For the first time in 20 years PS Socialists have lost their ‘absolute majority’ in the autonomous region of the Azores.
Legislative elections which took place last Sunday (October 25) saw the party scrape through with 39.1% of the votes, losing five parliamentary mandates in the process.
Centre-right PSD is the party that made the most in terms of ‘gains’, increasing its number of MPs in the regional parliament from 19 to 21, while Chega, PAN and Iniciativa Liberal all secured at least one MP for the first time.
Casualties were the PCP communists, which lost their only MP, as well as CDS-PP (which lost one of their four representatives on the islands).
Perhaps worse was the fact that even with fine weather, and time on their hands, the majority of Azoreans couldn’t be bothered to cast their votes at all. Abstention was around 54%, say reports, which nonetheless came in better than in the last elections (in 2016) when over 59% of the archipelago failed to exercise its right to vote.
Sunday’s result means that PS regional president Vasco Cordeiro wins a third and final term in office, but will now have “quite a task ahead of him” (according to a tweet by PS president Carlos César) to form a government.
Cordeiro faces ‘negotiating with six other parties now within the Azorean parliament.
