09) PORTUGAL: PRESIDENT ASKS RIGHT TO FORM GOVERNMENT DESPITE LEFT MAJORITY

 

Based on files from the Morning Star (www.morningstaronline.uk), October 23-24, 2015

 

            Portugal’s left has reacted angrily after President Anibal Cavaco Silva  asked pro-austerity parties to form a minority government.

 

            The outgoing coalition of the Social Democratic Party (PSD) and the CDS People’s Party lost its parliamentary majority in the October 4 elections, dropping 11% in votes and 22 seats, reduced to 107 out of 230.

 

            Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho’s government became unpopular after it implemented an EU-dictated programme of savage austerity cuts in return for a 78 billion Euro  debt bailout.

 

            The opposition includes the Socialist Party (PS), which gained 12 seats, up to 86; the Left Bloc (BE), up 11 to take 19 seats; and the Democratic Unity Coalition (the Portuguese Communist Party and the Ecologist Party) which gained one new seat, up to 17. With a total of 122 seats, this group of parties is willing to form a coalition administration.

 

            But on the evening of Oct. 22, the President asked the PSD-CDS alliance to form a minority government, flying in the face of the popular mandate for a new government. He claimed he could not give power to parties opposing Portugal’s membership of the euro - a reference to the Communists and Left Bloc.

 

            “Out of the EU and the eurozone, Portugal’s future would be catastrophic,” Cavaco Silva claimed, insisting that Portugal risked losing what it had gained after four years of belt-tightening.

 

            Passos Coelho, who leads the PSD, began forming his new cabinet the next day. But the opposition vowed to use their majority to bring down his government by voting against its four-year policy plan.

 

            The government has said more austerity measures are needed on top of four years of cuts to pay, pensions and public services which, along with tax rises, have provoked mass strikes and protests.

 

            PS secretary-general Antonio Costa accused the president of triggering “a pointless political crisis.” He said Cavaco Silva’s decision was “unacceptable” and only postponed the inevitable victory of the left.

 

            PCP parliamentary group president Joao Oliveira said the decision showed an “absolute contempt” for the will of the Portuguese people. He added that it revealed the president’s “total lack of impartiality” and disrespect for the constitution.

 

            The president’s hostility to authorising a government dedicated to easing austerity is backed by other eurozone politicians.

 

            Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy claimed that a government led by PS and backed by the BE and PCP “would be the first time in Portugal’s democratic history that the party which won the elections does not govern.”

 

            His fellow conservative German Chancellor Angela Merkel voiced her opinion that a left-of-centre coalition in Portugal would be a “very negative development.” Germany played a key role in demanding that the Syriza-led government of Greece surrender to the forces of austerity last summer, despite the opposition of a majority of Greek voters. Neoliberalism is the EU official doctrine and any administration that seeks to buck the trend will find all the bloc’s institutions and government leaders ranged against it.

 

            Like Greece, Portugal has suffered because of eurozone economic and monetary policies designed to benefit Germany. Nearly half a million people have left the country since the 2011 election in search of a better life, leaving behind a 12 per cent jobless rate, a fifth of the population existing below the poverty line and national debt equating to 125 per cent of annual GDP.

 

            Further austerity will worsen working people’s living standards, which is why Portuguese voters plumped for something different from the outgoing government’s menu of tax increases and cuts in pay, pensions and vital public services.

 

            Doubts still remain about the sincerity of PS anti-austerity protestations given that party’s previous role in reducing workers’ pensions in 2011 in response to creditors’ demands. But the gains of the left parties reflect a clear popular demand to ditch the bankers’ austerity agenda.

 

(The above article is from the November 1-15, 2015, issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading socialist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $30/year, or $15 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $45 US per year; other overseas readers - $45 US or $50 CDN per year. Send to People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 706 Clark Drive, Vancouver, BC, V5L 3J1.)