PREVIEW: Elections arouse little interest in austerity-hit Portugal

By Sinikka Tarvainen Jan 20, 2011, 15:21 GMT

Lisbon/Madrid - Portuguese voters disillusioned with politics have shown little interest in Sunday's presidential elections, which pit outgoing President Anibal Cavaco Silva against leftist candidate Manuel Alegre.

Portugal's election campaign has been 'without any interest, without any of the candidates presenting even a single innovating idea,' the daily Diario de Noticias complained.

Opinions polls show that the Portuguese are most worried about the country's economic problems, which the new president - largely a figurehead - will have little power to solve.

Six candidates are in the fray and Cavaco Silva, a 71-year-old conservative former prime minister, is expected to win in the first round - as he did in 2006.

A poll published Wednesday said Cavaco Silva would take 61.5 per cent of the vote against 15 per cent for Alegre, 74, a poet who fought Portugal's 1926-74 corporatist dictatorship and colonialism in Africa, and later embarked on a decades-long parliamentary career.

Cavaco Silva belongs to the main opposition conservative Social Democratic Party (PSD), while Alegre has the backing of Prime Minister Jose Socrates' Socialists and of the more radical Left Bloc.

The candidate who came third in Wednesday's poll was Fernando Nobre, who is politically independent.

The elections are taking place against the backdrop of international concern over the state of Portugal's economy, which suffers from weak growth and high debt levels.

Concern persists that Western Europe's poorest country might follow Greece and Ireland in needing a bailout from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), even if market pressure on Portugal has eased recently.

Cavaco Silva initially tried to rally the country's political forces behind the Socialist government's tough austerity measures in an attempt to trim the budget deficit from about 7 per cent in 2010 to 4.6 per cent this year.

Yet as the campaigning gathered pace, the president blamed an eventual IMF intervention on the government, while Alegre linked his opponent with a reactionary right trying to 'force the entry of the IMF into Portugal.'

Several Portuguese have negative memories of the IMF, which carried out programmes in the country in 1977 and 1983, cutting social benefits.

Yet many Portuguese have also been hard hit by Socrates' austerity measures, which have slashed their spending power and which are seen as penalizing the poor and middle classes rather than the rich.

Politicians 'ask us to tighten our belts while they continue earning millions,' said Manuel Garnecho, who is retired.

About 80 per cent of the Portuguese see the country's 10-per-cent unemployment rate as its main problem, and 46 per cent feel that economic and social conditions have deteriorated since the 1974 leftist Carnation Revolution that ended the dictatorship, according to a recent poll.

Alegre - who stresses his political independence despite his membership in Socrates' Socialist Party - has tried to tap into that discontent, while Cavaco Silva presents himself as representing stability and continuity.

The president, who is an economist, promised to use all his powers to steer economic policy in 'the right direction.'

Allegations that Cavaco Silva pocketed undue capital gains when selling shares of a holding company of the troubled BPN bank in 2003 appear to have done little to dent his credibility.

Yet, even if Cavaco Silva wins the elections as expected, a low turnout could reduce his already slim margin of manoeuvre, analysts said.

Cavaco Silva might also face a difficult coexistence with the Socrates government, which has accused him of not having been sufficiently neutral during his first term.