Portugal’s far-right party becomes kingmaker ahead of polls

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Portugal’s far-right party becomes kingmaker ahead of polls

Until recently, countries like Portugal felt that they may be immune to populist movements that have gained prominence across Europe. Not anymore.

www.trtworld.com

Portugal’s far-right party becomes kingmaker ahead of polls​

MURAT SOFUOGLU

23 HOURS AGO

Until recently, countries like Portugal felt that they may be immune to populist movements that have gained prominence across Europe. Not anymore.

Populist movements have swept across the world from Latin America’s Brazil to Donald Trump’s US and the UK’s Brexit movement. In France and Italy, the EU’s two founding members, far-right parties have made significant gains, even pulling center-right parties further right.

Despite the far-right’s march across the Western world, some countries like Portugal and Germany thought that they might be exceptions to the phenomenal rise of populist movements.

But approaching elections in Portugal, a Catholic-majority country with a 10 million population, have shown that Lisbon might be the next trouble spot of the far-right, as the country’s populist party, Chega!, has significantly increased its appeal across the southwestern European state.

Prior to the establishment of Chega!, which means Enough, in 2019, the party’s leader, Andre Ventura, had been a sports pundit at the country’s popular football club Benfica’s TV station, but also has an academic background.

Following the 2019 general elections, Ventura was able to enter the Portugal parliament as the only MP of Chega!, receiving 1.4 percent of the vote. But he has risen spectacularly since garnering nearly 12 percent of the vote in the country’s presidential elections last year, coming third.

Different polls indicate that in the upcoming elections on Sunday, his party will possibly get ten times more votes than the 2019 polls, placing his party in a kingmaker position for the formation of the next government.

Andre Ventura, leader of the populist party Chega! (Enough!), reacts when someone shouts "fascist" as he leaves the lectern after delivering a speech in the Portuguese Parliament. (Armando Franca / AP Archive)


Will Ventura be the kingmaker of Portugal?

Currently, Portugal has a minority government led by the country’s Socialist Party (PS), which has been backed by the two left-wing parties. But both leftist parties refused to support the Socialist government’s budget, triggering snap elections two years earlier than scheduled.

Angered by early elections, the Portuguese electorate might punish leftists parties. As a result, Ventura’s populist party could get more votes than the two small radical left parties, placing itself third in the elections. If that happens, then, Chega! might be the potential coalition partner of the country’s center-right Social Democratic Party (PSD).

“There will not be a government on the right without Chega,” Ventura said in a recent speech.

“One aspect of Portugal’s far-right at the moment is that we don’t really know how the party will look like once they have several MPs (possibly about ten in the next parliament),” says Nuno Garoupa, a Portuguese academic and a Professor of Law at George Mason University.

“One thing is a party largely built around one specific charismatic person (Ventura), a different thing is a party with 10MPs and possibly the third largest in the Parliament. That’s a big unknown at the moment,” Garoupa tells TRT World.

“It’s going to happen, if not after this election then after the next one,” said Francisco Pereira Coutinho, a constitutional law professor at Lisbon’s Nova University, from which Ventura graduated in law with a grade of 19 out of 20. “It’s going to be impossible to have a majority on the right without the populists,” Coutinho argued.

Garoupa himself is also a candidate for Portugal’s Libertarian party (IL) for overseas voting districts. As a result, he did not want “to opinionate about another competing party”.


Ventura’s contradictory stances

But in the past, Garoupa strongly criticised Ventura’s political conduct in which the Chega! leader stigmatised the country’s small Roma community, also warning other minority groups that they have “rights” as much as “responsibilities”.

Paradoxically, the same guy, who received a good education from different institutions becoming a law professor and jurist, provided a strong criticism in his PhD thesis toward “criminal populism”, expressing his fears of "stigmatisation of minorities" and "expansion of police powers".

Since 2019, as the Chega! leader, Ventura, not only stigmatised minorities but also became a populist leader, allying himself with people like France’s Marine Le Pen, leader of the country’s far-right party, Rassemblement National, and neighbouring Spain’s far-right Vox party leader, Santiago Abascal.

Presidential candidate Andre Ventura and French far-right populist Marine le Pen, center left, lay a wreath at the monument to WWI fallen soldiers in Lisbon, Jan. 8, 2021. (Armando Franca / AP Archive)


When asked about the clear contradictions regarding his past and current stances, Ventura controversially said that he "always made a distinction between science and opinion", referring to his PhD conduct as "scientific analysis, not ideological postulate".

