Portugal’s central right government could lose its vote of trust in Parliament and push the European Union (EU) nation into its third general election in three years.
The government “stricken everything to the end to avoid the snap election,” Portugal’s central right prime minister, Luis Montenegro, told reporters after voting Tuesday evening.
The lawmaker voted 142-88 with abstain from zero for the confidence move Montenegro presented after the opposition parties questioned the integrity of his deal in relation to the consulting company he founded.
Portuguese media have reported allegations that the company currently run by Montenegro’s sons has contracts with several private companies that rely on government contracts.
Montenegro, who had already survived two condemnation votes, has denied any fraud.
“The insinuation that I mixed business and political activities is totally abusive and even insulting. Repeated falsehoods are not true, but they pollute the political environment…this is what populism feeds,” he told Congress before the vote.
Pedro Nuno Santos, leader of the Socialist Party, the country’s biggest opposition party, described the government’s actions as “shameful” and relied on “manipulation, games and tricks” to survive.
Montenegro became prime minister after resigning in November 2023 under the shadow of corruption investigations.
Costa, who denied accusations of peddlers of levelled influences against him, was elected head of the EU’s Council of Europe in June 2024.
The Montenegro administration now assumes the role of caretaker.
After the vote, it will be up to Portugal’s president, Marcelo Rebello de Souza, to whether to call parliamentary elections after consulting major political parties on Wednesday and his advisory committee on Thursday.
De Souza said there could be a new vote in mid-May.
Minority governments and far-right rise
Montenegro’s Central Right Democrat Union (AD) coalition won the election in March 2024, but won just 80 seats in the country’s 230-seat parliament. The Socialist Party, which previously held the government, won 78 seats.
In contrast, Portugal’s solid Chega Party won 50 seats.
At the time, Montenegro excluded work with Chega and said “no” to form a government with the party.
Adelino Martez, a political scientist at the University of Lisbon, said there was little change in voting preferences since the March 2024 election. Advertising and Socialists are neck and neck in most studies.
“The problem is that new elections are not critical… advertising and socialists are connected. It’s a difficult situation for them to navigate,” Martez said.
The centralist agreement between the Social Democrats and Socialists in Montenegro was the only solution despite differences in their policy proposals, he said. The two major rivals had such an agreement once in Congress between 1983 and 1985.
“If they don’t do that, it’s going to be the same instability,” Martez said.
Tuesday’s no-confidence vote points to the worst political instability spell as Portugal adopted the democratic system in the wake of the 1974 carnation revolution more than 50 years ago, ending a four-year dictatorship.
Early elections are almost inevitable now, but voters have already shown election fatigue and disillusionment with politicians.
“This seems like a joke. No one understands why there is a new election right away. Joan Brito, a 70-year-old retired civil servant in downtown Lisbon, said:
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