{"version":1,"tree":{"n":"html","c":[{"n":"head","x":"\n ","l":"\n ","c":[{"n":"title","x":"Desconocido","l":"\n \n "},{"n":"link","l":"\n","a":[["rel","stylesheet"],["type","text/css"],["href","../../stylesheet.css"]]},{"n":"link","l":"\n","a":[["rel","stylesheet"],["type","text/css"],["href","../../page_styles.css"]]}]},{"n":"body","a":[["class","calibre"]],"c":[{"n":"div","x":"| ","a":[["class","calibre_navbar"]],"c":[{"n":"a","x":"Siguiente","l":" | ","a":[["href","javascript:void(0)"],["rel","articlenextlink"],["data-eueMZIbjjuCPX9e9np7aa2","{\"name\": \"feed_5/article_4/index_u19.html\", \"frag\": \"\"}"]]},{"n":"a","x":"Menú de sección","l":" | ","a":[["href","javascript:void(0)"],["data-eueMZIbjjuCPX9e9np7aa2","{\"name\": \"feed_5/index_u76.html\", \"frag\": \"article_3\"}"]]},{"n":"a","x":"Menú principal","l":" | ","a":[["href","javascript:void(0)"],["data-eueMZIbjjuCPX9e9np7aa2","{\"name\": \"index_u63.html\", \"frag\": \"feed_5\"}"]]},{"n":"a","x":"Anterior","l":" | ","a":[["href","javascript:void(0)"],["rel","articleprevlink"],["data-eueMZIbjjuCPX9e9np7aa2","{\"name\": \"feed_5/article_2/index_u77.html\", \"frag\": \"\"}"]]},{"n":"hr","l":"\n","a":[["class","calibre6"]]}]},{"n":"div","a":[["class","calibre-nuked-tag-article"]],"c":[{"n":"div","x":"When enough is not enough","a":[["class","calibre8"]]},{"n":"h1","x":"Portugal heads to the polls for the third time in barely three years","a":[["class","calibre9"]]},{"n":"div","x":"Can a political culture of compromise survive the turbulence?","a":[["class","calibre19"]]},{"n":"p","x":"may. 08, 2025 01:49 | LISBON","a":[["class","calibre10"]]},{"n":"div","a":[["class","calibre-nuked-tag-article"]],"c":[{"n":"img","a":[["src","images/img1_u17.jpg"],["title","Billboard Campaign Posters For Portugal's Snap Election, on a street in Lisbon, 2025."],["class","calibre3"],["data-calibre-src","feed_5/article_3/images/img1_u17.jpg"]]}]},{"n":"div","a":[["class","calibre11"]]},{"n":"p","a":[["class","calibre12"]],"c":[{"n":"span","x":"I","a":[["data-caps","initial"],["class","calibre13"]]},{"n":"span","x":"T IS AN","l":" election that almost nobody except the main party leaders wanted. But when the Portuguese vote on May 18th, for the third time in a little over three years, they face some important issues. One is whether they can engineer stable and decisive leadership to deal with the social dislocations accompanying a vigorous economic recovery from the grim years of austerity that followed the financial crisis of 2008. Another, common to many European countries, is whether they can preserve a habit of pragmatic consensus that in Portugal is under threat from Chega (”Enough!”), a fast-growing hard-right party. They will also decide how much importance they give to ethics in public life.","a":[["class","calibre14"]]}]},{"n":"p","x":"Next week’s election came about when Luis Montenegro, the centre-right prime minister for the past year, called and lost a confidence motion in parliament following revelations that Spinumviva, his family’s consulting firm, had received a monthly fee from a company seeking to renew a government concession to run some casinos. It has since transpired that the consultancy had six more clients who do business with the government.","a":[["class","calibre12"]]},{"n":"div","a":[["class","calibre-nuked-tag-article"]],"c":[{"n":"img","a":[["src","images/img2.png"],["title",""],["class","calibre3"],["data-calibre-src","feed_5/article_3/images/img2.png"]]}]},{"n":"div","a":[["class","calibre11"]]},{"n":"p","x":"“I didn’t receive a single euro from a private entity since I became prime minister,” Mr Montenegro insisted in a television debate with his Socialist opponent, Pedro Nuno Santos. When he became the leader of the (misleadingly named) Social Democratic Party (","a":[["class","calibre12"]],"c":[{"n":"span","x":"PSD","l":") in 2022, he transferred his shares in the firm to his wife and children. He was certainly imprudent in not getting rid of Spinumviva altogether. But the affair “looks worse than it was”, concludes a prominent economist.","a":[["class","calibre14"]]}]},{"n":"p","x":"Mr Montenegro, a lawyer from a small town near Porto, came to power as a result of another scandal. Antonio Costa, the Socialist prime minister, resigned less than two years