MADRID. All in the space of a few hours. Over breakfast, Portuguese people were surprised by news about government figures being investigated for alleged wrongdoing in projects related to lithium and green hydrogen. And after lunch they found themselves without a prime minister. Firmly in the saddle at the helm of the country since 2015, the socialist leader Antonio Costa resigned as soon as he learned that his name had also ended up in the investigators’ notebook, despite declaring himself uninvolved in the facts. “The duties of a prime minister are incompatible with any suspicion about his integrity,” he said. An unexpected political crisis opens up for Portugal.
Last year Costa embarked on his third term as prime minister, the first solo after having won the last legislative elections by a landslide. Yet, for some time the image of his government had been tarnished by some controversies that ended up at the center of the controversy. However, what started yesterday morning appears to be a political earthquake of entirely different proportions, which also arrives on the eve of the European Socialists’ congress in Malaga (10-11 November).
The earthquake was triggered by several searches commissioned by the General Prosecutor’s Office and conducted in Costa’s official residence and in other public and private locations. Five people ended up in handcuffs, including Prime Minister Vítor Escaria’s chief of staff. Also on the list of suspects is Infrastructure Minister João Galamba.
At the center of the suspicions are contracts for the extraction of lithium in mines in northern Portugal, as well as projects for the construction of a power plant and a data center in the city of Sines. The General Prosecutor’s Office contests crimes of “embezzlement, active and passive corruption of political office holders and influence peddling”. And he explains that “some suspects have mentioned the name of the prime minister”, in particular with regard to “his interventions to unblock proceedings in this regard”. The Supreme Court will now investigate Costa. “I want to tell the Portuguese, looking them in the eyes, that there is no burden on my conscience of any illicit act,” the resigning prime minister declared live on TV, also saying he was “totally available to collaborate”.
Shortly before, the socialist leader had twice visited the President of the Republic, the conservative Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa. Once his resignation was accepted, the Head of State called a round of consultations with the parties, announcing that he “will speak to the country” as soon as he has completed them. As he explains he to The print Luca Manucci, researcher at the Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Lisbon, Portugal is moving towards the scenario of an interim government probably until early elections. In this case, a rise of the current opposition parties, the traditional center-right of the PSD and the radical right of Chega, cannot be ruled out. «As already shown in regional contexts, the PSD might not have much difficulty in allying itself with Chega, if this is the most practicable formula», he claims.
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