The Portuguese Centre-Right Is Unfit for Purpose

“The specific political distinction to which political actions and motives can be reduced is that between friend and enemy”, wrote the great German thinker Carl Schmitt in his seminal 1932 book The Concept of the Political. Politics, indeed, is not the arena of compromise and mediation, but of struggle; it implies a clash of objectives that is not merely philosophical or metaphysical, but palpable, brutal, and overt. The defining factor of political life is where the real fault lines are located.

In Portugal, the fault line is between a crumbling regime and those who profit from it, on one hand, and those who oppose to it on the other.

The country is currently in the process of holding its most consequential presidential election ever. This Sunday, right-wing nationalist André Ventura will face the Socialist António José Seguro in the second round of what has been a bitter fight for the presidency. That is big. Never before in the history of the Third Republic has a runoff included a genuine opposition. Modern Portuguese democracy was not the result of an agreement, by the Left and the Right, to share power amongst themselves in mutual respect. There was no “Portuguese transition” in the way there was, after Franco, a “Spanish transition.” Instead, the regime was birthed by a revolutionary takeover of the State by far-left, often Communist-aligned elements of the army.

“Democracy,” in Portugal’s case, never meant a system of government of which both the Left and the Right were equal participants. The Third Republic was a regime built by the Left for the Left: the constitution, which to this day presents the “transition to a socialist society” as a national goal, was written by the Left; all the traditional political parties, including those of the systemic “Right,” had to be approved by the Communist-dominated Movimento das Forças Armadas in order to be allowed to exist. The current regime is the heir of a revolution whose first steps were to purge right-wing intellectuals from the universities and force them into exile while collectivising their homes. For a genuine right-winger to make it to the runoff is thus without precedent. Until now, Portuguese conservatives always had to make do with a Communist-approved “centre-right.” Now, finally, they are savouring a Right that is more than the moderate wing of the ruling Left.

But, whereas the long vassalage of the Portuguese Right could once be understood in practical terms as a necessity of survival, today that is no longer the case. Today, the political centre of gravity has shifted so much that systemic conservatives no longer have any real need to remain systemic. With the rise of CHEGA, the combined Right, if it were a genuine bloc, would hold a commanding majority both in parliament and in the streets. The disastrous legacy of the Socialist Party—a vast, inefficient state unable to perform or finance its duties; a public debt that, while diminishing, remains at a crippling 90% of GDP; the cataclysmic demographic and social consequences of former PM António Costa’s open border policy, a historical mistake that flooded Portugal with immigrants and likely left it with a population that is more than 30% foreign—created a large right-wing social majority. Now, that social majority is waiting for the Right—the traditional, EPP-aligned Democratic Alliance of Prime Minister Luís Montenegro, André Ventura’s CHEGA, and the smaller Liberals of Mariana Leitão—to get their act together and govern in the national interest.

The reaction of the two other right-of-centre poles to Ventura’s crushing result in the first round of this year’s Presidential election has again proved that this is still not where Portugal is headed, the voters’ desires notwithstanding. From the beginning of the current political cycle, with Montenegro’s 2024 election victory, both the Democratic Alliance and their Liberal allies have persistently sabotaged any attempt at a “union of the Right.” Confronted with Ventura’s offer for a majority right-wing government, Montenegro’s now infamous reply was “No means no.” Now, with Ventura facing the Left in the second round of an immensely consequential presidential election, the “centre-right” was once again given an opportunity to show some maturity and redeem itself. Unfortunately, it hasn’t taken it.

Alas, the opposite happened. Luís Marques Mendes, the candidate supported by PM Luís Montenegro in the first round of the election, duly announced he would support Seguro in the runoff. Henriqeu Gouveia e Melo, the former Navy Admiral and once the favourite to win the Presidency, is an independent broadly seen as centre-right. He too closed ranks behind Seguro, therefore effectively helping the Socialists recapture the presidency even though they are only the country’s third largest force in parliament, behind AD and CHEGA. Similarly, João Cotrim de Figueiredo, the Liberal candidate who achieved a strong showing in the first round, ultimately also threw his weight behind Seguro.

Not once in half a century has there been such a large and committed right-wing social majority. Suffocated by unbearable taxes, business owners and the young demand a state that punishes them less. Workers understand that mass migration hurts them more than anyone else, whether by freezing their wages or by leaving them with public services that don’t work, neighbourhoods they’re afraid to live in, and houses they can’t afford. Today, beyond the halls of power, the national consensus is solidly reformist. With the support of the people and command over parliament, these competing factions of the “Right” could, if they also took over the presidency, structurally transform the country. Yet, when the moment of truth arrived, the “centre-right” once again preferred to work with the Left rather than give the people what they have desperately been asking for in election after election: a Right that learns how to work together, yield power together, and fix the country.

This is a mistake the centre-right will come to regret. In France, like now in Portugal, the systemic Right long preferred to ally itself with the Left to prevent the Rassemblement National from gaining power. This strategy, known as the “Front républicain,” eventually discredited traditional conservatives as mere appendages of the ruling globalist class. When the electorate woke up to this reality, it also turned against those rightists who had allowed themselves to be co-opted. If, out of spite and an irrational, blind hatred of Ventura, Portugal’s systemic Right follows the same road, it will sooner or later suffer the same fate.  And it shouldn’t complain when that happens.