after winning an election when prosecutors raided his official residence. They found €76,000 in the office of his chief of staff and arrested five people in what they said was an influence-peddling scandal. But no charges have been brought and there is no evidence of wrongdoing by Mr Costa, who was chosen as president of the European Council last year.","a":[["class","calibre12"]]},{"n":"p","x":"These events, and the decision by the president, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, to call a snap election in March last year, deprived Portugal of a strong and stable government. The chief beneficiary was Chega, which won 18% of the vote and 50 seats, up from just 1.4% and one seat in 2019. Its leader, André Ventura, a clever, demagogic lawyer and former football pundit, exploited discontent over a swift rise in immigration and the holes that years of austerity had burrowed into the welfare state. Mr Montenegro scraped into office, his coalition winning just 55,000 more votes and two more seats than the Socialist Party (","a":[["class","calibre12"]],"c":[{"n":"span","x":"PS","l":"). Rather than form a coalition with Mr Ventura, he obtained the abstention of the Socialists to approve a budget.","a":[["class","calibre14"]]}]},{"n":"p","x":"Mr Montenegro’s pitch now is for more time to complete what he started in a country where the main issues are health care, a housing shortage and taxes. He has used growing tax revenues to pay for higher pensions and pay rises for civil servants and the police. But his promise to hire more doctors and cut hospital waiting lists has yet to bear much fruit. He wants to cut corporate and income taxes to boost growth, which dipped in the first quarter of this year. Opinion polls suggest that his coalition will do better in the forthcoming election than it did last year and could even eke out a majority with Liberal Initiative, a small classically liberal party. But few analysts are prepared to say that Chega has peaked, and Mr Montenegro has ruled out any deal with them.","a":[["class","calibre12"]]},{"n":"p","x":"For all its political volatility, Portugal has enjoyed underlying stability. Since 2016, its economy has grown by an annual average of 2.2% per year, thanks to booming exports and a newfound commitment to fiscal responsibility shared by both the ","a":[["class","calibre12"]],"c":[{"n":"span","x":"PSD","l":" and the ","a":[["class","calibre14"]]},{"n":"span","x":"PS","l":". Its revolution of 1974 overthrew dictatorship and opened the path to integration with Europe. “We’ve built in all this period a democracy based on compromise, on finding common ground,” says Antonio Vitorino, a former European commissioner. “I think we are losing this political culture.” For a relatively small and poor country on Europe’s periphery that would indeed be a big setback. ","a":[["class","calibre14"]]},{"n":"span","x":"■"}]},{"n":"p","a":[["class","calibre12"]],"c":[{"n":"i","x":"To stay on top of the biggest European stories, sign up to ","a":[["class","calibre18"]],"c":[{"n":"a","x":"Café Europa","l":", our weekly subscriber-only newsletter.","a":[["href","https://www.economist.com/newsletters/cafe-europa"]]}]}]}]},{"n":"div","x":"\n","a":[["class","calibre_navbar"]],"c":[{"n":"hr","l":"\n","a":[["class","calibre6"]]},{"n":"p","x":"This article was downloaded by ","l":"\n","a":[["class","calibre16"]],"c":[{"n":"strong","x":"calibre","l":" from ","a":[["class","calibre13"]]},{"n":"a","x":"https://www.economist.com/europe/2025/05/08/portugal-heads-to-the-polls-for-the-third-time-in-barely-three-years","a":[["href","https://www.economist.com/europe/2025/05/08/portugal-heads-to-the-polls-for-the-third-time-in-barely-three-years"],["rel","calibre-downloaded-from"]]}]},{"n":"br","a":[["class","calibre-nuked-tag-article"]]},{"n":"br","l":" | ","a":[["class","calibre-nuked-tag-article"]]},{"n":"a","x":"Menú de sección","l":" | ","a":[["href","javascript:void(0)"],["data-eueMZIbjjuCPX9e9np7aa2","{\"name\": \"feed_5/index_u76.html\", \"frag\": \"article_3\"}"]]},{"n":"a","x":"Menú principal","l":" | ","a":[["href","javascript:void(0)"],["data-eueMZIbjjuCPX9e9np7aa2","{\"name\": \"index_u63.html\", \"frag\": \"feed_5\"}"]]}]}]}]},"ns_map":["http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"]}