Portugal's Political Impasse
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- Published on Saturday, 12 March 2016 20:45
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A Socialist Project e-bulletin .... No. 1232 .... March 13, 2016
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Portugal’s Political Impasse
Charles-André Udry
The election of conservative candidate Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa as Portugal's new president on January 24 (with 51.99 per cent of the vote and a 48.84 per cent voter turnout) adds a new element to the existing ‘tripolar’ situation, which may be analyzed as follows.
First, we have a Socialist Party (SP) government, serving alongside the newly elected president, presided over by the party's general secretary (Prime Minister) Antonio Costa. Costa's government is based on conditional parliamentary support he received from the Left Bloc (Bloco de Esquerda, in Portuguese) and the Portuguese Communist Party (PCP).
However, the Left Bloc's conditions differ significantly from those of the PCP. The PCP is, in turn, very different from the Left Bloc;... for instance, it maintains close ties to the MPLA (Movimento Popular de Libertição de Angola) government of Angola, which controls that country's wealth almost as if it were a family business. The daughter of Angolan President José Eduardo dos Santos, Isabel dos Santos, is among the key investors in the old colonial metropole where she enjoys the title of the "richest woman in Africa." Furthermore, the PCP keeps up relations with the celestial bureaucracy of China, still referred to as ‘communist’ by hack journalists. These ties to the MPLA and the Chinese Communist Party flow not only from ideological affinity, but also through some material veins.
For anyone who is following events in Portugal, it is therefore wrong to speak of a ‘bloc’ between the Left Bloc and the PCP. It may well be that the PCP will utilize pressure from sections of the CGTP (General Confederation of Portuguese Workers) in order to negotiate with the government. But the CGTP is extremely weak, especially since a layer of young people who mobilized last year to protest austerity has been forced to migrate to search for work.
