Portugal: An absolute majority in Parliament is secured by the party of Prime Minister Ant. Costa

The centre-left Prime Minister Antonio Costa unexpectedly won a clear victory in the early elections parliamentary elections held yesterday Sunday in Portugal, ensuring absolute majority in parliament, in a vote marked, however, by the the rise of the far right.

Although polls had him neck and neck with the centre-right opposition, Mr Costa has contradicted predictions as his party has improved its performance compared to 2019 and will no longer need the votes of his former allies on the radical left. The fact that Mr Costa was head of a minority government prompted the early elections after his allies rejected his 2022 state budget plan.

The former Lisbon mayor, aged 60, came to power in 2015 thanks to a left-wing alliance unprecedented since the 1974 Shrimp Revolution, although he didn't even win that election. Yesterday Sunday, the Socialist Party (PS) secured an absolute majority of seats in the Portuguese parliament for only the second time in its history.

Based on the almost final results - only the four seats contested by the Portuguese diaspora remain to be allocated -, the PS won 41.7% of the votes and will therefore occupy 117-118 of the total 230 seats in the Portuguese Parliament.

«Absolute majority does not mean absolute power (...) it is a higher responsibility, it means that we have to govern with and for all Portuguese people,» Costa, 60, stressed during his episcopal speech. He spoke of the prevalence of «humility, confidence and stability».

«PS must win because it needs stability, this is not the time for political change,» said a 39-year-old voter, a human resources management specialist, after voting in Lisbon.

«I voted for the socialists because we need them at this difficult time,» said a 68-year-old retired carpenter.

While hoping to make the big turnaround, the official opposition, the conservative Social Democratic Party (PSD) led by Hui Hui, got a nasty surprise, seeing its share of the vote fall below 30% (to 29.3%).

The far-right Chega («Enough») party, on the other hand, became the third political force in the Iberian country, having obtained 7.15% of the votes and will occupy 12 seats in the parliament, while it had only one in the outgoing one.

Until 2019, Portugal was an exception in Europe, as from the end of the dictatorship in 1974 until then the country of 10 million inhabitants had not elected a member of the far right to parliament.

«The people understood our message», judged Sega president André Ventura, for whom it is «bad for the country that Antonio Costa continues to be prime minister».

The Liberals, who entered parliament in 2019 with just one MP, confirmed the rise that the polls had led them to believe, gathering 5% of the votes and nominating five MPs.

They thus outperformed the two factions of the Portuguese radical left, the Left Bloc and the Communist-Green Alliance, which were apparently punished by part of the electorate for having called the early elections by rejecting the draft state budget for 2022.

During the election campaign, Antonio Costa did not stop boasting that he «turned the page on austerity» opened under the Portuguese right under the supervision of the «troika» (EU, ECB, IMF) in the midst of the sovereign debt crisis.

But while the minority government it led was thinking of «turning the page on the pandemic», thanks to the vaccination coverage among the highest in the EU and the European recovery plan, it was stopped by its allies, who demanded greater concessions on social policy.

With his hands now free, Mr Costa can now proceed with the implementation of the €16 billion investment plan with European Union funding.

During his first term, which had ended before the health crisis, his government had taken advantage of the favourable economic situation to abolish the Troika-era wage cuts, while achieving the first primary budget surplus in Portugal's modern history.

Participation was expected to exceed the historic low of 2019 (49%).