Primer on current Portuguese politics #PortugalCoup

Current leader of Socialist Party (Costa) kicked previous leader (Seguro) after the 2014 elections to the European Parliament won by Socialist Party by a small margin (31.5% vs. 27.8% from the ruling center-right coallition). Costa claimed such a victory was "teeny-weeny" and a solid absolute majority by PS (obtainable in parliament with 40-42% of the votes in the general election) would be a cakewalk with a proper leader (himself).

During the 2015 campaign, Bloco de Esquerda and Communist party spent as much time attacking Partido Socialista as they did attacking canter-right coallition. In turn, Partido Socialista, while seeming to flirt with Bloco de Esquerda, campaigned with the aim of obtaining a majority by itself. In the last week of the campaign, when polls predicted a 38-40% win for the ruling coallition, at least one of PS' MPs claimed that "to vote for Bloco or Communist Party" would be a vote for the center-right coallition".


Election results:

• Center-right coallition (pro-free market, pro-EU, pro-balanced budget, favoring relinquishing State-owned enterprises) got 38% of the vote. (107 MP in 230)
• center-left Partido Socialista (pro-"freeish" market but against relinquishing State-owned enterprises, pro-EU, pro-Keynesian policies and severely against current austerity measures aimed at obtaining a deficit <3% GDP ) got 32% of the vote. (86 MP)
• former trotskyists/maoist from Bloco de Esquerda (favoring nationalizations, against balanced budget) got 11 % (19 MP)
• Communist party (against Euro, favoring nationalizations, against balanced budget) got 8%. (17 MP)

The Portuguese Constitution (which I readily admit is badly written, unclear and internally conflicting) states that the President should choose a PM "taking into account election results". In the day following the election, the President called on the center-right coallition leader (Coelho) to attempt to form a majority solution in the Parliament. Costa rebuffed Coelho (after Coelho proposed adopting about 20 of the proposals of PS's election platform and offered to accept any further proposals provided that they did not conflict with the need for a deficit under 3% of GDP) and initiated a series of meetings with Bloco and Communist party. No written agreement came from those meetings, though Costa and Bloco claimed they were coming close to a solution and Communists said they would not vote against Costa taking the PM position.

On October 22, the President (after talking to all leaders) appointed Coelho as PM since there was at the time (and there is still not) any written agreement between PS, Bloco and the Communists. He considered that there were many more similarities between PS and the center-right coallition than between PS and the far-left parties, specifically noting that the far-left parties disagree with 80% of the voters on the stance towards the economic and fiscal constrains regarding membership in the Eurozone.

In short: the initial report by the Telegraph's Ambrose Evans-Pritchard severely misstated the ongoing political situation. Their anti-EU biases got the best of them.