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The results of the legislative elections in Portugal, beyond the head-to-head between the Socialist Party (centre-left) and the Democratic Alliance (the centre-right coalition led by the Social Democratic Party, PSD), say that the far-right Chega party came in third place with just over 18 percent, doubling the 2022 result and obtaining 48 seats in parliament. Portuguese newspapers are writing that Chega was “the big winner” of Sunday’s elections, which will likely lead to the formation of the most fragmented parliament in the country’s history. With these results, forming a government will not be easy.
Chega, which means “Enough” in Portuguese, is a nationalist, populist, Eurosceptic and ultra-conservative party founded in 2019 by André Ventura, who before entering politics had become quite famous as a football commentator. Chega stood for election for the first time during the 2019 European elections, when together with other parties he obtained 1.6 percent of the votes and no seats. In the Portuguese legislative elections of the same year he took 1.3 percent and the only seat gained was assigned to Ventura, elected in the Lisbon constituency. In 2022 the party passed to 7.3 percent (and 12 seats).
Over time Chega, which has now received more than a million votes, has managed not only to grow, but also to structure itself at a national level: in Sunday’s elections, in fact, the numbers obtained were homogeneous throughout the national territory. However, Chega obtained the best result in a district in the south of the country, that of Faro, where he achieved 27.19 percent.
Commenting on his own results added to those of the Democratic Alliance (AD) and Iniciativa Liberal (IL), the centre-right party that came fourth with 8 seats, André Ventura celebrated saying that «this night will go down in history in Portugal, for a reason: this is the night in which the bipartisanship of this country ended». Ventura also has said that his party «in six months, one or two years will actually win the elections», and that «the Portuguese have given the majority to the conservatives». It would therefore be “irresponsible”, he concluded, “not to form a right-wing government now”.
Chega’s objective is in fact to put pressure on the traditional right to enter a future new government. Before the vote, Montenegro, of the Social Democratic Party, had ruled out any coalition that included Chega, but after eight years in opposition and given the results of the legislative elections, it remains to be seen whether the centre-right will maintain such a commitment. Alternatively, PS and PSD could decide to support each other by isolating André Ventura’s party, but this scenario also seems to be complicated. During the electoral campaign, the leader of the Socialists Nuno Santos had then announced that to prevent Chega from coming to government he would not oppose a hypothetical future centre-right minority government. In short, the situation is one of great uncertainty.
Another certain fact of the elections is that the appeal to the “useful vote” made in recent weeks by the main parties that had governed the country until now was not accepted by Portuguese citizens. «The result shows that the Portuguese did not respond to the call for a useful vote and decided to vote with sincerity: we have the most fragmented parliament ever and we have to go back to 1985 to have an election in which the PS and PSD together had less by 64 percent”, commented the political scientist Marina Costa Lobo.
In Portugal, unlike in many European states, the far right has so far failed to have a major impact. But the early elections – announced at the beginning of November after the resignation of the outgoing prime minister, the Socialist António Costa, following the news of his involvement in a corruption investigation – were held at a time of discontent towards the main centre-left parties and centre-right, caused above all by several corruption scandals. The housing crisis, low wages and unreliable public health services are other issues that appear to have favored the far right.
For his election campaign, Chega was inspired by former US president Donald Trump, who is also the de facto candidate for the Republicans for the next presidential elections, by the former far-right president of Brazil Jair Bolsonaro and by the French Marine Le Pen. Chega mainly addressed younger voters by using social media a lot and also doing a lot of disseminating disinformationespecially on the issue of migrant people.
Chega has harsh positions towards what he defines as “illegal immigration”, he proposes a strengthening of border controls, the expulsion of migrants with criminal records or those who are economically inactive. He then made the fight against corruption one of his main themes, he often talks about crime, decorum, security, tax reduction and denounces the excess of personnel in the public administration and the excessive burden of bureaucracy. He wants to strengthen the Portuguese police force (he has proposed prison sentences of two to five years for those who film the police), defends life imprisonment, the death penalty and chemical castration for repeat rapists.
Finally, the party says it is a strong supporter of “Western civilization” and has often spoken out against Islam and against Roma people (Ventura has also been fined several times by the Portuguese Commission for Equality and against Racial Discrimination for your comments).
Ventura has spoken on several occasions about “ethnic substitution”, a well-known racist conspiracy theory widely used by the international far right according to which there is a global conspiracy to replace white people with people of other ethnicities. He also claimed that there is an ongoing conspiracy to destroy European civilization by imposing a pro-LGBTQ+ culture on society, and he cited several times the existence of the so-called “gender ideology”, an alleged conspiracy for the destruction of the so-called traditional family and for confuse the sexuality of boys and girls.
In recent years several Chega exponents have ended up on the front pages of Portuguese newspapers for their highly controversial positions: they have been accused of having given the Nazi salute and criticized for suggesting removing the ovaries of women who have had abortions. The party was also criticized for having reused the motto of the Portuguese dictator António de Oliveira Salazar, i.e. “Deus, Pátria, Família” (God, Homeland, Family) and for having within it direct supporters of Salazar himself.
Chega’s position on the European Union is defined as eurosceptic. The party thinks that Portugal should have more room for maneuver than the Union and supports the idea of ”a Europe of sovereign nations” united by “common Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian roots”.