The death of democracy in Portugal?

[CaptainQuintero]

The election results are in and the left leaning anti-austerity party has gained an absolute majority. However the president has denied the party power and instead given government to the party who finished second with 31% of the vote on the grounds of national interest.

Just how dangerous is this precedent?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/11949701/AEP-Eurozone-crosses-Rubicon-as-Portugals-anti-euro-Left-banned-from-power.html

[melies]

Well sometimes you have to kill democracy in order to be more Democratic... Wait, that doesn't make sense. Long live the king then!

or in Stalin words...

I think I made things clearer..

[TheMonk]

It's a dangerous precedent indeed, and if indeed the Left-wing comes together, they can issue a vote of no confidence on the government, and unapprove next year's budget... and if that's the case, we're gonna see new elections in about 6 months.

[sengjc]

Wow...he can do that? This guy must be a somebody.

[CaptainQuintero]

It's a dangerous precedent indeed, and if indeed the Left-wing comes together, they can issue a vote of no confidence on the government, and unapprove next year's budget... and if that's the case, we're gonna see new elections in about 6 months.

That's what I thought, but they have an absolute majority already, so the same would surely happen again?

It's shocking, who wouldn't be surprised if this ended up with fire and pitchforks what other option do people have if democracy utterly fails like it has here.

Reading this again those morning just leaves me baffled.

[mgravito]

This whole situation is a shame. The economy had started to rebound a little after some of the previous government's austerity measures, but the constitution is the constitution.

The leftist coalition will end up passing a vote of no confidence anyway. Ironically in President Silva's attempt to not destabilize the economy he does so anyway.