But Garoupa found Ventura’s “distinction” quite "a ridiculous argument and an incomprehensible position", describing his explanation "like saying that the Earth is round scientifically but politically it is flat.”

"It is as if Darwin wrote 'The Origin of Species' and then defended creationism," the professor said on Ventura’s problematic evolution from a liberal academic to a far-right politician.

Ventura has also written a couple of books, Montenegro and A Última Madrugada do Islão (The Last Dawn of Islam). Both books also have a controversial content related to female submission and homoeroticism.

The publication of his latest book, which is a novel about the death of Palestinian Liberation Organisation’s leader Yasser Arafat, was suspended due to its "incendiary potential" for problematic references to Prophet Mohammed and Palestinian leaders.

 

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https://www.riotimesonline.com/brazil-news/modern-day-censorship/snap-portugals-elections-and-the-dizzying-rise-of-right-wing-chega/

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Snap Portugal’s elections and the dizzying rise of right-wing CHEGA​

After taking just 1 seat in the 2019 vote, polls showed CHEGA (Enough) party poised to claim up to 10 times that in Sunday’s elections. It won 7,15% of the vote, thus becoming the country’s third-largest parliamentary force, and virtually wiping out the whole far-left.

By Iolanda Fonseca

January 31, 2022

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Portugal’s general vote on Sunday, January 30, was expected to see conservative right-wing CHEGA party secure 10 times more seats than in 2019. It did that, and some more.

“CHEGA promised and delivered: we are Portugal’s third political force!” Ventura said, amid a cheering packed Merriot hotel conference room in Lisbon.

In his speech, the leader of CHEGA didn’t mince his words: “António Costa, I’m coming for you now!” (photo internet reproduction)

The early election was triggered last December after the fragile – and doomed to collapse – deal between Prime Minister António Costa’s minority Socialist government and its allies in the Portuguese Communist party and the Left Bloc broke down during negotiations to pass the 2022 budget.

Not only did the rupture end the alliance known as the “geringonça” – or improvised solution – which had made Portugal a rare beacon of European social democracy, it also yielded an election that could see the conservative right-wing CHEGA party become the third biggest group in parliament.

Although the polls in recent days showed a close race for first place between Costa’s Socialists (PS) and the centre-right Social Democrats (PSD), the latter appeared to be pulling ahead. The Socialist Party won 42% of seats in the parliamentary elections yesterday.

However, leading up to the elections, neither the PS nor the PSD were expected to secure an overall majority, meaning that deals would need to be struck and alliances forged by whichever party won the most votes.

While PSD leader Rui Rio once ruled out including CHEGA in any coalition, his discourse changed over time, making room for the party to play a big role in shaping and securing a PSD government.

CHEGA owes “this victory to our work, and that of hundreds of thousands of Portuguese,” who “despite every day being lied to and attacked by other political parties,” didn’t “let themselves be fooled.”

The “message” was “direct,” Ventura assured: “We want CHEGA as the solution to a right-wing government,” he added. In total, the party elected 12 deputies.

After taking just 1 seat in the 2019 vote, polls showed CHEGA (Enough) party poised to claim up to 10 times that in Sunday’s elections. It won 7,15% of the vote, thus becoming the country’s third-largest parliamentary force, and virtually wiping out the whole far-left.

“If the party manages to be the third political force in parliament or, ‘at the limit’, the fourth political force, as of January 30, it will begin to fight to be the real and the only opposition to the Socialist Government,” said CHEGA leader André Ventura while campaigning.

CHEGA’s flagships since its 2 years of foundation is the subsidy dependence of certain minority groups – getting benefits from the state compared to the middle classes who are paying for them, and that only those paying into the system should receive them.

The other is corruption. It’s an important source of discontent in Portugal. Close to 90% of Portuguese believe there is corruption in the government, said watchdog Transparency International.

“Advisors who become consultants and mayors who become entrepreneurs and provide services to their own municipalities. The socialist tentacles that threatens us for another 4 years!” Ventura said in one of his campaign rallies, gathering thousands behind him while singing the national anthem.

Not surprisingly, CHEGA pledged to rattle the establishment, to such a point and through André Ventura’s “enfant terrible” stance and vociferous statements in and out of parliament that other candidates’ campaigns zoomed in on defamation, labeling the party as the far-right, “a new dictator in the making,” rather than presenting their own plans for the country.

