12 February 2021
International Politics and Society, 11 February 2021.
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"At the height of the Covid-19 pandemic last month, the Portuguese parliament discussed an extension of the state of emergency and new restrictions on public life. Right now, Portugal is experiencing a critical situation: over 250 people are dying of the respiratory disease every day. And no other country in the world has such high numbers of new infections.
During the parliamentary debate, André Ventura, the only deputy of the right-wing populist Chega party, gave a two-minute campaign speech against the Socialist government. He used the word ‘shame’ five times, while at the same time welcoming the proposed closure of the border and, in the end, voted against the extension of the state of emergency without justifying his political stance.
This behaviour is part and parcel of his strategy. ‘Ventura wants to shock. Even if he pretends to say something truthful, he is still just an opportunist with only one goal in mind: he wants to get into power,’ says political scientist Marina Costa Lobo of the University of Lisbon’s ICS social science institute.
Ventura has now come one small step closer to achieving his goal. In the presidential elections on 24 January, he received 11.9 per cent or nearly 500,000 votes. This means that in the parliamentary elections a year and a half ago, the former tax officer with a PhD in law won around eight times as many votes as his party, Chega (whose name means ‘Enough!’). How can his rise be explained in a country that until recently still seemed immune to right-wing populism?"
Source: Portugal is not immune to right-wing populism after all (IPS, 11 February 2021)
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