Portugal's opposition Socialist and left-of-centre parties today pledged to topple the Passos Coelho minority government in a ‘no confidence’ motion.
The Socialist Party leader, Antonio Costa said that Portugal’s President Cavaco Silva had stirred up "an unnecessary political crisis" by last night naming Pedro Passos Coelho as the next prime minister.
The move, if successful, will derail the prime minister’s mission to have his government programme voted through in 10 days time and will increase the uncertainty and paralysis now infecting Portugal’s politics.
The Socialists and left wing parties control the majority of seats in parliament and can block all government motions including the 2016 State Budget proposal which already is late in being submitted to the EC, leaving the public purse open to fines.
The political impasse is eating away at the government's claim that all is well, austerity is working and we all must stick to the harsh fiscal regime that has seen unprecedented tax rises alongside unsuccessful reductions in public spending, the result of which has been a three year recession.
According to a report in Reuters, 'Portugal's bond market investors have been calm, preferring to focus on the likelihood of more quantitative easing by the European CentralBank. Benchmark 10-year bond yields were unchanged at 2.36% on Friday.'
The first sign of parliamentary fun and games was today’s election of a socialist ‘speaker of the house,’ a move pushed through by the opposition majority. Eduardo Ferro Rodrigues was elected with 120 votes in the 230-seat house which defeated the government’s preferred Social Democrat candidate.
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