“When a party annoys the whole system and challenges all vested interests, it means we are doing something right!” Ventura says.


UNAFRAID OF BEING ISOLATED BY THE RIGHT-WING

Ventura also criticized the PSD – “the right-wing failed to live up to its responsibilities” – for having spent the electoral campaign rejecting agreements with CHEGA: “They spent all their time saying that ‘not with Chega,’ and the result is clear: Yes, with Chega,” Ventura told a cheering crowd. “The main culprit of this is Rui Rio.”

At a CHEGA rally, supporter Larissa Gonçalves, a 26-year-old Brazilian-Portuguese, bore a party flag and said she agreed with some of Ventura’s claims. “Some work, while others sleep…We all have to contribute,” she said.

A CHEGA supporter immigrant in the UK, representing the Diaspora posted on social media in protest standing alongside the statue of the dictator “worshiped by the Portuguese left and far-left Karl Marx, who inspired and still inspires so much hatred, so many deaths and so much misery all over the world.”

“Dictatorship never again,” the man said, holding the CHEGA party flag.

In an interview with Brazil’s Terra, actress Maria Vieira, who has worked in Globo, is now a strong name within CHEGA. She said that she became the target of criticism and insults for declaring herself conservative and right-wing.

Winner of several awards, the artist says she is boycotted by the TV stations where she worked. Former colleagues have distanced themselves. Others take to social media to criticize her. On social networks, Maria has expressed admiration for President Jair Bolsonaro and contempt for the Brazilian left-wing.

Actress Maria Vieira, who has worked in Globo, is now a strong name within CHEGA. (photo internet reproduction)

“I am currently a Municipal Deputy in Cascais, Mandated for the Non-European Electoral Circle (which obviously includes Brazil) and I am the 9th candidate for Parliamentary Deputy, in a list of 53 candidates for CHEGA.”

In Portugal, as in Brazil, most TV and press professionals are left-wing. Those who are on the other side of the political spectrum get little space to freely expose their thoughts.


THE FAR-RIGHT “GHOST”

André Ventura, the founding body and current members of CHEGA do not stem from the classic Portuguese far-right. They come from Ventura’s own personal network, from the grassroots of parliamentary parties (PS, PSD, CDS) and from abstentionism.

The dominant political culture of CHEGA’s founders is economic liberalism and conservative values.

André Ventura recurrently presents himself as the voice of the people betrayed by the system’s political elite trapped by political correctness. This emphasis is constant in CHEGA’s discourse.

PSD leader Rui Rio has little doubt: CHEGA “effectively has some extreme and populist profile positions,” but he rejects attaching other, harsher labels to the party. “I think it’s somewhat excessive to classify CHEGA as fascist or far-right.”

 

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Taking hold of the Portuguese hinterland - but actually Chega punched above average also in Lisbon, probably due to the personal popularity of André Ventura who lives there; their worst results were in Portugal's second-largest city Porto:

 

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Some Leftist analysis of the election results:

The Rise of Portugal’s Far Right Is a Wake-Up Call

After its hard-won return to democracy, Portugal was considered almost immune to the rise of the far right. In Sunday’s election, a party of “God, fatherland, and family” elected 12 MPs — the highest total since the end of the dictatorship.

www.jacobinmag.com

The fragmentation on the Portuguese right was visible even in the previous contest in 2019. Back then, two new parties — Chega and the market-fundamentalist Liberal Initiative (Iniciativa Liberal) — entered parliament for the first time, at the expense of the PSD, the main center-right force. This dynamic was confirmed on Sunday: alongside gains for Chega, the Iniciativa Liberal rose from one to eight seats, while the PSD fell from seventy-seven to seventy-one. Its main ally, the conservative CDS-PP, founded after the 1974 revolution, fell out of parliament altogether.
...

The success for the far right had been a long time coming. Ever since its first breakthrough into parliament in 2019, there was suspicion that Chega would advance further in the next such contest — indeed, the media buzz around the party allowed for no other outcome. Sunday’s election confirmed this prognosis: Chega advanced from one to twelve MPs (eleven of them men), and from 1.3 percent (66,000 votes) to 7.15 percent (385,000 votes) — albeit still less than the 496,000 that party frontman André Ventura won in last January’s presidential election.
...

