in Lisbon – and the fans of both these top clubs, and their opponents (Braga and V. Guimarães) are expected to go into their habitual frenzies. This carries with it the risk that they may not even be in a fit condition to vote on Sunday.
Abstention, admit leader writers, is one of the greatest unknowns in this ‘race’ – and is a strong feature of Portuguese elections (particularly when they come round as regularly as they have been in the last few years…) Even the weather could affect voting: the weekend is expected to have fabulous temperatures (up to 26ºC in some places) which may see people deciding they would prefer to be at the beach…
Polls too have been largely ‘unhelpful’ , suggesting the country is facing another minority government, very possibly AD – and that the ‘strongest option’ would be a central government, including PS Socialists. That scenario however is very much in doubt considering the relationship between the two parties’ leaders.
A poll being touted today, however, is suggesting AD (the coaliton of the current government, involving PSD and CDS-PP) is on track to clinch 34% of the vote, while PS Socialists will only get 26%. ND
