The man with the bazooka is re-elected. Portugal’s socialist prime minister achieved an election result this Sunday that many other social democrats can only dream of: António Costa won an absolute majority for his Partido Socialista. It is undisputed that Costa may have helped his bazooka.
The martial language image, which does not go at all with the calm, mostly friendly smiling Costa, comes from spring 2020. It was shortly after the first wave of the corona pandemic, from which Portugal compared to what was to come, comparatively had come out unscathed; Portugal was waiting for the planned reconstruction program from Brussels. When the domestic pressure on him increased and he was urged to present a contingency plan, Costa said at the time: It all depends on what weapons the EU provides Portugal; whether to send him a slingshot or a bazooka.
Portugal will receive 13.9 billion euros in aid from the EU fund and another 2.7 billion in loans
Well, there came the bazooka. Portugal will receive 13.9 billion euros in aid from the EU fund and another 2.7 billion in loans. The metaphor of the “European bazooka” stuck with Costa, and it also accompanied him through the election campaign. And this Sunday, the Portuguese gave the 60-year-old the order to fire off the EU billions, to stay in the picture.
During the election campaign, Costa advertised that he had already drawn up a budget for the current year. The left bloc and the communists had refused him their consent to this in the fall. Since 2015, Costa has led a minority socialist government that has been tolerated by the two smaller left-wing parties. The Portuguese called the left-wing experiment “rattletrap,” half affectionately, half mockingly.
Left bloc and communists didn’t like their stubbornness in enforcing higher social spending. Her election results show that many of her voters have switched to Costa, the man of the centre. Costa speaks of a “victory of humility”. But it is above all a victory for pragmatism.
Costa shares the reputation of being a realist with Olaf Scholz. Scholz had already said in December that he was “absolutely confident” that Costa would win the election at the end of January. Portugal’s polling institutes saw things differently up to the election date. The surprise is all the greater now, Scholz congratulated Costa on Twitter and called him a “true advocate of social justice”. Scholz Costa was one of his role models in the past. During a visit to Lisbon last year, the then finance minister joked that he could learn from António Costa “how to get the triple: mayor of a big city, minister in the cabinet – and then the head of government.”
In fact, the careers of the two social democrats are similar, only the order is not correct: Costa was once Minister of Justice under Prime Minister António Guterres, now UN Secretary General. Five years later, the lawyer became mayor of Lisbon, the city of his birth. António Costa is the son of the poet Orlando da Costa, who was persecuted by the Salazar dictatorship because of his communist beliefs. The roots of the family go back to the Indian Goa, which was a Portuguese colony until 1961.
Costa, who has been married to the now retired kindergarten teacher Fernanda Tadeu for 35 years and has two children with her, is considered a reserved man and experienced crisis manager in Portugal. He had succeeded in emancipating the small country on the Atlantic coast from the austerity measures of the EU troika and at the same time stabilizing the economy. The Portuguese also apparently trust him to deal with the new crisis arising from the pandemic. And just in case he has his bazooka at hand.