Will Portugal’s Socialist Party survive the latest corruption scandal?

The President of the Republic of Portugal, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, has just dissolved parliament and called early elections for March 10, 2024. This has brought an early end to the socialist government of António Costa, which had a solid parliamentary majority. In just 24 hours, a judicial investigation forced the resignation of a prime minister after a political career full of successes and a government of the Socialist Party (PS) that was the envy of the European socialist family, not to mention the balance it had achieved in the country’s public finances.

Unlike Spain’s, Portugal’s democracy is semi-presidential. In a situation like the current one — a prime minister who has to resign because he is the subject of a police investigation — the president has several options. If he had wished, he could have kept the socialists in power with a new government, since they had a majority in parliament. This has not been the case and the socialists face a huge challenge. Despite everything, Rebelo de Sousa will give the party time to reorganize and find new leadership, just as he did in the 2022 elections with the center-right party, the PSD.

The biggest challenge for the PS will be managing the political fallout from the scandal involving corruption, which has taken several years to eliminate. The party carries with it the inheritance of former socialist prime minister José Sócrates, who was indicted in 2014 for corruption and who, almost 10 years later, is still waiting for a judicial decision. The political right, and especially the radical right of the Chega party, will remind voters ad nauseam about the issue between now and the elections.

However, the central question in the March 2024 elections will be who has more parliamentary seats, the right or the left. That was not the case until 2015, when, in order to govern, the PS had to ally itself with the radical left and the communists after failing to win a majority of seats in parliament. That brought about a sea change in Portuguese politics. For this reason, although the radical left of the Bloco and the center-right of the PSD will be on the hunt for the socialist vote, the potential need to form alliances will be the determining element.

The PS will quickly enter primaries to elect a new leader. If former infrastructure minister Pedro Nuno Santos runs and wins the contest, the Socialists will be able to withstand the challenge. Nuno Santos left the socialist government almost two years ago and was one of Costa’s detractors. Nuno Santos is associated with sectors of the PS that favor alliances with the two parties to the party’s left, and he could rise to the challenge.

On the right, the panorama is complex. As usual, the PSD says it will not agree with the populist radical right, but will try if the conservative bloc wins a parliamentary majority. After eight years of socialist government, which has destroyed the association that a significant part of the electorate made between left-wing parties and the waste that led to the bankruptcy of the state during the euro crisis of the previous decade, the fractious right will do everything possible to reduce the PS to a prolonged opposition.

Elections in Portugal are normally less polarized than in other EU countries. But those on March 10 will be tough and will require coalition governments, either on the right or the left. Will the two main parties in power since the restoration of democracy be reduced to rubble by the most radical forces on the left and especially the right? I don’t think so. But the outlook seems very conflicted.

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