Portuguese PM Luis Montenegro lost a vote of confidence yesterday amid a scandal over potential conflicts of interest related to a consultancy owned by his family. The collapse of Montenegro’s minority government means Portugal is set to hold its third snap election since the start of 2022. (AP)
Our Take
The fall of the government less than a year after it formed marks the second time in recent years that a corruption-related scandal has undone the Portuguese government. In late 2023, Socialist PM Antonio Costa resigned after nearly a decade in the role when a member of his staff was investigated for corruption. That alone represented the biggest political crisis the country had seen in decades.
Now, Portugal is almost certainly heading back to the polls just over a year later, reflecting an unusual amount of political instability for the country. To some extent, however, the minority government led by Montenegro’s center-right Democratic Alliance, or AD, was inherently fragile from the moment it was formed. Only when Montenegro managed to get a budget approved in November did the government show potential durability, and even that was only due to abstentions from the Socialist Party, which said it did so for the sake of stability.
