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Tuesday, July 02, 2013

Governo em risco: Portuguese government at risk of collapsing after Foreign Minister resigns

UPDATE (18:15) - We thought it would be useful to explain quickly how things work in Portugal when a government crisis occurs. If the Prime Minister resigns, the Portuguese President is the one who decides when and if parliament has to be dissolved.

Under Portugal's electoral law, new elections must be held at least 55 days after parliament is dissolved. This would mean almost two months with a caretaker government at a rather unfortunate time for Portugal. 

ORIGINAL BLOG POST (17:45)

One day after the resignation of Finance Minister Vítor Gaspar, the Portuguese government has just lost another one of its key players. But the impact could be a lot bigger this time.

Paulo Portas, the country's Foreign Minister (see picture), has resigned because he disagreed with the appointment of Maria Luís Albuquerque as new Finance Minister.

Portas is also the leader of the People's Party (CDS-PP), the junior coalition partner of Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho. If the party pulls out of the coalition (which looks likely in light of Portas's resignation) Passos Coelho will lose his majority in parliament. So this is critical as it can potentially trigger new elections. 

Passos Coelho will make a TV statement tonight. We'll keep you posted. In the meantime, it's worth keeping in mind the economic and social challenges Portugal faces - which we outlined here.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

This assault on democratically elected governments and, indeed, democracy itself, across Europe and the world is designed to augur a new era of global 'governance" by unelected technocrats and banksters: they are creating the chaos from which they think they will restore their new order.

The problem for those technocrats and banksters is that we have achieved critical mass of awareness of the people as to what they are doing to us.

And we know who to hold personally accountable as they skulk in their sewers.

As these "resignations" suggest, these self appointed global elites now have the choice: quit while you're winning or put everything you have on the line to pursue an ultimately failing policy global fascism.

Rik said...

Portugal will go bust unless the EZ is willing to subsidise a 'Greek' road. Which is imho unlikely to happen. Hard to see a few zero growth Northern countries subsidise a dysfunctional South for a decade or more.

Simply not enough economic capacity to finance the standard of living they are having.
I gave them 20-30% chance at the beginning of the crisis, but things are simply moving too slowly. No way they will make it.

Just waiting for the first country that start to cut drastically its welfarestate and governmentapparatus.
The longer they keep it intact the higher the debt will be and the lousier the country's reputation with investors (especially the business ones that have to get them new jobs).

The political will (overall) to make drastic changes is around zero. So likely the money will have to be cut off first, so they have no choice.