Portugal’s Socialists to govern alone after poll win

Portugal’s Socialist party, which was re-elected in a weekend general election but fell just short of a parliamentary majority, said Friday it will govern alone without a repeat of the formal alliance with two hard-left parties that had backed it during the past four years.

Prime Minister Antonio Costa’s Socialists strengthened their position in parliament in Sunday’s polls, winning 106 seats in the 230-seat assembly, up from 86 seats but still 10 shy of an outright majority.

After the last election in 2015, Costa formed a minority Socialist government with the support the anti-capitalist Left Bloc and the hardline Communist party in an unprecedented alliance foes called a “geringinca”, or “odd contraption”.

Unlike in 2015 when the backing of these two parties was indispensable, this time around Costa needed the support of only one of them to reach a majority.

The Left Bloc held the 19 parliamentary seats it won four years ago while the Communist party won 12 seats — five fewer than in the last vote but still enough to give the Socialists a majority of at least 116 seats.

But after holding talks with other parties on Thursday, the Socialist party (PS) said it would govern this time around by seeking support from other parties on a case by case basis instead of with a written agreement like the last time.

The party will “implement a permanent dialogue throughout the legislature to find solutions” to approve budgets and other laws, it said in a statement.

The Left Bloc were prepared to back the Socialists again but had demanded the reform of a labour law approved by a previous centre-right government as part of measures agreed with the European Union and the IMF in exchange for a 78-billion-euro ($85 billion) international bailout.

But Costa, who has reversed some of these austerity measures while still managing to bring Portugal’s budget deficit down to nearly zero, said revising the labour law was not “a priority”.

Since the Socialists won more seats than all centre-right parties combined, Costa could approve bills if other left-wing parties abstain from voting.

The election result is incomplete as four seats must still be attributed according to votes cast abroad, which are yet to be counted.