Before winning the parliamentary elections on January 30 this year, António Costa’s thoughts on absolute majorities were known: “I have no doubt that the Portuguese do not like absolute majorities and have a bad memory of them, both PSD and PS.🇧🇷
The verdict, said in an interview with TVI in August 2019, provoked displeasure among the two targets registered at the time: Cavaco Silva, protagonist of two absolute majorities at the head of the PSD (1987 and 1991) and José Sócrates (leader of the PS in the majority of 2005). By a wide margin, this week the DN editors chose António Costa as national figure of the year and the absolute majority of the PS as national event of the year🇧🇷
An absolute majority is not absolute power, it does not rule alone. […] One of the big challenges I will have in this legislature is to reconcile the Portuguese to the idea of an absolute majority and that stability is good for democracy and not a threat to democracy.”
It was therefore with some surprise – you and all observers – that on the night of 30 January this year, when you learned that you had won the election with 41.4% of the vote and an absolute majority of 120 Members in the parliament, that the socialist leader had to reverse his old speech against absolute majorities. The theory then became this: “An absolute majority is not absolute power, it is not just governing. […] One of the big challenges I will have in this legislature is to reconcile the Portuguese to the idea of an absolute majority and that stability is good for democracy and not a threat to democracy.”
It was the resounding failure of the polls in the election campaign last January that the absolute majority of the PS came as a huge surprise. No electoral study had predicted it and in fact what was observed by many was the prediction that PS and PSD would be neck and neck even the Social Democrats, then led by Rui Rio, could dream of victory. Just not.
The PSD was effectively with a result equal to that of the 2019 legislature and two fewer deputies (from 79 to 77). On the right, Chega and the Liberal Initiative grew exponentially. Both had one alternate each (André Ventura and João Cotrim Figueiredo), Chega had 12 and IL had eight. Both grew at the cost of a decline in abstinence, but also the CDS-PP, which, led by Francisco Rodrigues dos Santos (“Chicão” to friends and supporters) and struggling with brutal internal divisions, disappeared from the parliamentary panorama (where it had been present since the first elections after April 25 in 1976).
On the left, apart from the PS (which grew from 108 deputies to 120) and Livre (one of which was and remained elected), it was the downfall. The CDU (coalition with the PEV led by the PCP) went from 12 deputies to six (and the PEV no longer has any representation); in the Bloco de Esquerda the disaster was even greater: 19 elected officials became five; in the PAN it was also bad: four elected officials shrunk to one, the party spokesman Inês Sousa Real. In short: the PS won, obtained an absolute majority, but the left shrank from 140 to 132 deputies in total (And these accounts don’t include the PAN, which doesn’t like to be considered left or right).
The right grew, from 86 deputies to 97with all this growth centered on Chega and the Liberal Initiative.
The results thus showed that there was a helpful vote for the PS on the left, with an emphasis on the socialist voices favoring either the PCP or the BE. But the same has not happened to the right, in an accelerated process of reconfiguration, where new forces grow, one disappears (the CDS) and the PSD remains the same. Apparently, and given that the parliamentary elections stemmed from a budget crash (of the SB2022) and the resulting political crisis (António Costa resigned as Prime Minister), the elections became a plebiscite on the idea of stability.
And Costa was the best it could guarantee, while Rui Rio on the right bickered with Chega over hypotheses of understanding, never becoming clear whether he absolutely refused them or accepted them at all. The “bogeyman” of a right-wing alliance that would place Chega in power, firmly agitated by Costa, transferred many votes for the PCP or the BE to the PS, the only party on the left capable of guaranteeing stability (while, moreover, the “device” was no longer a solution). The PS thus obtained its second absolute majority. The result of the Socialists was the first major national political surprise of the year. The second would come later.
“Cases and Houses”
Despite being entrenched in an absolute majority, the government of António Costa has shown an internal instability never seen in its two previous governments (from 2015 to 2019 and from 2019 to 2022). The head of government calls them “cases and cases” and publicly states that they only matter for the “political media bubble”.
However, it was not the “political media bubble” that came up with the “case” of a minister, Pedro Nuno Santos, of Infrastructure and Housing, who decided at the end of June last year, despite the head of government, to announce a new solution for a new airport in the metropolitan area of Lisbon (Montijo as a temporary solution until a permanent solution is built in Alcochete).
Without permission, the prime minister forced the minister to withdraw the message containing the said solution. And this one lent itself to a bizarre my mistake in public where he amounted to “miscommunication” with the prime minister. He ‘obviously’ (his expression) remained in office, which many analysts saw as a way for Costa to keep him from being let go in the PS, fully committed to his internal campaign to become the next secretary-general one day.
Cases like Pedro Nuno Santos seem to be the result of a lack of coordination at the top of the government. In the current XXIII Constitutional Government, No. 2 Mariana Vieira da Silva (Minister of the Presidency), who replaced Augusto Santos Silva, now became Speaker of Parliament (and putative PS Presidential candidate in 2026). Costa, despite having already been warned by the President of the Republic that a political crisis will erupt if he one day wants to move to a European post, fails to fuel an intense international agenda. And apparently, in his absence, there is no one in charge.
Costa tried to solve the problem and strengthened his communications team. And then he recruited an assistant secretary of state, Miguel Alves, as president of Caminha’s Chamber – a choice that would prove to be an ominous shot in the foot. Weeks after taking office, Miguel Alves was forced to resign, when he confirmed that he had been charged with municipal financial crimes in an inquest.
Occupation: crisis manager
In the history of government instability, there is also the case of the resignation in the early hours of August of the health minister who managed the entire pandemic, Marta Temido, who complained that she could no longer “stay in office”. And yet, a few weeks ago, the replacement of two secretaries of state who had publicly disowned the respective Minister António Costa Silva (Economy).
António Costa, as always since 2020, does nothing but manage crises. First there was the pandemic and now, since February, the war in Ukraine, with consequences for inflation and a brutal loss of purchasing power. In the SNS, there are situations that sometimes almost seem to indicate a pre-collapse scenario. There are worrying signs of a growing teacher shortage in primary education. Whether António Costa will be the architect of the reconstruction remains to be seen.
Source: DN
