Portugal’s Socialists Win Absolute Majority

Portugal’s opposition Socialists scored their biggest
electoral win, giving Prime Minister-elect Jose Socrates an absolute
parliamentary majority to implement plans to kick-start growth in
Western Europe’s poorest country.

The Socialists won 120 of the 230 seats in parliament in a general
election on Sunday, the first time any party has held an outright
majority for a decade, and their victory was endorsed by a large voter
turnout.

Socrates, who ousted center-right Prime Minister Pedro Santana Lopes,
said he wanted Portugal’s fourth government in three years to restore
confidence to the country, where unemployment hit a seven-year high of
7.1 percent last year.

"The Socialist Party has a majority to govern Portugal. This is not a
majority of protest. It is a way to build a new future for Portugal,"
Socrates, 47, told cheering supporters after the Iberian nation’s
clear-cut swing to the left.

Cars with Socialist supporters waving flags raced up and down Lisbon’s
palm tree lined Liberty Avenue to celebrate the party’s largest
election win since a revolution overthrew a rightist dictatorship in
1974 and established democracy.

Socrates faces challenges in boosting an economy still struggling
after a recession and closing a stubborn budget deficit that breached
euro currency zone limits in 2001, but many analysts saw his strong
mandate as cause for optimism.

"GOOD FOR MARKETS"

"The result will be good for the markets," said fund manager Pedro
Correia da Silva.

"I was scared that the election results would be neither fish nor
fowl. But the government that comes out of these elections has now all
the conditions to do its work, if it has good policies and (chooses)
good politicians."

President Jorge Sampaio dissolved parliament early in December, citing
lack of confidence in Santana Lopes’s coalition government after a
bout of instability.

Santana Lopes was in power for only seven months. The former Lisbon
mayor replaced Jose Manuel Barroso as prime minister in July when the
latter left to become European Commission president.

Portugal’s Lusa news agency, quoting preliminary results from the
National Elections Commission, said the Socialists had won 120 seats
in the 230-member parliament and the Social Democrats 72.

The Communists won 14 seats, the rightist Popular Party, the Social
Democrats’ coalition partner, had 12, and the Left Bloc eight seats.
The results do not include four deputies to be elected by Portuguese
living abroad.

Sampaio will meet party leaders in the next few days to discuss the
formation of a new government and Socrates is likely take office in
mid-March.

Socrates has vowed to boost economic growth to three percent a year
through technological investment. The central bank has forecast growth
this year at 1.6 percent, below the European Union average for the
fifth year in a row.

He has also said he would cut public spending, now nearing half of
gross domestic product, by reducing the public work force through
attrition. Reuters