This October’s elections reflected the changed political atmosphere. On the one hand, the results were inconclusive, failing to produce a clear majority that could form a government. On the other hand, they decisively showed the fate of the sitting government, made up of the centrist Progressive Party (FSF) and the right-wing Independence Party (XD). In 2013, they had received a clear majority of votes — each winning nineteen parliamentary seats out of a total of sixty-three — despite their direct responsibility for a number of bank collapses in 2008.
Between 1991 and 2008, XD enacted a unrelenting series of ultra-neoliberal and right-wing policies that led to the financial crisis. The basis for this neoliberal turn, however, was laid in the eighties, when an earlier Progressive-Independence coalition government held power. [...]
The Panama Papers finally blew it out of power. The revelation that the prime minister held off-shore, tax-free accounts contradicted his persona as the representative of the protesting masses. On April 4, thirty thousand people rallied to demand his resignation and new general elections. Both demands were met. [...]
The Pirates’ rise in the polls can be attributed, to a large degree, to protest votes; the traditional left and right had lost all credibility, and this upstart party seemed like the only option.
But eight years of protests were also a decisive factor. The size of this movement cannot be overstated: Between 2008 and 2011, the police counted over 1,300 protest meetings of various sizes and shapes — close to one every day. The Pirates appeared as a direct, organized, and electoral representation of these protests, presaging a renewed social contract based on the enormous political activity after the collapse.
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