Portugal decides to… ignore their country’s parliamentary elections?

Wait, how would that even work?

Portugal has entered dangerous political waters. For the first time since the creation of Europe’s monetary union, a member state has taken the explicit step of forbidding eurosceptic parties from taking office on the grounds of national interest.

Anibal Cavaco Silva, Portugal’s constitutional president, has refused to appoint a Left-wing coalition government even though it secured an absolute majority in the Portuguese parliament and won a mandate to smash the austerity regime bequeathed by the EU-IMF Troika.

OK, obviously they think that they can get away with doing that, and there’s probably some clause or law in there somewhere that gives the Portuguese government a legal fig leaf. But there’s a difference between thinking that the Left shouldn’t win an election and thinking that the Left shouldn’t be allowed to take power after winning an election. The former is just good, common sense; the latter is, well, wrong.  Not to mention a really, really dumb precedent to set.

(Via Instapundit)

Moe Lane

PS: Weirdly, that Telegraph article’s entire tone shifts about halfway through. I think that they stuck an op-ed on the end of the original by accident. And possibly even by accident-accident.

8 thoughts on “Portugal decides to… ignore their country’s parliamentary elections?”

  1. It’s an interesting problem ..
    .
    Boiled down, it looks like the question is whether the citizens may elect candidates who intend to violate the laws of the country .. and what role the legitimate (until the mess ends? until a set date?) government has if the citizens do so…
    .
    Because, y’see, that E.U.-IMF thing isn’t just a suggestion .. it’s a treaty with force of law .. and that means the potential end-game for seating leftists who wish to violate the treaties is state-vs-state violence..
    .
    Mew

  2. So the Euro-statists are facing of against the old-school State-statists? Couldn’t happen to a nicer hive of scum and villainy.

    1. See that attitude? European politics as a hive of scum and villainy?
      .
      That’s why I’m less concerned about getting pulled into another European war.
      .
      The mask of Europe as somehow superior seems only to still work on the weak-minded and liberals ..
      .
      Mew

      1. American Liberals are, at their core, statists.
        .
        I don’t think there will be another european war for a while. Conditions seem more ripe for a Revolutions of 1848/EuropeanSpring sort of event where the locals who aren’t really sure abut this whole EU/migrations thing become more certain about their situation.

        1. Does seem poised that way, doesn’t it?
          .
          The storm cloud on the horizon is the clearly-adventurist Putin .. and what advantage he may try to push in the situation.
          .
          Mew

        2. Diasgree. There’s already a European war underway, though only the Dar al-Islam and Hungarians (possibly also the Slovenians) realize they’re in it, and the serious shooting hasn’t started yet.

  3. Its a little hyperbolic. Basically, since Portugal has a parliamentary system, its expected for the winning party to form a coalition if they don’t have an outright majority. Since that is the result for the right-wing party in Portugal, which has 38% of the seats, they would be expected to do just that. However, there are the three left-wing parties (two socialist parties and one communist) that could band together and have almost all the remaining seats (as in, there’s only one other seat in the legislature beyond those four parties).

    So, the right-wing party is going to form a minority government for a few months, and then elections will be forced, and people will decide what they want to do. In the mean time, nothing will really get done, since the governing party doesn’t have the votes to do anything.

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