António José Seguro will face far-right leader André Ventura in a runoff ballot Feb. 8.
  • Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    2·
    3 days ago

    Funnilly enough, I voted yesterday, didn’t at all follow this on TV (what’s the point: me following the news about isn’t going to change anything, better just check the final results the next day) and forgot to check the results until I saw this post in Lemmy.

    Nice to see that a leftwing guy won this first round (even though he’s from the mainstream “left” party, he’s actually from a different faction that the self-serving neoliberal crooks that have dominated that party for 2+ decades, so he’s probably center-left unlike the leadership of his party which is at best center-right)

    Not nice to see the far-right fascist who almost certainly gets support from American fascists (he certainly parrots a lot of their propaganda) getting second place followed by the far-right ultra-neoliberal (who also probably gets support from the more traditionals American far-right, though Reaganists - when it started his party under his leadership wanted to privatise the National Health Service until they found out the public were overwhelmingly against it - rather than Fascists) in third place.

    Nice to see the sleazy rat with fingers in all pies fielded by the curreny mainstream rightwing party in Government only get 11%.

    That said, there will be a second round between the top two candidates and if you add up the numbers from just the people who are very openly and without a doubt rightwing, they exceed 50% (just) so there is still a real risk that the far-right fascist might win.

    Also note that the President in Portugal is a position with very little power, with almost all of the power being in Parliament and Government, similar to Germany.

  • rollin@piefed.socialEnglish
    1·
    4 days ago

    As none of the candidates secured an absolute majority, António José Seguro, a former head of Portugal’s Socialist Party, and André Ventura, leader of the far-right Chega party will face each other in a Feb. 8 runoff election.

    But while Ventura performed strongly on Sunday, few believe he has a real shot at winning the runoff vote. Political watchers expect the public to mobilize to prevent him from capturing the presidential palace and to rally round Seguro. That may not matter to Ventura, who said he has no real interest in being “the president of all Portuguese people” and has hinted he was only running to gauge support for his eventual candidacy for prime minister.