Portugal enters full pre-campaign period with pandemic concerns

With three weeks to go before the legislative elections, Portugal is already in pre-campaign mode with debates between the candidates and amid growing concern over the escalation of the pandemic, which could trigger abstention. Although the official campaign only begins next Sunday, the country has already entered the countdown to the polls and in the last week fifteen two-way debates between candidates have been televised, which have served to define positions before an election with an uncertain outcome.

The latest poll shows Prime Minister António Costa's Socialist Party as the favourite, with 38% of the vote, and although the PSD (centre-right) continues to close the gap, it is still six percentage points behind. What all the polls so far agree on is that no one will have an absolute majority and it will be necessary to seek understandings with other parties.

After Costa's former left-wing partners voted against the 2022 budget, which precipitated the elections to be brought forward, one of the main unknowns for 30 January is whether it will be possible to re-establish the left-wing alliance known as the "geringonça".

So far, Costa has focused on calling for a socialist majority that would allow him to govern in a stable way, and this week he went so far as to say that the "geringonça" is a solution that "does not give confidence", although he did not close the door completely. "I am not here to put up the walls again (between the left-wing parties) that I myself knocked down six years ago", he said in a face-to-face meeting with the secretary general of the Communists, Jerónimo de Sousa, who said he was open to "convergences" with the Socialists.

The other former member of the "geringonça", the leader of the Bloco de Esquerda, Catarina Martins, went so far as to say that Costa is an "obstacle", although she assured that her party wants a government agreement on the left. Martins and Costa will face each other in a debate on Tuesday, and two days later it will be the prime minister's turn to face centre-right leader Rui Rio, the most eagerly awaited of the 30 debates scheduled by Portuguese broadcasters.

If there is no agreement for another "geringonça", the alternative being considered in Portugal is a "bloco central" between the socialists and the centre-right, a government solution that has only occurred once in all of Portuguese democracy, in 1983. Rui Rio has already indicated on several occasions that he is open to talk in order to "contribute to the stability" of the country.

The other big unknown for the polls is the vote for those positive for COVID-19, as the escalation of infections in recent weeks, with the highest peaks of the entire pandemic, could leave hundreds of thousands of people in quarantine on the day of the vote.

The government is working with the National Association of Municipalities to increase the number of early polling stations, where those who request to do so can vote on 23 January and avoid being left without a ballot if they become infected in the last week. Nor is the possibility of letting prisoners out to vote completely ruled out, and the opinion of the Consultative Council of the Attorney General's Office has been requested to find out whether, legally, solitary confinement prevents the exercise of the right to vote.

"We have to do everything within the framework of the law to ensure two things: that all people can exercise their right to vote and at the same time guarantee that all people who vote do so in safety and that they do not fail to do so for fear of being infected," Costa said. Quarantines and isolations could trigger abstention in the country, where it already exceeded 51% in the last legislative elections, in 2019.

The fifth wave has not yet begun to subside in Portugal, where this week has seen peaks of almost 40,000 infections per day and the 14-day incidence is approaching 2,500 cases per 100,000 inhabitants.