In a 142-88 vote with no abstentions, opposition lawmakers ousted the Portuguese administration after only 11 months in office.
After Portugal’s third largest party CHEGA! and the Portuguese Communist Party (PCP) both presented votes of no confidence against the ‘centre-right’ government of PM Luís Montenegro in the past weeks, the Democratic Alliance (AD) government decided to present its own vote of confidence on March 11th.
CHEGA!’s motion was rejected by the largest parties, while the Communist Party’s motion gained the backing of the Socialist Party (PS). The Socialists, tied with the AD in the polls and currently the second-largest party, chose to support the no-confidence vote. Their decision was influenced by the growing number of scandals surrounding Prime Minister Montenegro, who is now revealed to have been receiving thousands of euros monthly from previously undisclosed investments in private companies during his time in office.
Montenegro’s AD put forward their own vote of confidence, partly to block a bipartisan parliamentary inquiry into the PM’s private dealings, and partly to stave off months of declining support for him, the government, and AD. Montenegro wants to quit while he is still ahead. However, the motion was rejected on Tuesday by all political forces except the AD and the liberals.
Montenegro will now act as a caretaker until voters return to the polls again later this spring.
The PM’s mounting conflicts of interest have resulted in a decline in his popularity in recent months, prompting the Socialist Party to seriously consider allowing the government to collapse. The PS has been dominated by its left-wing faction and has struggled to form a coherent opposition to Montenegro’s ‘centre-right’ government.
In addition, PS has had recent scandals of its own, not to mention the fact that its leader, Pedro Nuno Santos, is a failed minister in the previous Socialist government who had to resign in disgrace. As the minister of infrastructure, Santos was one of the loudest voices for the nationalisation of the airline TAP during the PS government but was forced to trigger its reprivatisation after the company logged some of its biggest losses in history. He was also forced to inject almost €3 billion into the perpetually loss-making national rail company CP.
While CHEGA! has had its own share of scandals over the years, having even lost one MP in 2025, it has consistently been the main voice arguing for anti-corruption reforms and is easily identified by the electorate as the number one promoter of this topic, along with defending the lowering of politicians’ salaries and a reduction of the number of seats in parliament. As such, CHEGA! also stands to capitalise on the government’s woes connected to irregular financial misadventures, just as it did in 2024 when the PS government collapsed under similar suspicions.
Since 2023, Montenegro has followed the strategy devised by his party’s elites of blackmailing CHEGA!’s voters, appealing to a ‘useful’ vote aimed at preventing the Left from returning to power. In 2024, this utilitarian strategy resulted in CHEGA!’s best election result in the party’s short history.
The AD government now hopes that the Portuguese people will punish those responsible for political instability, as they have consistently done for the past 50 years, by reinforcing the AD majority and penalising both the PS and CHEGA!. Another option would be to form a coalition with the Liberal Initiative (IL)—the fourth largest party—even if the AD were to fall behind the Socialists in the upcoming spring election.
In either scenario, Montenegro’s AD has been firm in maintaining a cordon sanitaire against CHEGA!. While an alliance between the two parties would easily secure a stable right-of-centre government, the AD elites insist on their ‘red lines,’ being too afraid of adversarial media and an EU backlash were they to normalise and destigmatise the ‘populist Right.’
The coming campaign will undoubtedly see CHEGA! leader André Ventura make the most of recent high-profile crimes to attack the AD leadership for their refusal to link rising crime rates with the colossal wave of third-world immigration the Portuguese have experienced in recent decades. CHEGA! will also highlight the AD government’s woke policies to denounce the lack of conservative credentials of the supposedly centre-right party.
Conversely, PS and the Left have few platforms left to campaign on. The AD government only timidly moved to limit immigration and, by and large, the government’s spending largesse—especially to Left and far-left entities—was not curtailed. Civil servants and NGOs have so far had little to fear from Montenegro’s policies.
Should the AD fail to secure a clear majority either alone or with the liberals in the upcoming elections, Montenegro would likely resign, throwing the AD and the centre-right into crisis.
