In Portugal, an unlikely deal for the Left begets victories and exposes all contradictions
by CAMARGO João
After the Portuguese general election last October it seemed unlikely that the actual outcome could have made such a long run. The Socialist Party, led by Antonio Costa, had to choose between its utter surrender to the center-right or a shift to the left, pressured by the relative majority of the right-wing coalition that governed in Portugal during the troika years on the one side, and a rising left on the other.
Left Bloc’s pressure to drop the right-wing government and sustain a Socialist Party’s government with the help of the Communist Party and the Greens paid off when the Socialists, with 28% of the vote, and the left, representing close to 20% of the vote, joined in Parliament and failed the right-wing’s coalition government program, forcing the right-wing president to call on Costa to constitute a government against his expressed will.