being in politics is a bit like gambling you've just got to play the hand you get and sometimes you win and sometimes you lose and for the portuguese left block and communist they lost and quite a lot actually after a tumultuous post-christmas election season on sunday portugal headed the polls to resolve a political crisis a crisis resolved emphatically with antonio costa's socialists winning an absolute majority of seats only for the second time in the party's history and only for a sixth time since portugal became a democracy but looking just at the socialists paints a rosier picture for them than otherwise applies so let's take a look at what actually happened and why the left and communists are probably regretting their actions by the way this video is brought to you by the tldr store support the channel and grab some countries with choose pin badges including portugal and every other eu country and you can get NUMBER_TOKEN off any badges you order if you use code portuguese the link is in the description to properly explain this election we need to set the scene and explain the political crisis the election was trying to fix and to do that we need to set the scene when it comes to the portuguese parliament the assembly of the republic the assembly consists of NUMBER_TOKEN seats and prior to the election antonio costa's socialists known as ps held NUMBER_TOKEN seats not enough for a working majority that ultimately meant that they had to form a de facto coalition known in the country as a jeringosa best translated as rickety bridge or bodge job this tricky coalition was with the left block be who held NUMBER_TOKEN seats and the communists pcp who held NUMBER_TOKEN seats together the coalition held a nice majority of NUMBER_TOKEN seats and worked pretty well until the sticky issue of the budget arose toward the tail end of october last year when antonio costa's government tried to put forward and pass a budget the portuguese communist party and left block withdrew their implied support for the budget with the communists arguing that portugal does not just need any budget it needs a response to the problems in society today that are piling up anyway that presented costa with a problem and a big one at that passing a budget is arguably one of the most important things a government can do if you don't have the money allocated for existing spending commitments the national health service the police border officials and so on and so forth let alone new commitments then you're going to struggle to govern and while the portuguese constitution does not explicitly make a budget vote a vote of confidence in the government this is where portugal's semi-presidentialism steps in that's because the portuguese president announced that my position is simple either there is a budget or there will be dissolution if there's no budget i'll advance the process to dissolve parliament cue a panicked rush to try and find consensus on the budget but in the end negotiations failed marking the first time in portugal's democratic history that a budget has been rejected by the assembly the president then went through his simple position formally dissolving parliament after consulting with the major parties however even before an election was formally on the cards costa made clear that he wouldn't
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