The history of pre-electoral coalitions between the PSD and CDS in the elections to the Assembly of the Republic is simple: they competed three times (1979, 1980 and 2015) and always won. After the first two elections, the coalition formed a government (the first led by Sá Carneiro and the second by Francisco Pinto Balsemão); no longer in 2015 because, although the coalition ‘Portugal à Frente’ (Passos Coelho + Paulo Portas) won, the absolute majority sided with the parliamentary left and decided to support a government formed by socialists, led by António Costa, the famous ‘device’.
It is a different story at the European elections. Here the PSD/CDS coalition lost every time it entered against the PS: in 2004, with João de Deus Pinheiro at the top of the list; and in 2014 with Paulo Rangel.
In both cases, these defeats occurred when the PSD and CDS ruled the country – the Europeans therefore served as a form of punishment. And the two socialist victories were achieved by the two most sporadic leaders: Eduardo Ferro Rodrigues (2004) and António José Seguro (2015). Both ended up shortly after being expelled from the party leadership: Ferro for resigning and Seguro for being defeated by António Costa, who claimed that the victory the PS had just won was “small.”
Conceptually, the ‘Democratic Alliance’ (AD) – like the one the PSD and CDS are now preparing to revive – is a pre-electoral coalition. However, agreements between the two parties are not always concluded in this way. Sometimes it was post-election.
From 1985 to 1995, the PSD, led by Cavaco Silva, always governed alone, in the first term with a minority and in the other two with an absolute majority. Since then, however, the PSD has governed only in alliance with the CDS, and the two times this happened (from 2002 to 2005 and from 2011 to 2015), it always followed agreements signed after elections in which each of the parties competed for the himself. In 2015, Passos Coelho and Paulo Portas formed allies and formed a government, which lasted only a few days and was dethroned by the left-wing majority in parliament.
Only Soares divided them
Moreover, the ‘spirit’ of the AD extends far beyond parliamentary elections. In presidential elections, for example, the two parties almost always stood arm in arm behind the same candidate.
It happened in 1976 (Ramalho Eanes), in 1980 (Soares Carneiro), in 1986 (Diogo Freitas do Amaral), in 1986 (Cavaco Silva), in 2001 (Joaquim Ferreira do Amaral), in the elections (2006) and again. election (2011) of Cavaco Silva, in the election and re-election of Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa (2016 and 2021).
In practice, the two parties were only divided in presidential elections: in 2001, when Mário Soares was re-elected for a second term in Belém, the PSD, led by Cavaco Silva (then Prime Minister), supported him and the CDS. alone with his candidate, Basílio Horta. Mário Soares began to set a record that remains unbeaten today: with 3.5 million votes, he is the most voted politician ever in Portugal.
The third largest municipal force
Moreover, there is an extensive history of autonomous coalitions between the two parties.
Currently there are forty chambers governed by agreements between the two parties, in many cases involving other parties (PPM, MPT and in one case even the Liberal Initiative). It was precisely thanks to a coalition with the CDS, which also included the MPT and the PPM, that the Social Democrats managed to win the presidency of the Lisbon City Council for Lisbon and steal it from the PS.
In total, the municipal coalitions involving (at least) the PSD and the CDS have 330 elected representatives on municipal councils, 1032 in municipal assemblies and 431 chairmen of parish councils, in addition to hundreds of elected representatives for parish meetings. In fact, the PSD/CDS coalition is the third largest local power, with more than half a million votes, only behind the PSD (about 600,000 votes) and the PS (the largest local party, with 1.6 million votes). ). .
‘Civilize’ the regime
In terms of national political power, the AD’s rise to power, through agreements with the PS (then led by Mário Soares), led to deep reforms in the constitutional nature of the regime.
In fact, the 1982 constitutional revision ‘civilized’ the regime through the abolition of the Council of the Revolution and the creation of the Constitutional Court, which made available the possibility of preventive inspection of the constitutionality of laws.
The ideological burden of the constitutional text was also reduced, making the economic model more flexible – the socialist model based on nationalizations was no longer an imperative, which would later open the way to the reprivatization of the banking and insurance sectors.
The powers of the President of the Republic were also moderate: the choices of the military leaders became those of the government; the principle of the exclusive political responsibility of the government to the President of the Republic was eliminated, placing it now on the latter and the Assembly of the Republic.
A principle of ecology
The inclusion in the Democratic Alliance of the then leader of the Popular Monarchist Party, the architect Gonçalo Ribeiro Telles, also made possible the first tests of an environmental policy. As Minister of State and Quality of Life, Ribeiro Telles launched a regime in land use and territorial planning, creating the protected areas of the National Agricultural Reserve, the National Ecological Reserve and also the base of what would become the municipal directors. As deputy, Ribeiro Telles was responsible for the proposals for the fundamental environmental law, the hunting law and the legal regime for environmental impact assessments.
Source: DN
