Portugal Clash with Merkel Likely, Says Left Coalition Lawmaker

Portugal's third largest party, the Left Bloc, or BE — which won 19 seats and 10 percent of the popular vote in October’s election — was thrust into the international limelight after it agreed to enter into a tripartite pact with the Socialist Party and the communist PCP to topple Prime Minister Pedro Passos, who was re-elected with a slim margin.

teleSUR interviewed one of BE lawmakers who won a seat in the election, Jorge Costa, who said the Socialist Party, or PS, which will form the government with support from the BE and PCP if President Anibal Cavaco Silva allows it, has challenging times ahead.

Jorge Costa can be seen behind Socialist Party leader Antonio Costa (3rdR) and Left Bloc party leader Catarina Martins (L) as they sign a document to form a government in Lisbon, Portugal, Nov. 10, 2015. | Photo: EFE

“Any left-wing government will possibly have to have a confrontation with Angela Merkel and the European Union,” Costa said on teleSUR’s From the South, responding to a question regarding parallels with Greece’s Syriza party and its wrangling with the EU, in which German Chancellor Merkel played an instrumental role.

The kind of break with austerity envisaged by the new coalition “has to face Europe and the institutions,” Costa said, referring to the International Monetary Fund and European Central Bank, which have imposed similarly harsh austerity measures on Portugal as in Greece.

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No big political change, like a Portuguese axing of austerity policies, “can be accepted by the neoliberal institutions in the European Union nowadays,” he expanded.

“Any solution for the impoverishment of the people for a society such as the Portuguese, which is experiencing big impoverishment and large-scale immigration from young people,” Costa explained, will inevitably lead to clashes with the EU.

Regarding the PS and its ability to lead the country and how far it will distance itself from austerity policies, Costa, whose Marxist BE party is to the left of the PS, said, “The Socialist Party has to make big decisions and it has a large history of wrong decisions (on EU austerity measures).”

Costa clarified that if the president allows it, the PS will be the ruling party, but that the support of the BE and PCP means it will have a working majority to enact change.

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WATCH: Left Bloc acitivist Catarina Principe interviewed by Tariq Ali on teleSUR’s The World Today