The figures vary: between 350,000 to 400,000, sometimes even 700,000. These are the estimates of the number of people confined due to Covid at the end of January in Portugal. Whether they point to the top or the bottom of the range, these figures will weigh in on the results of the snap general elections on 30th January next.
→ ANALYSIS. Portugal tightens the screw against the Omicron variant
They pose a real fundamental problem: how to combat abstention, traditionally among the strongest in Europe – 51.43% in the 2019 legislative elections and nearly 70% in the European elections – while avoiding too much mixing of the population between people infected and the others? Clearly, how to respect the democratic standards of the right to vote and those, binding, health measures? The puzzle, political and democratic, has still not been resolved as the electoral campaign began on Sunday 16 January.
An early vote to defuse the abstention bomb
The answers are not satisfactory for anyone, even less for the outgoing government, which is groping in the face of an unprecedented situation. The successive solutions envisaged have, for the most part, come up against the Constitution, which strictly frames the electoral process. Or they presuppose legislative intervention.
But then we touch on the fundamental question: there is no longer a National Assembly since President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa dissolved it, at the beginning of November, after the rejection of the finance bill submitted by the socialist government. , minority in the Assembly. Impossible, therefore, to legislate. By choosing, last fall, the date of January 30 for early legislative elections, the Portuguese president was far from suspecting the power of contagion of a variant whose existence was not even known at the time.
Four times more polling stations
As with the January 2020 presidential election, when the Covid wave at the time deeply affected the national health system, an early vote will be possible on Sunday January 23 (provided you register in advance). Additional time is granted to those who test positive, but they will only be able to vote physically with a negative test carried out no later than the day before the poll.
For this election, the town halls will open 2,600 polling stations, four times more than for the presidential election of 2021. Among the other solutions considered, the shortening of the confinement time for infected people. For the moment, it is only granted to asymptomatic or high-risk contact cases (7 days against 10).
Elections under the sign of bipolarization
In the latest polls, the Socialist Party of Prime Minister Antonio Costa is leading the voting intentions with 38.1%, ahead of the Social Democratic Party (republican right) of Rui Rio, credited with 28.5% of the vote. The outgoing Prime Minister is acclaimed as the best head of government (49% against 28% for his challenger). But, less than two weeks before the election, the PS is still far from an absolute majority (achieved with 41% of the vote). The absence in the ballot boxes of 300,000 ballot papers (or more) will make all the difference for the legitimacy to govern of Antonio Costa’s successor.
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