As the final results of yesterday’s elections are still being quantified – and as pundits point to a “new political cycle for the country” with a ruling coalition without an absolute majority – TVI24 is running with the news that a third of the next parliament “will be occupied by women”.
Of the 230 seats in Parliament, 76 are now taken up by female MPs.
The breakdown is as follows:
Portugal à Frente coalition – of the 104 elected, 33 are women;
PS – of the 85 elected, 27 are women;
Bloco Esquerda – of the 19 elected, six are women;
CDU – of the 17 elected, seven are women.
In Madeira, two out of the three PPD/ PSD MPs elected are women and in Azores, of the two MPs, one is a woman.
In total, this increases the number of women in parliament by 14 since 2011.
But in the Algarve, we are down one female MP, Elsa Cordeiro (PSD), as the region’s frustrations over the way the government has handled the issue of tolls on the A22 Via do Infante has seen the region once more return to Socialist control.
Only the areas of Albufeira, Loulé and São Brás remain “orange” on the map that shows a country otherwise bereft of “orange and blue” (the coalition colours) below Lisbon.
A new MP for the Algarve – a man – is João Vasconcelos, the hero of the anti-tolls campaign, who won his seat representing the Left Bloc.
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