Lusa Agency, Presidential Interview 2021
There was no champagne among the elected representatives of the National Rally for the victory of the Portuguese National Party Chiga, on Sunday 10 March, but messages of victory: “The Portuguese defend their identity and prosperity and sweep away the corrupt socialists.”Jordan Bardella releases on X on March 11. “In two years, Chiga It rose from 7% to almost 20%, and today it embodies the political power of the future in Portugal“, applauds Marine Le Pen. Congratulations to our friend Andre Ventura on this great result. We look forward to seeing you on June 9 to build the European Alliance of Nations together..
A joy that does not reach Clement Beaune, who vomits his hatred on the same network as X, nor does it reach Manon Aubry from France. For her, Sunday's election looks like a demolition party for the left's palace of myths. “Fifty years after the Carnation Revolution, it is a sad day for Portugal, which is witnessing the advance of the far-right Chiga party, which has quadrupled its seats.”.
Shiga (enough or enough in Portuguese), the party of Andre Ventura, 41, and Pedro Pinto, the head of the list who welcomed “Historic night”It came in third place in the poll with 19% of the votes, behind the center-right Democratic Alliance Party and behind the Socialist Party led by Pedro Nuno Sanchez, which has been in power since 2015. It is an irresistible boom.
Charismatic personality
Chiga was founded in 2019, less than five years ago, and subsequently received 1.3% of the vote. Two years later, in 2021, he finished third in the presidential election with 11.9% of the vote and won among the government parties. As he approaches 20%, Chiga should triple or quadruple his number of elected representatives in parliament: Ventura and Pinto today have twelve seats in the 230-seat chamber, and should lead between 40 and 50 elected representatives.
Andre Ventura, a former tax inspector with a law degree, was born not into gilding palaces, but into middle-class Lisbon. Journalist inside Figaro Portuguese (Correiro da Manhá(, the most widely read newspaper. This charismatic figure also exercised his talents as a sports journalist before joining the centre-right Social Democratic Party, which he left to lead the raid. But this success would not bring Chiga to power immediately: the party had found a door It is closed among the conservatives who reject any alliance at the present time, and the composition of the next government, which depends on alliances, is not yet known.
Chiga's performance was not surprising either in Portugal or in France, where the National Front expected it to be a new sign of the rise of nationalist parties in Europe. And for good reason, the Portuguese in Chiga are very close to Marine Le Pen's party. “They, like us, support a Europe of nations“, explains the head of the French National Front delegation to the European Parliament, Jean-Paul Jarreau, who traveled to Portugal last year with Jordan Bardella to participate in the party's conference. Andre Ventura has long looked up to Marine Le Pen.Follows Jean-Paul Jarreau. They are very close to us, including on a personal level. Chiga executives and voters see what's happening to us: they don't want this to happen to them..
Purchasing power and corruption.
The largest diaspora in this country of ten million lives in France, and French is the second language spoken in the land of Magellan. The Portuguese turn their eyes to France. “They experience in France what the French experience is, and they talk about it when they return to their country.”“, explains Joanna Morell, Regional Advisor to the Royal Navy and delegate of the French people abroad in Portugal and Spain in particular. Added to this “French model”, which has become a hostile model in various parts of the world, are the results of the dramatic socialist management of the low-income population: the minimum wage In Portugal it does not reach € 650. During his election campaign, Chiga favored the topics of purchasing power, corruption of the Socialist Party in power, excessive taxes, the state of the health system, and immigration.
Three months before the European elections, the vote could not have come at a better time for all the nationalist and anti-European von der Leyen-style parties on the Old Continent. Crossing the threshold to reach effective power remains a real challenge coupled with another, which is the unity of these emerging or older national parties tomorrow in Strasbourg, against the elected representatives of the center-right and center-left. Meanwhile, the wave of disengagement affecting Europeans in all European countries promises some stressful electoral evenings for those who have chosen to crush nations.
