Despite a three-hour long meeting today at the PSD headquarters in Lisbon, Portugal is no closer to a consensus over the shape of the next government.
Socialist leader António Costa has been the first to speak after the meeting that saw the Portugal à Frente coalition across the table from the country’s second most voted party.
As has become clear since Sunday’s vote, the coalition has to join forces with another ‘power’, or faces a bid by the Socialists to harness the support of other left-wing parties.
Costa told Económico website today that the difference between this morning’s meeting with the PSD/CDS-PP and yesterday’s talks with the PCP communists is that they were “highly inconclusive”.
When Costa met PCP leader Jerónimo de Sousa, the pair were able to “seriously discuss concrete proposals”, he told journalists. But today’s meeting showed that the PSD “had no proposal” at all.
The three hours of discussions had “not corresponded to expectations”, he added, saying his next meetings will be with the Green Party (Os Verdes) later on today, the Left Bloc (BE) and PAN (the People Animal Nature party, that elected one MP to parliament) on Monday, with the hope that a new meeting with the coalition on Tuesday would bring the proposal the PS is “waiting for”.
