Portuguese elections. Socratic dialogue

A landslide for the left, but plenty of economic problems loom ahead

IT SHOULD have been a night to celebrate. Portugal's centre-left Socialists won a historic victory in the election on February 20th. For the first time since the overthrow of the dictatorship in 1974, the party took more than half the seats in parliament. But even as the win became a landslide, Lisbon stayed strangely quiet.

José Scrates, the Socialists' new leader, tried to instil some passion by shouting “We did it! We did it!” in his victory speech. Yet the turnout (65%), the highest in ten years, and the big swing to the left were less a vote of confidence in the Socialists than a rejection of the centre-right government. Nobody did more for the left than Pedro Santana Lopes, the former mayor of Lisbon who took over as prime minister last July, when José Manuel Barroso stepped down to become European Commission president.

His government proved so erratic, blunder-prone and media-obsessed that, after only four months, Jorge Sampaio, Portugal's Socialist president, took the unusual step of dissolving parliament and calling elections a year early. His decision has been vindicated by a result that should ensure four years of stable government. Some of the blame should go to Mr Barroso. His centre-right Social Democrats were torn apart by his choice of successor, helping to push them towards their biggest-ever defeat. Not only did the Socialists win an absolute majority, with 45% of the vote, but the left swept up 60%, with hardline Communists and a group of former Trotskyites and Maoists winning close to 15% among them. “Barroso is not innocent in this crisis,” said Angelo Correia, a top Social Democrat. “He fled the country for a position that is highly prestigious for Portugal, but he left a mess behind.”

The muted response to the victory also reflects the serious tasks facing Mr Scrates. Unemployment is at a six-year high of 7.1%, and the economy is just emerging from the worst recession in Europe. Productivity is less than two-thirds of the EU average and a bloated public sector soaks up the equivalent of 15% of GDP in wages. Inspired by what he calls “Nordic social democracy”, Mr Scrates wants to copy the success of Finland and Ireland. By doubling state investment in research, paying for science and management graduates to work in companies and more teaching of English in primary schools, he promises a “technological shock” to create up to 150,000 jobs in four years.

He also wants spending on this plan to be exempt from the euro-area's stability-pact limits on the budget deficit, arguing that the pact should allow such “healthy investment”. Under an earlier Socialist government, in which Mr Scrates served as environment minister, uncontrolled spending led to the first official breach of the pact, ushering in two years of austerity under Mr Barroso. Economists hope that the vagueness of Mr Scrates's programme will let him this time make spending cuts to offset his spending promises, even if he did not spell this out to voters.