Like Ireland, Luxembourg and Malta, Portugal has long been one of the rare exceptions to the phenomenon that has seen elected members of far-right populist parties enter the national parliaments of most European Union countries. The legislative elections of October 2019 put an end to this singularity, allowing the Chega ("Enough") party, created in the spring of the same year, to move into the São Bento Palace, the seat of Portugal's Assembly in Lisbon, with a total of 1.29% of all votes cast on national level.

The only representative at the time was founder and party president André Ventura, a doctor of law who had previously been TV regular as a soccer commentator and was a recent defector from the center-right Social Democratic Party (PSD). More than two years later, in January 2022, in early elections caused by the rejection of the budget in October 2021, the same party was able to get 12 MPs elected in ballots which produced an absolute majority for the Socialist Party of the outgoing Prime Minister António Costa.

In November 2023, Costa resigned suddenly in the wake of the revelation of his involvement in a corruption affair that remains obscure to this day. This was one in a long series of cases involving the country's two main parties, both on the mainland and on Madeira Island, which have led to a growing tension between the political and judicial powers.

'Clean up Portugal'

Portuguese voters are once again being called to cast their ballots on Sunday, March 10. This time, with just a few days to go before elections, the polls seem to agree in predicting a narrow victory for the Aliança Democratica – a coalition made up of Luis Montenegro's PSD, the center-right party kept away from power since 2015, and its historic allies the Democratic and Social Center - People's Party (Christian Democratic) and the Monarchist People's Party –followed by the Socialist Party, now led by Pedro Nuno Santos, who served as a minister under Costa.

Above all, the Chega party, whose promise to "clean up Portugal" and put an end to "hideouts and corruption" speaks volumes about its essentially populist nature, is credited with a total of between 12% and 20% of the vote, according to various polls.

Throughout an election campaign marked essentially by the themes of health, education, housing and purchasing power, the Chega party and its leader, Ventura, confirmed their populist character by reproducing the recipes that have made far-right populist movements so successful in many European countries: anti-elitism, anti-pluralism, demands for more direct participation by the people and various positions based on a varying ideology depending on circumstances.

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