André Ventura, the racist and xenophobic leader of the Portuguese extreme right, proclaims himself these days as the “challenging candidate”, who challenges the political system implemented after the carnation revolution of 1974. At only 41 years old and just over four of parliamentary experience, the president of the Chega party appears as the great veteran in the race towards Sunday's elections. It is the only headliner of the six largest Portuguese parties that repeats with respect to 2022. The leadership vacuum generated by the unprecedented simultaneous renewal process of its rivals drives the rise of Ventura, along with the recent cases of corruption of socialists and conservatives and the social unrest generated by the shortage and the intense recent growth of immigration, in the context of the global unrest on which the ultras feed.
Although Chega became the third political force in 2022, until now its electoral power has been low compared to that of its international counterparts, from Giorgia Meloni to Jair Bolsonaro, including Vox. Santiago Abascal's party obtained 10% of votes in April 2019, 15% in November of that year and 12% in 2023. On the other hand, the Portuguese ultras peaked in 2022 with 7%. However, this status of third force was its catapult into the peculiar Portuguese political system, in which the two large traditional parties resist in an unusual way.
According to the average of Rádio Renascença surveys, Chega can even multiply by 2.5 times. However, after repeated and glaring errors, the polls are more than in question. Nobody doubts that the Chega will experience a strong rise but its magnitude is unknown. This expectation has placed the extreme right at the center of the campaign, whose main thematic axis deals with governability scenarios. The big question is whether the announced cordon sanitaire will be maintained to prevent Ventura from being the master of the situation if the forecasts come true and the progressive parliamentary majority that has existed since 2015 disappears.
The conservative candidate and favorite according to the polls, the former parliamentary speaker Luís Montenegro, has promised not to get into an agreement with Chega, as his former boss, the former Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho, defends, according to the weekly Expresso. At the same time, the socialist candidate, former minister Pedro Nuno Santos, has announced that if the democratic right surpasses the center-left he will allow Montenegro to form a government. The big doubt lies in what would happen if Santos is ahead of Montenegro, since there the conservative leader would be faced with the temptation of agreeing with Ventura. He maintains that if the Socialist Party maintains power, Portugal will be a nation of "schizophrenics" who do not perceive the reality of, in his opinion, the catastrophic management of the resigned Prime Minister António Costa, as well as "a country of Alzheimer's."
The bravado of the ultra leader no longer shocks in Portugal. His outbursts have become normalized, since in 2017 he rose to fame as the municipal candidate of the conservative PSD of the Lisbon metropolitan area who denounced the supposed privileges that people of Roma ethnicity would enjoy. Previously he had become known as a television football talk show host, as well as a commentator on events. This former seminarian, with a degree in Law, accused the Costa Government a year ago of having blood on its hands after an Afghan refugee suffering from a mental disorder killed two workers at a Muslim social center in Lisbon.
Since Costa obtained an absolute majority in 2022 that was so surprising that not even his party expected, the guillotines were installed in the headquarters of the main Portuguese political parties. Heads rolled non-stop, starting with that of the until then head of the opposition, Rui Rio, of the PSD. The leader of the Left Bloc, Catarina Martins, fell, and also the very old Jerónimo da Sousa as general secretary of the fossilized Portuguese Communist Party, which in 60 years had only had three leaders. Even João Cotrim, leader of the Liberal Initiative, who had obtained a very good result, even left his position, apparently fed up with Portuguese politics.
This spiral of leadership changes reached its peak in November, when after the prosecutor's office announced that it would investigate his alleged involvement in a corruption case, Costa resigned as prime minister and leader of the PS. Later, the shadow of corruption also reached the conservative PSD, when the regional president of Madeira, Miguel Albuquerque, was forced to resign.
While the conservative Montenegro and the socialist Santos strive in the campaign to make themselves known, André Ventura can focus on placing his merchandise, straight out of the ultra manual. It includes the now classic message delegitimizing the electoral process, in the style of Bolsonaro and Trump.