The party’s rise was especially significant, given the usual primacy of coalition talks in Portuguese politics. Pre-election scenarios included a renewed PS minority government, perhaps reliant on the left-wing parties; a more or less informal centrist bloc backed by both PS and the PSD, as happened with António Guterres’s government in 1995–2002; or even a right-wing variant of the Geringonça, in which Rui Rio’s PSD would form an administration reliant on the Liberal Initiative, the Christian-Democrats, and even Chega.

This prospect was key to driving the left-wing electorate toward the PS, and it was talked up by the far-right party itself, which even announced which ministries it wanted. Such a scenario is not unprecedented, given that such a pact already exists in the Azores. In October 2019, the PS came first in these islands’ regional election, but the PSD sealed a parliamentary agreement with Chega, which had elected two representatives, thus allowing it to govern with far-right support. The Azores are a small region — but this was a big step in the normalization of Chega, and a trial run for a similar solution at a national scale.

The PSD leader made it clear during the January 2022 campaign that he did not want a governmental coalition with Chega. Yet he was ambiguous about other, less formal kinds of parliamentary agreements. In reality, given the fragmentation of the Portuguese right, there was no chance that Rio would have been able to govern without some sort of Chega backing. At the same time, right-wing commentators argued that since the PS had made deals with the so-called far left, the PSD should equally be allowed to find allies on its own right flank, not least given that it needs Chega if it is ever going to be in government. The normalization of the far-right party thus reached a new level.

This fragmentation is also a sign of the radicalization of the Portuguese right. The Liberal Initiative has radicalized its economic agenda, adopting an openly neoliberal line that advocates mass privatizations of public services, even including the support system for victims of domestic violence.
...

It was argued that the memory of almost half a century of fascist dictatorship and the values of the Carnation Revolution would protect it from a parliamentary far right. Moreover, such factions as did exist were marginal and fragmented, politically inept, and associated with violence and organized crime. That was until Chega arrived, replicating the populism and social media strategy of its Spanish counterpart Vox.

The failure of the PSD’s centrist strategy, now reflected in leader Rio’s resignation, suggests that this center-right force may itself radicalize in order to avoid further losses. For now, it is expected to take a more low-key opposition to the PS while it elects a new leader. Chega will surely take advantage of this moment to affirm itself as the leader of the opposition, disputing that place with what it denounces as the “soft right.”

These dynamics already became visible on election night, with the PSD’s Rio unusually speaking before Chega’s Ventura. The PSD leader acknowledged the party’s defeat and said that it would not make any sense for him to keep his position if the PS did indeed achieve an absolute majority. Ventura addressed the country immediately afterward him, criticizing the center-right and promising, “António Costa, I will be coming for you now!”

 

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This is how a Commie observer chronicles the breaking down of anti-Right cordon sanitaire in Portugal:

Chega: the worst of the Portuguese system now has a party - by Fabian Figueiredo - Party of the European Left

www.european-left.org

The recent memory of the crimes of the Estado Novo dictatorship of António Oliveira Salazar [1899-1970, president of the Council of Ministers from 1932 to 1968] and Marcello Caetano [1906-1980, president of the Council of Ministers from 1968 to April 1974, then military exile in Brazil] and the democratic gains of the Revolution of April 25, 1974 contributed decisively to keeping the Portuguese extreme right in quarantine for many years. Subsequently, the Portuguese party spectrum proved to be quite resilient, mainly in the right-wing camp. Until 2019, the two main parties of the Portuguese right, the Social Democratic Party (PSD) and the Social Democratic Centre – Popular Party (CDS-PP), had never seen a political formation on their right that has managed to impose itself politically.​

These two fundamental characteristics: the memory of repression and poverty under the dictatorship and the stability of the party structure have given Portuguese democracy 45 years without representatives of extreme right-wing parties being elected to national and regional parliaments and municipal councils.
...

In the 1980s and 1900s, the neo-Nazi movement gained a certain presence in the regions of Greater Porto and Lisbon. They organized demonstrations, concerts and created a new party: the National Action Mouvement (MAN). Like all its predecessors, its life was short. The activity of these groups was practically limited to violent actions. They had a close link with organized crime. The Portuguese skinheads were convicted of the murder of a young black man, Alcindo Monteiro [in 1995 he was from Cape Verde] and the leftist activist and member of the Socialist Revolutionary Party (PSR), “Zé da Messa” [José Carvalho was killed in October 1989 outside the door of the PSR headquarters in Lisbon]. As a result of this strategy, these skinheads were brought to justice and their main leaders were arrested.​

In 1999, a group of far-right activists infiltrated an eroding centrist party, the Democratic Renewal Party (PRD). This group repaid its debts and took control of its leadership and changed its name to National Rewal Party (PNR). The Portuguese Constitutional Court accepted this change in April 2000. The Portuguese extreme right tried to regroup in PNR, but contrary to what happens in many European countries, it did not succeed in coming out of the margins.​

The PNR has accumulated successive failures. The best was obtained in the 2015 legislative elections with 0.18% of the cast votes. It has not managed to attract qualified executives, nor has it managed to arouse interest among “economic circles”.
...

