LISBON: Portugal’s new centre-right Prime Minister Luis Montenegro will unveil his cabinet later Thursday after his coalition barely managed to emerge top in a badly fractured parliament.
The 51-year-old lawyer was last week asked to form a government after the March 10 elections which resulted in a hung parliament.
He will late Thursday send his list of cabinet ministers to President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, AFP reported.
Democratic Alliance, a coalition anchored by Montenegro’s centre-right Social Democrat Party (PSD) that includes two smaller conservative parties, secured 28.8% of the vote and won 80 seats in the 230-seat parliament.
The Socialist Party of outgoing Prime Minister Antonio Costa won 28% of the ballot and 78 seats.
Montenegro’s minority government should assume power next Tuesday, bringing an end to 8 years of Socialist rule.
Portfolio in Portugal’s New Government
Nuno Melo, the president of CDS-PP, one of the small parties in Montenegro’s coalition, will be defence minister, according to local media.
There is speculation that Ana Paula Martins, a former chief of a Lisbon University hospital, could be named health minister.
Other parties in the coalition, such as Iniciativa Liberal which secured has 8 seats, are not expected to be included in the new cabinet.
The far-right party Chega (“Enough” in Portuguese) soared to fifty deputies from twelve in the previous assembly, but Montenegro has refused to pass any accords with the far right.
The badly fragmented parliament could not elect a speaker for days.
Finally, the Socialists and the PSD agreed to share the role, with the PSD’s Jose Pedro Aguiar-Branco holding the position until September 2026 before passing it to a Socialist.
The new government faces calmer seas on the economic and financial front, inheriting a budget surplus of 1.2% of gross domestic product, only the second such annual surplus since the country returned to democracy after a 1974 coup.
