Portugal left a bitter taste in its election victory after Lisbon lost

None of the polls gave a penny advance to Carlos Moedas (51), who worked in Brussels as Portuguese European Commissioner between 2014 and 2019. However, the mayor of the capital went to him with 36 percent of the vote, a technocrat working on behalf of A coalition of right-wing parties, including the Social Democratic Party (center-right). Fernando Medina, the current PSC Lisbon mayor, is down by less than 32 percent of the vote.

Medina was the first to declare this result a “personal defeat”. He was really to blame. In June, opponents demanded his resignation after the Socialist Party’s board of directors passed the personal data of three anti-Putin Russian protesters to the Russian embassy. The city described this as bureaucratic oversight, but it later emerged that Lisbon had been providing such data for years to repressive regimes in China, Venezuela, and Angola, among other countries.

However, the loss in Lisbon is actually a delicate blow, both for the Socialist Party and Prime Minister Antonio Costa personally. Costa owes a lot to the capital: here he made a political name for himself as mayor between 2007 and 2015, a position that became a stepping stone to the premiership.

Since Costa headed the Portuguese government, the Socialist Party has won all parliamentary, European and local elections. The presidential election went only to a right-wing candidate, but the party did not participate. On Sunday, the Socialist Party also won again, with 34 percent of the vote – just below 2017, when the party beat the competition with 38 percent. In addition to Lisbon, the Social Democrats also lost the important city of Coimbra to a right-wing coalition led by the conservative Social Liberal Party, Costa’s main rival to the Socialist Party.

low turnout

Turnout has been traditionally low, with 54 percent of Portuguese taking the trouble to vote. The Portuguese Communist Party (PCP) was one of the parties that failed to mobilize voters. This is struggling with aging voters and has been trying to turn the tide after previous disappointing results. With just over 8 percent of the vote, the Communists had their worst result since 1976, the year Portugal restored democracy.

The far-right Shiga Party (Pasta) ran in local elections for the first time with modest success, receiving 4 percent of the vote nationwide. Party leader Andre Ventura, who presents himself as a man Law and order, It won itself with 25 percent of the vote in Mora, a provincial town with a large Roma population. Ventura often targets gypsies, who have major social problems, and this has spread to Mora. It was the largest shiga anywhere.