Short-termism

ANTÓNIO COSTA, leader of Portugal’s Socialist Party (PS), may soon be able to tell the curious story of how to lose a vote and yet still become prime minister. After the election on October 4th, far from winning a majority as he had hoped, his PS was not even the biggest party. That title went to the centre-right alliance led by Pedro Passos Coelho, the incumbent prime minister. Many expected Mr Costa to resign as party leader.

Yet within weeks, Mr Costa expects to become prime minister of an “anti-austerity” government. This is the result of a bold—and perhaps historic—compromise between his own moderate party and the far left. Before then, Mr Passos Coelho will be sworn in as prime minister, but his minority government seems doomed from the outset to last little more than a fortnight before losing a “motion of rejection”.

The demolition of what Mr Costa calls Portugal’s “Berlin Wall”, a 40-year ideological divide within the left, has as much to do with his instinct for survival as with any new political vision. The former mayor of Lisbon fought a knives-out battle to become PS leader last year, accusing his predecessor of failing to capitalise on the hardships inflicted on ordinary Portuguese by four years of austerity under Mr Passos Coelho. After losing the election, Mr Costa rejected the humiliating option of backing the centre-right government in return for vague concessions and instead began trying to forge an alliance that had previously been seen as impossible: between the PS, the radical Left Bloc and the hardline Portuguese Communist Party.

Although no such coalition was offered to voters before the election, the 62% share taken by the three parties (and smaller opponents of Mr Passos Coelho) represents a vote for change and for an end to austerity, argues Mr Costa. Aníbal Cavaco Silva, Portugal’s conservative president, is not convinced. Constitutional precedent must prevail, the president has ruled. So he has given Mr Passos Coelho, as leader of the largest political group, the first chance to form a government, even though the combined left is poised to bring it down almost immediately. More controversially, the president has uttered dire warnings against any government that relies on support from the two far-left parties, which favour debt restructuring and are opposed to the fiscal-compact treaty’s rules.

In spite of Mr Costa’s guarantee that any government that he forms would respect Portugal’s euro-zone commitments, Mr Cavaco Silva says that he has not seen any evidence that it would be “stable, lasting or credible”. He has a point. More than 70% of voters backed mainstream parties (including the PS) that strongly favour keeping Portugal in the euro. “People are weary of austerity,” comments Paulo Baldaia, director of TSF radio. “But a large majority also want the books to balance.”

Mr Cavaco Silva’s high-handed approach and disparaging remarks about the anti-euro left may have closed more doors than they have opened. But that does not mean, as Eurosceptics outside Portugal have concluded, that he is bent on keeping the left-wing parties out of office. If Mr Costa succeeds in sealing a pact with the two far-left parties and bringing down Mr Passos Coelho’s minority government, Mr Cavaco Silva’s final reluctant act, after a decade in office, is likely to be to preside over a new experiment: a left-wing coalition government, with all the economic uncertainty that might bring.