In the 2017 municipal elections, the PSD presented André Ventura as candidate for mayor of the municipality of Loures, Portugal’s sixth-largest, located in the outskirts north of Lisbon. André Ventura was known for his inflammatory interventions in defense of SL Benfica (Portugal’s largest football club) in sports commentary panels on television on CMTV and for his inflammatory interventions regarding “criminal acts” in the Portuguese tabloid press. As a member of the PSD’s national leadership, he also chose as a campaign flag the denunciation of the gypsy community, the defense of the death penalty, life imprisonment and the strengthening of repression and police surveillance. The national “populist” discourse created unease among its right-wing partner, CDS, which broke with the coalition.​

Despite the strong opposition and resistance that his xenophobic and authoritarian discourse aroused in Portuguese society and also among sectors and leaders of the PSD, the then leader, Pedro Passos Coelho, renewed his support for André Ventura. He supported him in the electoral campaign. This gesture can be read today as the fall of the first cordon sanitaire between the right and the Portuguese extreme right.​

André Ventura was elected municipal councillor, his candidacy obtained the 3rd place, behind the Portuguese Communist Party (PCP) (which has led the municipality since 2013) and the Socialist Party (PS). In 2018, after the departure of Pedro Passos Coelho from the presidency of the PSD, André Ventura left the PSD and the municipal council and announced the creation of a new party, the Chega.​

The far-right formation, after several initial controversies (they tried to legalize the party using false signatures), was accepted by the Constitutional Court in April 2019.​

In May 2019, Chega ran in the European elections under the aegis of the Basta (Enough!) coalition, joined by the Popular Monarchist Party (PPM), the Pro-Life Catholic Traditionalists party (PPV) and a liberal microgroup, “Democracia XXI”. The electoral front of the radical right led by André Ventura is not in the European Parliament. It finished in 9th place, with about 50,000 votes (1.49% of the vote). In the legislative elections of October 2019 Chega ran alone, but included the PPV in its lists. He won 67,826 votes (1.29%) and its leader was elected MP for the Lisbon constituency. A few months later, he declared his intention to run in the January 2021 presidential elections.

The Andalusian moment of the Portuguese right wing

Since Chega’s foundation, a debate has been raging within the traditional Portuguese right on its relationship with the extreme right. Until regional elections in the Azores in October 2020, leaders of the Portuguese parliamentary right rejected any agreement with André Ventura’s party. They accused it of presenting proposals incompatible with their “democratic” and “humanist” programs and principles.​

“The proof of the pudding is the eating”. In the regional elections in the Azores in October 2020, the Socialist Party lost its absolute majority. After a long period of 24 years of opposition, the right may return to power. All that was needed was for José Manuel Bolieiro (leader of the PSD/Azores) to reach a parliamentary agreement with Chega, who won two deputies and 5% of the vote.​

The extreme right imposed three conditions on the PSD. The first was a commitment to reduce by 50% the number of beneficiaries of the RSI (Income for Social Insertion, a social support for the poorest of the poor). On average, each beneficiary in the Azores receives 86.11 euros per month. Data published by the National Institute of Statistics (INE) shows that nearly 10% of beneficiaries in the Azores are working, 61.3% are women, mostly single, between the ages of 35 and 44. The Azores are in fact the poorest region in Portugal. In addition, Chega has demanded the creation of an “anti-corruption cabinet” – a “populist” measure of no consequence – and the reduction of the number of deputies in the Legislative Assembly of the Autonomous Region of the Azores, a measure which, because it depends on the approval of the Parliament of the Republic and the region itself, will hardly see the light of day.​

The Portuguese right wing has had its Andalusian moment in the middle of the Atlantic [reference to Vox’s 2018 results in Andalusia with 11 per cent, allowing for the formation of a right-wing government]. The precedent of the Azores agreement shows that the Portuguese liberal and conservative right will make agreements with the extreme right as long as the key to power remains in their hands. It is of little interest to it, when it comes to taking power, that it thus deepens the naturalization of racist, xenophobic and authoritarian discourse, heir to the worst episodes in Portugal’s contemporary history.​

What is Chega made of?

