Early election looms as Portugal's government loses confidence vote

LISBON — Portugal's center-right minority government collapsed on Tuesday after losing a vote of confidence, with the country now likely to head into its third early general election in as many years.

Lawmakers voted 142-88, with zero abstentions, against the motion of confidence that was presented last Thursday by Prime Minister Luis Montenegro, who has been in the job for 11 months. He called the vote after the opposition questioned his integrity over the dealings of a consultancy firm he founded and is now run by his sons.

Montenegro, 52, said at the start of a parliamentary debate on the vote of confidence that "I have committed no crime".

He denied wrongdoing or any ethical shortcomings by the firm, which has contracts with private companies.

"The insinuation that I mixed my business and political activity is completely abusive, and even insulting," Montenegro told parliament before the vote.

Montenegro's administration now assumes a caretaker role. It is now up to President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa to call a parliamentary election — after he consults the main political parties on Wednesday and his advisory Council of State on Thursday. He has said a new ballot could be held in mid-May.

The next general election in Portugal was scheduled for January 2028.

"We tried everything to avoid a snap election," Montenegro told reporters after the vote. His administration had tried to convince the main opposition Socialists to abstain from the vote, or to agree on terms for the government to withdraw the motion.

Montenegro said he had proposed that he face a parliamentary committee inquiry into his family's company that would last up to two months, something he had previously ruled out. The Socialists refused to negotiate setting a time limit.

Any lengthier investigation would have worn out the government, Montenegro said.

Socialist leader Pedro Nuno Santos labeled the attempts to negotiate just minutes before the vote "desperate and shameful", saying that Montenegro was the only one to blame for the crisis and was "unfit to govern".

An early ballot is all but inevitable, but analysts see no strong mandate for any political force emerging from it.

Voter fatigue

Voters are already showing election fatigue and disillusionment with politicians.

"This seems like a joke, no one understands why there's a new election so soon. Politicians blame each other, but all of them are being irresponsible," said Joao Brito, a 70-year-old retired civil servant in downtown Lisbon.

Political scientist Adelino Maltez of Lisbon University said opinion polls showed very little change in voter preferences from the March 2024 election, which Montenegro's Democratic Alliance, or AD, won by a slender margin — securing 80 seats in the 230-seat house.

The AD and the Socialists, who now have 78 seats, are neck-and-neck in most surveys.

Montenegro's Social Democrats are hoping that economic growth estimated at 1.9 percent last year, compared with the EU's 0.8 percent average, and a jobless rate of 6.4 percent, roughly the EU average, will keep their support firm.

"The problem is that the new election will not be conclusive.… The AD and the Socialists are tied. It is a situation that will be difficult for them to navigate," Maltez said. A centrist pact between the Social Democrats and the Socialists was the only solution, despite the differences in their policy proposals, he said.

The two main rivals had such an accord in parliament only once, in 1983-85.

"If they don't do it, it will be more of the same instability," Maltez said.

Agencies via Xinhua