Portuguese populists Chega have surged to second place in polls ahead of the country’s snap election on March 10th, called in the aftermath of a corruption scandal that toppled the country’s socialist government. Signs point to a political upset in Lisbon this week, with the insurgent right-wingers aiming to change national politics for good.
In the final weeks before Sunday’s legislative election, national conservative Chega has struck a chord with voters by promising to clean up endemic corruption in Lisbon. Citizens have turned against the historically powerful Socialist Party following an embarrassing high-level corruption scandal that brought down the previous administration.
The world’s media attention turned to Lisbon last November when veteran socialist PM Antonio Costa tendered his shock resignation following a corruption probe into lithium exploration and hydrogen energy production, while multiple government ministers found themselves persons of interest in the subsequent police investigation.
Chega, founded as recently as 2019 on a national conservative platform, grabbed the political turmoil immediately, with its leader, former sports commentator André Ventura, building the case for reforming the Portuguese legal system. Promises to clamp down on corruption and a commitment to restricting immigration have caught the popular mood.
“Portuguese people want to be proud of their institutions,” Chega youth activist José Maria Matias explains, pledging as a first priority to neuter the “parallel economy” of grift and socialist corruption suffocating the country’s politics.
Speaking to The European Conservative from the election trail, Matias was confident that this Sunday would be a historic occasion for the Portuguese Right in a country that has been dominated by the hard Left since democratisation.
Conscious to downplay comparisons with VOX and its failed attempt to forge an alliance with the centre-right in Spain, Matias instead listed Hungarian pro-natalist policies as a model to follow. This week, Chega’s leadership downplayed rumours that the party would crack down on abortion, legal in the country since 1984.
As polls suggest Chega now looks likely to be Portugal’s second-largest party, the English-language media is already sounding the perfunctory alarm about the rise of the ‘far Right’ as voters increasingly switch to the law and order message of Chega.
According to Matias, this coverage ignores the realities on the ground in Portugal, with Chega benefiting from decades of socialist inertia as it prepares to break new ground for a buoyant Portuguese Right.
This optimistic spirit was echoed by Chega leader André Ventura in an interview with The European Conservative earlier, describing how “corruption is an endemic evil and is rooted in all the structures of the state.”
Ventura and Chega are eying a kingmaker role with the centre-right of the Democratic Alliance (AD) in a political manoeuvre that could hamper the Left’s traditional dominance in Lisbon. The populist leader mocked attempts to place his party behind a cordon sanitaire early this week. Portuguese authorities are already being accused of tipping the scales against the populists due to ambiguities around the arrival of ballot papers in constituencies favouring the Right
On the European scene, Chega’s win would boost nationalists three months from important EU elections, with the Portuguese upstarts aligned with the right-wing Identity and Democracy faction of the European Parliament, alongside the Dutch PVV and Le Pen’s RN.
The world will know Sunday afternoon whether Chega has pulled off the milestone result suggested by polls.