If, during the first months of its existence, Chega tried to avoid the label of extreme right-wing party, it seems that this is no longer a problem for the party leadership. The formation led by André Ventura recently decided to join the European party Identity and Democracy (ID), which brings together most of the European extreme right. He publicly exchanges compliments with the Bolsonaro family, travels to Italy to campaign alongside Matteo Salvini, visits Marine Le Pen in Paris and receives her, in the middle of the presidential campaign, in Lisbon.​

The rhetoric and tactics he uses to consolidate his social base also seem to be drawn from the writings of the international extreme right, particularly Bolsonarism: neoliberal economic program, security discourse, deeply racist and xenophobic, nostalgic appeals to Portuguese colonialism and the dictatorship of the Estado Novo, authoritarian populism, mixed with messianic Christian references. André Ventura went so far as to declare publicly that God had entrusted him with the “difficult but honorable task of transforming Portugal”.​

The similarities do not end there. According to Portuguese experts, Chega’s digital militia consists of at least 20,000 fake accounts on social networks. These data explain, to a large extent, the success of the party on Facebook and Youtube. This device is used not only to reinforce the party’s propaganda, but above all to spread misinformation and attack journalists, left-wing leaders and activists of social movements. Chega is a veritable factory of lies that leaves Portuguese fact checkers without fingers to count them.​

The economic program is a veritable liberal vulgate. Chega intends to completely dismantle the Portuguese social state. It wants to privatize the National Health Service, public schools, social security and public transport and hand over all these public goods to private groups.It advocates for putting an end to progressive taxation and introducing flat taxes which, if applied, would increase the tax burden for those who earn less and then reduce it for those who earn much more. And it proposes to completely liberalize housing evictions and the Labor Law. In its electoral manifesto, the party even advocates lower wages. While the aggressive shock doctrine defended by André Ventura has created him problems in interviews and debates with opponents – Portugal is one of the most unequal countries in the EU, the at-risk-of-poverty rate before social transfers reaches 43% of the population – it has, on the other hand, served as bait to attract funding and support from various businessmen, real estate investors and bankers (many of whom are linked to various financial scandals).​

Many of the “Owners of Portugal” publicly assume that they are mobilizing their resources to support André Ventura. These include businessman João Maria Bravo – owner of Sodarca [arms] and Helibravo [air transport]; Miguel Félix da Costa – whose family was for 75 years the representative of Castrol Lubricants, now an influential real estate and tourism investment manager; Carlos Barbot – owner of Tintas Barbot [inks, colors]; or Paulo Mirpuri – CEO of the airline Hi Fly and Mirpuri Investments.​

The Portuguese far right also has strong allies in the financial world. Among them are several senior executives of Grupo Espírito Santo (GES), which went bankrupt in 2014, such as Francisco Sá Nogueira, Salvador Posser de Andrade or Pedro Pessanha. The last two are party members. Posser de Andrade, who is still the director of GES’s former property manager, Coporgest, is a national leader and ran in the Lisbon legislative elections. While Pedro Pessanha, a former advisor to the financial group in Angola, is president of Chega’s regional group of Lisbon. Francisco Cruz Martins, former straw man for the business of the Angolan elite in Portugal, and one of the Portuguese names mentioned in the international scandal of the Panama Papers, but also in other national corruption cases, such as the Vale do Lobo case or the bankruptcy of the Banif bank in Madeira. He is a strong supporter of André Ventura. The same can be said of the pharmaceutical businessman, César do Paço, owner of Summit Nutritionals International, which financed CDS until 2019. This ex-consul of Portugal in Florida, in addition to financing Chega, placed in the party his man of confidence – José Lourenço – who, until January 2021, held the position of president of Chega’s Porto chapter.​

