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Uncommon Decency


Feb 2, 2022

"Ó mar salgado, quanto do teu sal São lágrimas de Portugal!” “O salty sea, so much of whose salt Is Portugal tears!” Verses like this one by the acclaimed 20th century poet and critic Fernando Pessoa were somberly recited in his native Portugal throughout the 2010s, as the country went through a bruising cycle of financial insolvency, economic downturn and fiscal austerity. Amidst the gloomiest outlook since the advent of democracy in 1974, Pessoa’s melancholic poetry mirrored the mood of the crisis-stricken nation. Fast forward to this year, and the socialist government of Prime Minister António Costa has pulled off the unlikely feat of stabilizing the country’s finances while sparing it the kind of draconian austerity enforced by his predecessor, the right-of-center Pedro Passos Coelho. Costa first rose to office in late 2015 propelled by a no confidence vote in Parliament, despite falling short of a majority in an election earlier that year. He fell short again in 2019, his parliamentary majority relying on the support of two parties to his left—the communists and Bloco de Esquerda. This left-wing united front disbanded last November when the government’s budget, deemed not progressive enough by these two forces, was voted down, triggering a snap election scheduled for last Sunday. Earlier that week, we had sat down with University of Lisbon politics professor António Costa Pinto—no relation to the PM—and Peter Wise, the Financial Times’ Portugal correspondent, to survey the electoral field as Portugal headed for the polls. We can now report the results. Costa pulled off a stunning victory with almost 42% of the vote, meaning it will no longer need a smaller coalition partner. We hope our guests’ comments remain relevant now the suspense is gone. Namely, how has the country achieved financial solvency with only limited austerity? How come are the Socialists, sunk into irrelevance most everywhere else, still dominant in Portugal? And what does the rise of Chega, the upstart right-wing party whose rhetoric is at times redolent of Salazarism, tell us about the mood of the country?

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