Socialist against right-wing extremist: Portugal goes to the runoff election

Nobody would have believed him capable of it and now this: The socialist António José Seguro has surprisingly won the first round of the presidential election in Portugal with 31 percent of the vote and will therefore move into the runoff vote in three weeks. There he meets André Ventura from the right-wing extremist Chega (Enough). This achieved 23.5 percent. All of the other eleven candidates are far behind the two. It is the first runoff election since 1986.

The second round of voting on February 8th will thus be a choice between Seguro, who defends the current democracy that emerged with the overthrow of the dictatorship in 1974, and Ventura, who rejects the “Carnation Revolution regime” and glorifies that same dictatorship. Seguro demanded on election night “all democrats, all progressives and all humanists” to vote for him in order to “defeat extremism and those who sow hatred and division among the Portuguese.”

Seguro, who was once a minister in the government of António Guterres, who now heads the United Nations, retired from politics ten years ago after losing the party leadership primary election to António Costas, now president of the European Council. When the 63-year-old economist announced his candidacy for president, only a few from his Socialist Party (PS) supported him.

Nevertheless – or perhaps precisely because of his distance from the socialist apparatus, which was in deep crisis – he fought his way further and further up in the polls and finally won on Sunday. While Seguro now has 31 percent, the PS achieved just 23.4 percent in the last parliamentary elections. It was the worst result in their history.

Change to the right

Ventura, who with Hate speech against immigrants and minorities contested the election campaign, calls on the Portuguese to lose the “fear of change”. The 43-year-old former TV sports commentator promised that he would ensure order in the country and reshape, unite and lead the right-wing camp.

The largest right-wing formation, the conservative Social Democratic Party PSD, which governs Portugal, had little to counter this on election night. Their candidate Luís Marques Mendes only received 12 percent of the vote and thus came in fifth place. This is a serious blow for Prime Minister Luís Montenegro, who unconditionally supported Mendes during the election campaign. “Our political camp will not be represented in the second round,” said Montenegro, explaining why he does not want to make a recommendation for the runoff elections.

Montenegro, which rules in a minority, is building on the support of Ventura’s Chega in Parliament. Together they passed a controversial immigration law that failed before the Constitutional Court. Now the project, which, among other things, makes immigration from former colonies more difficult and wants to deny immigrants access to social assistance programs, will come before parliament again. The conservatives are also planning to work with the right-wing extremists to change the nationality regulations and no longer allow children of immigrants born in Portugal to have a Portuguese passport in the future.

Unlike in Germany, for example, the president in Portugal has extensive powers. He is commander-in-chief of the army and can – as happened three times in recent years under the previous conservative head of state Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, who was no longer able to run after two terms in office – dissolve parliament and call new elections. He can also stop laws and refer them to the Constitutional Court if he considers them unconstitutional, as happened last year with a new immigration law from PSD and Chega.

While the third and fourth-placed candidates did not recommend voting after the results were announced, the smaller parties on the Left pledged their support to Seguro. And even the leader of the PS, José Luís Carneiro, finally brought himself to unconditionally support Seguro.