Now comes the hard part

Judging by the 10-percentage-point victory of his conservative party (PSD) over the Socialists of José Sócrates, winning the Portuguese elections seems to have been the easy part for the prime minister-elect, Pedro Passos Coelho. Sócrates has become the latest victim of the debt crisis in the euro zone, and has thrown in the towel as head of his party and perhaps as a politician. The early elections held on Sunday ? with turnout at a record low and less than two years into the legislature ? have swept away the Socialists in 17 out of 20 districts after six years in power. The turn to the center-right Social Democrat Party (PSD), which obtained its best results in 20 years, was visible both in rural and urban areas where the left has traditionally prevailed.

Nor should it be difficult for the victorious opposition leader to assemble a coalition government with his party's traditional allies of the Social Democratic Center (CDS). The two parties, PSD and CDS, together hold 129 seats, which gives them guaranteed control of the 230-seat parliament in Lisbon. Passos Coelho has announced that he will soon be ready to form a Cabinet, perhaps this week, as soon as he obtains the go-ahead from President Aníbal Cavaco Silva.

Portugal, swamped in a formidable economic crisis, is a country whose finances are now in the hands of its European and IMF creditors. While the parliamentary elections have brought a clear end to months of political uncertainty since the collapse in March of the minority Socialist government, incapable of passing its new austerity package, it will fall to the new conservative administration to carry out the huge task of implementing the drastic measures demanded last month by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund as conditions for the granting of a 78-billion-euro bailout fund.

The prescription imposes on Lisbon sharp conditions to reduce its huge deficit and debt, such as tax hikes and major cutbacks in expenditure. And that's not all. The three-year agreement includes thorough reforms in areas such as public health, education and justice. The implementation of some of these commitments will require constitutional reform, for which a two-thirds majority is required, and thus the cooperation of the opposition. It would be a sign of farsightedness if the incoming Cabinet were to include a member of the Socialist Party, which negotiated the bailout plan.

On Monday Pedro Passos Coelho, who has no experience in power, said that he was absolutely committed to the terms of the loan to Portugal. He has even said that he might go further, to put the economy on a really sound basis. It will not be easy, however, to apply radical surgery to a country in recession, with the highest unemployment rate in decades. The success of political and economic reforms is apparent only after the fact. And it remains to be seen how promptly and decisively the most unpopular measures will be taken; and, above all, how an already much-battered population will react to them.