Dem
47
GOP
53
We had a brief item yesterday on the recent elections in Romania, and we thought we'd follow that up with one on the recent elections in Portugal, another nation where people are trying to decide if far-right populism is the way to go.
The Portuguese, as some readers will know, are in a situation similar to that of Israel (and many other multi-party parliamentary democracies). In short, no party is able to win an electoral majority, or even to win a plurality and then to form a stable governing coalition. This weekend's election was a snap election, the third in as many years, called by Prime Minister Luis Montenegro, leader of the center-right Democratic Alliance (AD).
The good news for Montenegro is that, once the ballots are all counted, he and his party will have at least 89 seats (there are 4 seats, set aside for Portuguese citizens living abroad, that have yet to be called). That's an increase from the 80 seats that AD currently controls. The bad news is that 89 is well short of the 116 needed for a majority. So, the snap election did not achieve its goal.
There is another bit of bad news, both for Montenegro and, arguably, for the world community. The center-left Socialist Party (PS) took a beating, dropping from 78 seats to 58 (though again, with four to still be called). Meanwhile, the far-right-populist party CHEGA! (it means "Enough!" in Portuguese) grew its representation from 8 seats to 58 seats. The problem for Montenegro is that while he has a tough time working with PS, it's even harder to work with CHEGA! The PM has described them as "unreliable" and "not suited to governing." And the bad news for the world, of course, is that far-right-populists are rarely interested in the well-being of anyone but the far-right-populists, and are willing to do whatever damage needs to be done in service of that goal.
The dominant issues in the election were inflation, housing costs and immigration. Perhaps that list sounds familiar. Events in Portugal, and in so many other countries that we have written about, suggest to us that: (1) the world is changing rapidly, in many different ways; (2) many voters have glommed onto various things that seem to be manifestations of those changes; (3) the things those voters have glommed onto are largely beyond government control, and so (4) whoever is elected, on a "change" mandate, is pretty much bound to fail, because they can never deliver on the things that got them elected.
Maybe we are overgeneralizing here, but we don't think so. And watch for an item on this basic subject next week. Think walls, both great and otherwise. (Z)