Portugal’s minority government takes office, faces fragmented parliament

With just 80 seats in 230-seat parliament, the government will need the support of the opposition to pass legislation.

Portugal’s new centre-right minority government led by Prime Minister Luis Montenegro has been sworn in amid uncertainty about its long-term viability as it faces a highly fragmented parliament.

The Democratic Alliance (AD) coalition won the March 10 election by a slim margin over the outgoing Socialist Party (PS).

Montenegro said on Tuesday that the government was determined to govern until the end of its four-and-a-half-year mandate and promised to act with “humility, patriotic spirit and capacity for dialogue”, while demanding the same from the opposition.

“The [expected] investiture in parliament [next week] can only mean the opposition will respect the principle of letting us work and execute the government’s programme,” he said.

With just 80 seats in the 230-seat legislature, the AD will need the support of either the far-right Chega party, which quadrupled its parliamentary representation to 50 members of parliament, or the centre-left PS, which secured 78 seats, to pass legislation.