Portugal held its presidential elections on Sunday. Ten men and one woman were running for the top post. Exit polls have named the far-right Shega party as the runner-up in the first round.
\nPolling stations have closed in Portugal. The current presidential campaign featured a record number of candidates \u2013 11.
\nShortly after the official end of voting, Europe Elects reported that Ant\u00f3nio Jos\u00e9 Seguro of the center-left Socialist Party had received the most votes in the first round \u2013 just over 30 percent. According to preliminary results, he thus overtook the front-runner, Andr\u00e9 Ventura, leader of the far-right Shega party. (Last year, Shega became the second-largest party in the Portuguese parliament, and Ventura ran on anti-immigrant slogans, among other things \u2013 editor’s note.)
\nJo\u00e3o Cotrim de Figueiredo of the Liberal Initiative party took third place in the first round, while retired Rear Admiral Henrique Gouveia e Melo, who ran as an independent candidate (he was recognized for his rapid and effective vaccination efforts during the coronavirus pandemic \u2013 ed.) came in fourth. In Portugal, the president is elected by direct popular vote, and to win in the first round, a candidate must receive more than 50 percent of the vote. This situation was considered unlikely by most observers, given the number of candidates. Initial results confirm that a runoff will take place on February 8, where the two candidates with the most voter support will face off. The last time this happened was in 1986.
\nAlmost 11 million people in Portugal are eligible to vote. The winner will replace the incumbent president, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, who has served the constitutionally permitted two five-year terms.
\nThe presidency in Portugal is largely representative, but the head of state is vested with key powers such as the right to dissolve parliament, veto laws, and call early elections.
\nThe new president will have to work in an environment of prolonged political instability: the country has already held three parliamentary elections in the past three years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Portugal held its presidential elections on Sunday. Ten men and one woman were running for the top post. Exit polls have named the far-right Shega party as the runner-up in the first round. Polling stations have closed in Portugal. The current presidential campaign featured a record number of candidates \u2013 11. Shortly after the official […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":157158,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10916],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zamanturkmenistan.com.tm\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157308"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zamanturkmenistan.com.tm\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zamanturkmenistan.com.tm\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zamanturkmenistan.com.tm\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zamanturkmenistan.com.tm\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=157308"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/zamanturkmenistan.com.tm\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157308\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":157309,"href":"https:\/\/zamanturkmenistan.com.tm\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157308\/revisions\/157309"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zamanturkmenistan.com.tm\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/157158"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zamanturkmenistan.com.tm\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=157308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zamanturkmenistan.com.tm\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=157308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zamanturkmenistan.com.tm\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=157308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}