Like other European “populist” parties of the radical right, Chega’s militant base and leadership structure is an amalgam of groups. The ideologue and first vice-president of the party, Diogo Pacheco de Amorim, has a long experience in the Portuguese far right. He was part of fascist student movements that were to the right of the Estado Novo dictatorship. He was a member of the terrorist groups MDLP, where he was part of the “Political Bureau”, and the MIRN. He was Portugal’s representative in the French neo-fascist magazine Nouvelle École and translator of Alain de Benoist’s texts into Portuguese. He was a member of the CDS-PP. He is also a member of the traditional Catholic movement Comunhão e Libertação. Second Vice President Nuno Afonso, currently Chief of Staff to André Ventura in the Assembly of the Republic, has spent his entire career in the PSD, as has its President. The party leadership also includes a president of the police union, José Dias, a member of Opus Dei, Pedro Frazão, and the leader of Chega’s evangelical neo-pentecostal group, Lucinda Ribeiro, who is also active in the denialist groups of Covid-19.​

The party’s National Convention Bureau seems to have been the place chosen by the ultra-nationalist wing to feel represented. The president of this body, Luís Filipe Graça, was a member of several neo-Nazi groups, such as the New Social Order (NOS) or the National Opposition Mouvement (MON), but was also a leader of the National Renewal Party (PNR). Nelson Dias da Silva, a member of this organization and a member of the Chega study group, combines these functions with that of spokesperson for the neo-fascist organization Portuguese First (P1), which includes several well-known faces of the Portuguese neo-Nazi movement, such as João Martins, the assassin of the young black man Alcindo Monteiro.​

The party is a growing force in the security forces. The Zero Mouvement (an import of the American Blue Lives Matter movement) is strongly linked to Chega. In November 2019, it organized a demonstration in front of the Portuguese parliament, in collaboration with police union structures. André Ventura was enthusiastically welcomed by hundreds of police officers and was the only political leader invited to speak in front of the demonstrators.​

 

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2022 Portuguese legislative election - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Share of CHEGA (CH) by municipality

 

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An interview of Ventura by a nationalist Spanish paper:

Interview | Unapologetically Conservative: How Portugal's CHEGA! Party Rose to Power

CHEGA was founded in April 2019 as the new alternative to the traditional right in Portugal. After a slow beginning in the 2019 European elections, the party

elamerican.com

Unapologetically Conservative: How Portugal’s CHEGA! Party Rose To Power​

by Álvaro Peñas

08.16.22

CHEGA was founded in April 2019 as the new alternative to the traditional right in Portugal. After a slow beginning in the 2019 European elections, the party became the third-largest parliamentary force in Portugal in the 2022 elections with 7.15% of the vote and 12 MPs. The president of the party, André Ventura, kindly spoke with us about the identity of the party and its newfound success. The interview has been edited for clarity.

There has been some talk for some time of the “Iberian exception” due to the absence of patriotic parties in the Spanish and Portuguese parliaments, but VOX and CHEGA have broken this exception despite pressure from the media and the political class. What was the key that brought CHEGA into parliament?

The traditional parties of the Portuguese political spectrum stopped responding to the real problems of the Portuguese a long time ago. Instead, they prefer to concentrate on defending lobbies and agendas that end up hijacking the interests and will of ordinary Portuguese.

Faced with the system’s lack of response, CHEGA! appeared. A right-wing party, we are conservative in our ways, reformist, fiscally conservative in the economy, and we defend the homeland above all else. We are party that is not afraid to confront vested interests, that fights against subsidized dependency, that proposes faster and more effective justice, with harsher sentences and even life imprisonment for heinous crimes.

We are not afraid to take the side of the Security Forces, the military, magistrates, doctors, and teachers; we defend the rural world and farmers; we defend a school without ideology. We are a party that respects the family as the basic institution of society and that defends the inviolability of human life in all its stages and dimensions.

It is therefore not surprising that CHEGA! is trusted by almost 400,000 Portuguese. We are currently the third national political force and we are rising in the polls.

Many of CHEGA’s fiefdoms were formerly fiefdoms of the communist left—a left that was defeated by CHEGA in the last elections. How do you explain this transfer of votes?

The truth is that in the different elections in which we have participated there has been great growth in places where, traditionally, the left had an important presence.

This is mainly due to the fact that in these places there are problems of dependence on subsidies, as well as phenomena of criminality that in many cases are associated with certain groups that are not integrated into society and live outside the law, with the consequent feeling of insecurity among the population for which the traditional parties have no answer.

Unlike these parties, CHEGA! is not afraid to identify problems, even if they are politically incorrect, and this is appreciated by the people, as shown in the election results.

What are CHEGA’s main issues in the Portuguese parliament?

