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Portugal’s president has called a snap general election for March following the shock resignation of Socialist prime minister António Costa triggered by a corruption investigation.
President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa announced the March 10 date after Costa quit this week hours after public prosecutors executed a number of arrest warrants and raids in an investigation into possible corruption and malfeasance by public officials.
The Socialists won an outright majority in the most recent vote in early 2022 and had been leading in the polls, but their standing against the centre-right opposition Social Democrats is likely to have been hurt by the corruption scandal.
The election also means the possibility of more gains by the hard-right Chega party, the country’s third-largest, which has risen rapidly in just four years by tapping into public grievances over graft, immigration and low pensions.
“The ruling Socialists are unlikely to do well in the vote,” said Antonio Barroso, deputy director of research at consultancy Teneo. “Not only will the corruption allegations probably hurt them, but the party lacks another figure with Costa’s charisma and name recognition.”
Luís Montenegro, leader of the Social Democrats, has struggled to gain traction and ruled out a pact with Chega, led by former football pundit André Ventura. But some analysts say a conservative alliance could be the only way he could take power with a parliamentary majority.
Rebelo de Sousa said he would delay the dissolution of parliament and Costa’s formal conversion into a caretaker leader to allow the passage of a budget package on November 29.
That means politicians will approve a bill that will increase public sector wages and pensions to alleviate the cost of living crisis, while also ending tax breaks for well-off foreigners that had helped turn Portugal into an expatriate hotspot in recent years.
The Social Democrats, who have criticised Costa’s spending plans, said it was nonetheless “better to have a budget than not have one”, partly because it would enable the country to continue receiving post-pandemic recovery funds from the EU.
Rebelo de Sousa thanked Costa, who has been in power since 2015, for leading Portugal during the pandemic and wars in Ukraine and the Middle East.
The president said he had chosen not to appoint a new prime minister from the current parliament, another option open to him, because the election result in 2022 had so much to do with Costa’s personal popularity.
“Give the word back to the people, with no drama or fears. That’s the strength of democracy,” Rebelo de Sousa said.
The Socialist party must also decide on a “new face” to lead it into the election, but there is no one obvious choice, said Paula Espírito Santo, a political-science professor at Lisbon university.
She said the contenders included finance minister Fernando Medina; Mariana Vieira da Silva, number two in the Costa government; Pedro Nuno Santos, a former infrastructure minister; and José Luís Carneiro, internal affairs minister.
The president’s only comment on the prosecutors’ corruption probe, which centres on two lithium mining projects, a hydrogen production facility and a data centre, was that he wanted it to be completed quickly.
Costa has denied any wrongdoing but resigned saying that suspicions about “integrity” were not compatible with the dignity of the prime minister’s office.
Prosecutors revealed the full extent of their probe on Tuesday when they carried out 43 raids on government buildings and homes, arrested Costa’s chief of staff Vítor Escária, and made infrastructure minister João Galamba a formal suspect.
They said that in the course of their investigations some suspects had alleged that the prime minister had intervened to “unblock procedures”.