The minority government of Passos Coelho announced it immediately to resistance. After that, they need parliament’s approval for their four-year policy program – which the center-left parties said they won’t grant. In that scenario, it would be up to President Cavaco Silva to tap another leader to form a ruling government. Given his harsh rhetoric, he might still deny Costa the opportunity do so, prompting a political crisis.
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Such a defeat would leave Portugal without an effective government.
Critics portrayed the president’s move as an assault on democracy. Both the Communist Party and the Left Bloc campaigned against the policies of those institutions, though the Socialist Party has said it would abide by eurozone financial rules. “Greece’s Syriza movement, Europe’s first radical-Left government in Europe since the Second World War, was crushed into submission for daring to confront eurozone ideology”, Evans-Pritchard wrote Friday.
Speaking to the Huffington Post, Antonio Costa Pinto, a political science professor at the University of Lisbon, said that he had voted for Coelho’s right-wing coalition earlier this month but still opposes President Silva’s attempt to prevent the left from governing. In a televised speech, he criticized the pro-European Socialists for seeking an agreement with far-left parties that question European Union fiscal restraints, oppose Portugal’s membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and are willing to take Portugal out of the eurozone.
The International Monetary Fund says Portugal remains “highly vulnerable” after leaving a Troika-imposed austerity regime, and warns that it could slide back into crisis if it fails to deliver on reforms, the Telegraph reports.
Portugal’s center-right coalition government began preparing its return to power Friday, but it appeared doomed to a brief mandate as anti-austerity parties vowed to bring it down in the new Parliament’s first vote.
Mr. Passos Coelho, who oversaw unpopular austerity measures demanded under an worldwide bailout and led Portugal out of a deep recession, is set to start a second four-year term within days.
The centre-right party of Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho will instead be allowed to continue in power to satisfy the desires of Brussels, despite falling well short of a majority in elections earlier this month.
“In 40 years of democracy, the Portuguese governments never depended on anti-European political factions”, he said.
The left parties said they would reject the program given that control a majority of seats.
To be sure, as the president noted, Passos Coelho’s PAF won 38.6 percent of the vote in the country’s October. 4 elections – the largest share of any single political faction. Costa has proposed to end the country’s “obsession with austerity” by, among other things, restoring spending on education and health care.
Cavaco Silva labeled it the “worst moment for a radical change to the foundations of our democracy” given Portugal’s financial situation.
“I have to tell the Portuguese that I fear a loss of confidence (in Portugal) by foreign institutions, our creditors, and investors in foreign markets”.
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However, German Chancellor Angela Merkel lent support for the exclusion.