We have brought to Parliament measures that until now were considered taboo and which we want to be discussed, despite the fact that the President of the Assembly of the Republic continues to put obstacles in the way of their discussion. Parliament took office just over three months ago and CHEGA! has already seen three initiatives blocked, such as the proposal for life imprisonment for particularly vicious crimes, especially against children, the increase of the maximum sentence to 65 years, or even the end of parliamentary immunity.

However, other issues have been put on the table, such as increasing the risk allowance for the security forces, anti-corruption measures such as the “delação premiada” (rewarded denunciation), and increasing the penalties applicable to these crimes, and also the end of tax benefits for political parties.

CHEGA! will also present a constitutional revision in September that aims to touch what the system does not want to be touched, and which, among other changes, will address issues such as life imprisonment, the reduction of deputies and political office holders, and lifetime incompatibilities for ministers who head agencies and then, after leaving office, start working in them.

In Spain, VOX has reached an agreement to govern with the Popular Party in Castilla y León. Is something similar possible in Portugal with the center-right PSD?

CHEGA! is always available for a government solution on the right that is a real alternative to socialism. That is why we have already challenged, more than once, the PSD and the Liberal Initiative to talk in a big conference to create an alternative to the socialist space in Portugal, so that we can walk a common path, respecting our differences. The response of these parties is well known, and so far it has always been negative.

In any case, we will never give up affirming our principles and values in any government agreement we make, and we will always demand concrete changes that respond to the needs of the country and the Portuguese people, just as we will not give up in the case of the Autonomous Region of the Azores, whose government depends on CHEGA’s support since 2020. We will never be a crutch for any governmental solution.

In the case of the Azores, the conditions for such an agreement include key issues such as reducing the number of regional MPs, creating an anti-corruption office, and reducing the region’s very high level of dependence on subsidies. However, there are still many things missing and missing. If the promises are kept and the agreement is implemented, there is nothing to fear. If not, we will see what happens.

I saw your intervention in Viva 21 in Madrid. What is your relationship with VOX and what do you share with Santiago Abascal’s party?

CHEGA! shares many concerns with Vox and, although we belong to different political families — CHEGA in Identity and Democracy and Vox in European Conservatives and Reformists — in many cases we fight the same battles.

There have been several contacts between the two parties and between myself and Santiago Abascal, and in those contacts, we have had the opportunity to deepen our relationship. We can only win if we have common strategies for the global problems that affect not only Portugal and Spain, but also other countries in Europe and the West. In this sense, it is also important to have a common European strategy for both parties so that we can be heard more forcefully in the European institutions.

Moreover, in both countries we are governed by socialists, so we have a common adversary that has been destroying our countries and that we have to defeat as soon as possible.

Do you know the trade union Solidarity supported by VOX? Would a patriotic trade union be possible in Portugal?

I only know the union through some news from Spain that I have read. In any case, it seems to me a mistake to think that there are forms of associationism, such as trade unionism, that are exclusive to the left and forbidden to the right.

This error stems from the fact that most trade unions, as we know them in Portugal and Spain, are mostly associated with the left and in most cases are the main enemies of the workers through the measures they promote, subverting what they claim to be their main mission, which is to defend them.

But it does not have to be that way, any more than it was with the Polish trade union “Solidarity”, led by Lech Wałęsa, which played a decisive role in bringing down communism in Poland and the “iron curtain”.

In June, you were in Antwerp at the ID meeting, and shortly afterward you met with Claudiu Tarziu of the AUR party of Romania in Lisbon. How important are relations with other European parties for CHEGA?

The importance of Europe in Portugal’s international insertion strategy is enormous, considering that many of the national policies and those of the different member states are designed and influenced by the institutions of the European Union.

In this sense, it is essential to develop and deepen relations with European political parties that defend the same causes and fight the same battles as CHEGA!, drawing common strategies to strengthen the voice of these parties in the different European and international forums.

CHEGA! has shown its support for Ukraine in the face of the Russian invasion. Do you think the European response is being sufficient? What is CHEGA’s position on this issue?

CHEGA! believes that the Russian invasion of Ukraine deserves the most severe public and political condemnation, as well as severe economic sanctions, unlike far-left parties in Portugal and across Europe.

In fact, we join the various economic sanctions packages imposed by the European Union and by most countries in the world, and we believe that Europe must invest in its Armed Forces and stand firm and united in the face of a threat that is becoming more dangerous every day and whose intentions are increasingly unpredictable.

 

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