” Is it that [gouverner] will it be a mission impossible? I do not think so. (…) Will it be very difficult? Certainly. » The President of the Portuguese Republic, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, did not fail to recall the fragility of the executive formed by the conservative Luis Montenegro, during the investiture ceremony of his seventeen ministers, at the Belem Palace , Tuesday April 2nd. Mr. Montenegro’s party, the Social Democratic Party (PSD, center right), having gathered only 28.9% of the votes and having only 80 of the 230 seats in the Assembly, the president suggested to the new prime minister minister of “divide the problems into several smaller ones” and solve them “one by one without losing sight of the whole and without creating illusory expectations or ambitions”.
Made up of ten men and seven women, the government is less equal than the previous executive of socialist Antonio Costa, who handed over after eight years in power. He resigned in November 2023, splashed by a case of alleged influence peddling involving close collaborators.
Professor of economics appointed to finance, hospital president appointed to health, former director of museums appointed to culture: all the members of the new executive belong to the PSD, with the exception of the minister of defense, from the small right-wing CDS-PP party. As promised, Mr. Montenegro did not entrust any portfolio to the far-right Chega (“enough is enough”) party, despite pressure from its president, André Ventura, to enter a coalition government in exchange for the stable support of its fifty deputies (18% of the votes). “The PSD has chosen its path. He chose the Socialist Party [PS] as interlocutor and it is with the Socialist Party that he will have to agree. Chega will lead the opposition in Parliament »launched Mr. Ventura, present when the ministers officially took office.
“Institutional responsibility”
The leader of the PS, Pedro Nuno Santos, whose party came second with 78 deputies (28% of the vote), did not attend the ceremony. A symbolic absence calculated to publicly signify, once again, that the PS does not “will not be used as crutches” to the government that came out of the polls on March 10. And yet, it is this formation that came to the aid of the executive on March 27. The day before, on three occasions, the nomination of the President of the Assembly had failed, due to lack of a majority within Parliament, Chega having chosen to present an alternative candidate. The PS finally found a solution: it gave its support to the conservative candidate, José Pedro Aguiar-Branco, in exchange for a rotating presidency of the Assembly, which must return to it in two years, in September 2026.
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