Portugal’s president dissolves Parliament and calls early elections

President of Portugal dissolves Parliament and calls early elections

President of Portugal, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, on Sunday, December 5, signed the decree that officially dissolved the country’s Parliament. As he had previously communicated to the country, he has called for early elections, to take place on January 30, 2022.

Rebelo de Sousa announced his action in an official statement, having waited for the deadline established by law to dissolve the Parliament of Portugal. This was also designed to allow time for the Chamber to process the maximum possible number of legislative initiatives that were pending. These included the euthanasia law – which he ended up vetoing anyway – and anti-corruption measures.

This dissolution of the Parliament of Portugal comes after the Budget for 2022 presented by the socialist government of Antonio Costa was rejected in the Chamber at the end of November. His government could not collect enough votes to pass the budget, after its former left-wing partners, and the whole of the right, voted against it.

Faced with this situation, the president decided that calling elections would be the best solution to get out of the blockade, which occurred just in the middle of the legislature. “It is part of the very life of democracy to give the people the floor”, Rebelo de Sousa said on November 4, when he informed the country that there would be elections.

To avoid the electoral campaign clashing with the Christmas period, he delayed the elections until the end of January. Costa’s Socialist party is favourite to win the election again, and it is believed he will still run for prime minister. He needs to win a majority vote to avoid needing to form another coalition government.

Costa has been the Portuguese prime minister since 2015, when he came to the government despite the fact that the Socialists were not the party with the most votes. In 2019, his party won the election, but were left eight short of an absolute majority, something he will hope to avoid happening again in January, as reported by larazon.es.

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