The president of Portugal appoints Luís Montenegro as prime minister

The inauguration of the head of the Portuguese Government will be held on April 2

The president of Portugal, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, announced this Thursday morning that he has appointed Luís Montenegro, candidate of the conservative Democratic Alliance (AD) and leader of the Social Democratic Party (PSD), as prime minister of the country, after having won the March 10 elections.

Rebelo de Sousa has made the decision after having completed the hearings with the political parties and coalitions that ran for the legislative elections and after the general secretary of the Socialist Party, Pedro Nuno, recognized that he would be the leader of the opposition, according to reads a statement from the Portuguese Presidency.

This same Wednesday, the head of state received at the Belén Palace an AD delegation made up of representatives of the PSD and the Democratic and Social Center-Popular Party (CDS-PP), who presented him with a composition of the future government and who It will be made public in a week, on March 28.

After the appointment, Montenegro has announced that it has agreed with Rebelo de Sousa that the inauguration of the head of Government will take place on April 2, according to an announcement made by the conservative from the Presidential Palace and reported by the Lusa news agency.

The outgoing Prime Minister, António Costa, has congratulated Montenegro on his appointment and has conveyed his "best wishes for success in governance, for the good of Portugal and the Portuguese." "Naturally, the Government will guarantee the best transition collaboration between portfolios and the installation of the XXIV constitutional Government," he indicated through his profile on the social network X.

The president's announcement took place shortly before the final results of the foreign vote were known. Democratic Alliance has obtained 80 seats - after the sum of the votes obtained in Madeira where said coalition participated without the Popular Monarchist Party (PPM) - compared to 77 for the socialists and 50 for the far-right Chega, which has achieved support unprecedented quadrupling of its deputies.

None of the parties has achieved the absolute majority granted by the 116 deputies of the 230 that make up the Assembly, so Montenegro will have a minority government in which it remains up in the air for the moment if the Liberal Initiative formation (which has with eight seats) will have a presence in the Council of Ministers.

Chega has shown his willingness to be part of the cabinet, its leader, André Ventura, has pressed stating that "the vast majority cannot be wasted" due to "ego or arrogance", in a clear response to the silence of the PSD leader and the possible continuation of his strategy against any agreement with the extreme right.

"Those who, insisting on their ego or arrogance, waste (a very large parliamentary majority) looking the other way or ignoring the vote of almost 1.2 million Portuguese, will be the ones who will cause all the instability that the country may experience" , declared before regretting that it has not been possible to "obtain any governance agreement."

The early elections were marked by the unexpected resignation of the Prime Minister, António Costa, in November 2023 due to a corruption case that he was wrongly accused of and which marked the end of an absolute socialist majority that has not been possible to revalidate in these elections.