by DICK NICHOLS
Left Bloc activists
Will Portugal finally see the end of austerity as administered for four years by the right-wing coalition of the Social-Democratic Party (PSD) and Democratic and Social Centre—People’s Party (CDS-PP)?
In the country’s October 4 elections this governing alliance, running for the first time as a single ticket called Portugal Ahead (except on the Azores), won the elections, but with only 38.4 % of the vote (down from 50.4% at the 2011 national election). Of the 5.4 million Portuguese who voted, 739,000 turned their back on the outgoing government, leaving it with only 107 seats in the 230-seat parliament (down 25).
As a result, the PSD-CSD alliance, which boasted during the election campaign of being the most reliable tool of the Troika (European Commission, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund), could even lose government.
Some of the votes lost to the right would have joined the ranks of the 4.27 million abstaining (an increase of 238,000 in a country of 9.68 million voters): this 44.1% abstention rate was the highest since the 1974 Carnation Revolution overthrew the dictatorship of António Salazar and his successor Marcelo Caetano.
A lot would have gone to the Socialist Party (PS), which governed the country from 2005 until 2011. However, the total PS vote increased by only 4.3%, from 28% to 32.3% (180,000 votes extra), giving it 86 seats (12 more). The PS even failed to beat Portugal Ahead in Lisbon, where PS leader António Costa was mayor before becoming PS leader earlier this year.
This result showed that, despite Costa’s woolly anti-austerity rhetoric, the party is still distrusted among many voters for bringing the austerity of the Troika (European Commission, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund) into Portugal in 2011.
The PS also failed to shake off its image as the party of the political caste, an image reinforced by the arrest of José Sócrates, the former prime minister, on corruption charges at the end of last year. As a result, while the PS won many votes from Portugal Ahead, it also lost many to abstention and to its left.
Due to Portugal Ahead’s losses and the PS’s very partial recovery , Portugal’s “parties of government” achieved their worst joint result since 1985 (70.7%). At the same time, the parties to their left–principally the Portuguese Communist Party (PCP) and the Left Bloc—won their highest ever score (18.4%).
Overall, the broadly defined parties of the left, including the PS and smaller forces that failed to win seats, won over 55% of the vote.
Within the left, very few of the lost PS vote went to United Democratic Coalition (CDU), the coalition of the PCP and the Green Ecological Party (PEV). It scored only 4000 more votes than in 2011, going from 7.9% to 8.3% (16 to 17 seats) because of the fall in participation.
Some disillusioned PS voters would also have supported People Animals Nature (PAN), which entered the parliament for the first time with 1.4% and one seat.
Left Bloc vote
The big winner from popular disgust with Portugal Ahead and distrust of the PS was the Left Bloc, the radical coalition which began life in 1999 as an electoral alliance of three parties coming from Trotskyist, Maoist and dissident PCP backgrounds.
The Left Bloc vote nearly doubled, from 5.2% to 10.2% (289,000 voters to 551,000), giving it 19 seats (11 more), its best ever result. The Bloc is now the third force in the Portuguese parliament.
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