IN PORTUGUESE, “swallowing a toad” means having to accept something that is deeply unpleasant. In 1986, when the Communist party (PCP) advised its voters to support Mário Soares, a Socialist, as the lesser of two evils in a presidential race, one militant said famously on television that she would “swallow the toad of voting for him, but I’ll have to take fruit salts afterwards”.
Aníbal Cavaco Silva, Portugal’s conservative president, may have no alternative in the coming weeks but to swallow what for him will be an equally unpalatable amphibian. He will probably have to swear in a Socialist party (PS) government dependent for its support in parliament on the hard-line PCP and the Left Bloc (BE), a radical group similar in inspiration to Greece’s Syriza.
This is not the way things were supposed things to go. In the October 4th election, the centre-right coalition headed by Pedro Passos Coelho, the prime minister, won the most votes. Mr Coelho had steered the country through a painful bail-out between 2011-2014, and the election was hailed as proof that pro-austerity governments could survive in southern Europe. But they...Continue reading
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