Ah, Portugal, the land where you have a right to disconnect from your boss, but you'd better not disconnect from your civic duty, for that's coming up on Sunday, January 30, our first major vote of 2022. In the last few weeks, we've seen budgets come and go across Europe, most notably in Sweden, where their first woman PM lasted exactly 7 hours before her budget got shot down. But enough about them, this thread is about Portugal, where a similar situation has taken place. The current PS government under PM Antonio Costa presented their budget to Parliament last month. They don't have a majority, but they were confident that other left-wing parties would support them. Well, they didn't. After the smaller left parties saw losses in 2019, they took a harder line on what would normally have been an easy support for what was considered a pretty progressive package. The Communists decided that the budget wasn't enough to fix Portugal's problems, and they and the Left Bloc(BE), shot it down. The President didn't see any other workable coalition arrangements, nor did he see a need for the Government to continue if a budget couldn't be passed, and so Parliament was dissolved and Portugal now goes to the polls.
Speaking of polls, PS remains as popular as before with a slight increase in support over their 2019 victory, though it's not certain yet if it can translate to a Majority Government. The biggest opposition party, PSD, just had a leadership election yesterday(November 27), in which Rui Rio managed to hold on in a relatively close vote. Meanwhile, the Populist Far Right has now arrived in Portugal as well. Chega is a new arrival that managed to make a strong showing in January's Presidential election when their leader, Andre Ventura, got just shy of 13% of the vote and third place. They're also in a C&S agreement in the Azores, managed a decent foothold in local elections in April, and are currently polling above the PCP and BE. Rio plans to work with Ventura on a case-by-case basis, something a lot of his party are wary of, wanting a Cordon Sanitaire like we see in other European countries.
So the far right is rising, the budget has fallen, and the Socialists remain steady...for now. Here's how it'll go down. The Assembly has 230 seats chosen in multi-member districts(which actually don't mean much as MPs represent the country as a whole similar to the Netherlands) using D'Hondt Closed-List PR with no threshold.
Now to meet the parties:
Socialist Party(PS) led by Current PM Antonio Costa: Centre-left, Social Democratic
Social Democratic Party(PSD) led by Rui Rio: Centre-right, Liberal Conservative
Chega(Enough) led by Andre Ventura: Right to Far Right, Eurosceptic, National Conservative, Right Populist, Economic Liberal
Left Bloc(BE) led by Catarina Martins: Left to Far Left, Democratic Socialist, Left Populist, Eco-socialist, Soft Eurosceptic, Feminist
Unitary Democratic Coalition(PCP-PEV) made up of the Portuguese Communist Party(PCP) led by Jeronimo de Sousa and Ecologist Party AKA Greens(PEV) led by Heloisa Apolonia: Left to Far Left, Communist, Eco-Socialist
Liberal Initiative(IL) led by João Cotrim de Figueiredo: Centre-right to Right, Classical Liberal
People-Animals-Nature(PAN) with collective leadership, Ines Sousa Real serves as spokesperson: Syncretic Politics, Animal Welfare, Green Policy
CDS-People's Party(CDS-PP) led by Francisco Rodrigues dos Santos: Centre-right to Right, Conservative, Christian Democratic
LIVRE(Free) with Collective Leadership: Centre-left to Left: Eco-Socialist, Democratic Socialist, Pro-Europe, Secular Universalist
So, NSG, what's your choice? For me, the PS budget was quite generous, so I think I'd give them another go this time.
