As of last week, Antonio Costa, the leader of Portugal’s Socialist Party, is a very happy man. Having lost the general election on October 4th, he was nevertheless able to reinvent himself, much to the shock of Portugal-watchers everywhere. Costa was expecting a very easy victory in the general; his opponents were staunch backers of austerity and, the conventional wisdom went, could not possibly hold on to power. But to the surprise of the Socialists, the center-Right coalition was able to win the elections, albeit falling short of an absolute majority.
Taking this into account, Portugal’s President, Aníbal Cavaco Silva, followed tradition and empowered the winners: the incumbent coalition began a second term, this time as a minority government. But Pedro Passos Coelho and Paulo Portas’ rule was short-lived and did not survive the rejection of its program by Parliament just six weeks after the elections.
This rebuff was the outcome of Costa’s decision to reverse his statement that the Socialists would not lead a “negative majority”. In fact, he decided to take extreme measures and break with historical precedent: he extended the olive branch to the country’s far-Left. In doing so he was able to ensure his political survival, and as of today leads a minority government after having signed three separate agreements with parties his Socialists had never deigned to work with before.
The decision of the President to now let Costa form his government was a difficult one, and was made only after many consultations with various political, labor and economic actors. It also led to a Presidential request for clarification from the incoming governing coalition that various international agreements on the euro, the EU and NATO will be honored, and for more general guarantees of stability.
As the government was being cobbled together, there was increasing international concern regarding the Portuguese economy. Would Lisbon’s resolve for reforms unravel, leading to the very situation that caused EU intervention in the first place? Are any of these fears grounded? If one reads the three agreements that were signed to create the new Socialist “coalition”, there are two things that immediately catch one’s attention: The first is that it took three separate agreements rather than a single document to make this government viable, which speaks volumes as to its strength. What we have before us is less a coalition and more a shaky marriage of convenience—a temporary alliance against a common “enemy”. And the second is that while there are several points of ideological convergence between the “coalition” partners, the far-Left gave very few concrete guarantees to the Socialists regarding the really big issues: Portugal’s future in Europe and in NATO.
But it is the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership—the European trade pact with the United States currently being negotiated—that is most likely to cause trouble for the shaky Socialist coalition in the near term. There are many domestic issues and actors within Europe and the U.S. that make these negotiations a complex process. Like all massive multilateral negotiations, they will not be all that easy to complete.
Both the outgoing center-Right government and even the Socialists themselves had been on board with securing TTIP. But the Socialists’ new partners are dead-set against it, and have already stridently taken anti-TTIP positions in public. Their arguments hinge on the traditional selling points of far-Left platforms everywhere: a profound anti-Americanism and a distrust of market economies. And indeed, it should come as a not much of a surprise that both anti-European and anti-Atlanticist sentiments are profoundly entrenched in Portugal’s far-Left parties. Indeed, this in large part is why there has never before been a rapprochement between the Socialists and the Communists. Lust for power is a very powerful drug, but not even it can erase history and tradition overnight.
The Socialists’ U-turn is thus not just unprecedented; it could well be lastingly consequential. Unlike in neighboring Spain, where political polarization has always been very high, elections in Portugal have traditionally been won at the center, both by the Left and Right. That pattern can no longer be taken for granted.
In choosing tactics over strategy the Portuguese Socialists have put another nail in the coffin of the moderate European Left. For the far-Left this is a dream come true, but for the rest of us, it may be the beginning of a nightmare. The Chinese have an ironic saying: “may you live in interesting times”. We can indeed expect more polarized and unstable times in a country that is already facing many Herculean challenges.