Portugal: right-wing populists gaining ground
The right-wing populist Chega party organised a conference on the weekend to prepare for the upcoming election campaign in Portugal. According to polls it could win around 15 percent of the vote in the snap parliamentary election on 10 March. Portuguese media analyse the reasons for the party's growing popularity and potential consequences.
Above all a protest party
The mainstream parties clearly don't know what people need and value, writes Público:
“Every time a politician distances himself from the voters (or is it the non-voters?), disconnects from the reality outside their own bubble and believes that the information that lands on their desk is enough to make decisions, a voter will abstain or be lost to a protest party. As much as Chega would like to rid itself of this label, it remains what it is: a party that brings together disaffected people with different sensibilities, united by the feeling of being invisible to the other parties.”
Citizens letting themselves be duped
It is precisely ordinary people who don't realise that by voting for Chega they are hurting their own interests, writes Expresso:
“It is ordinary citizens who will pay the price for the political impasse created by the rise of parties like Chega, whose real electoral programme (the first programme that Chega presented and then stashed away is similar to that of Milei in Argentina) is more liberal than that of the Iniciativa Liberal. When citizens abandon democracy and give up their demands from those they elect, it is not the 'system' that suffers, if by that we mean those in power. It is those they govern who suffer. Because the only people who really need democracy are those who have no power other than their vote.”
Topic of corruption must be on everyone's agenda
Correio da Manhã calls for a serious discourse:
“Leaving aside the fact that the Chega party congress was full of unrealisable proposals, one important question remains. In a country facing serious integrity problems, with a high number of corruption cases, where the historical parties lack a consistent discourse and practices in the fight against corruption, where the leadership of the [social democratic] PS and the [liberal-conservative] PSD don't have a clue about this issue, in such a country it is a great risk to leave the discourse on the fight against corruption to [Chega party leader] André Ventura. ... And both the right and the left are to blame for this.”