International Viewpoint - online socialist magazine

Deadly fires in Portugal: the eucalyptus business and European austerity stand accused

João Camargo — 2017-07-15T07:31:59Z

After the serious fire in PedrógÃ£o Grande, which caused 64 deaths on the weekend of 17-18 June in Portugal, the population is trying to understand what happened. For JoÃ£o Camargo, a climate change specialist in Lisbon, we must put a stop to policies that have led to austerity and to the dismantling and liberalization of public forest.

- IV510 - July 2017 / Portugal, Ecology and the Environment

Presidential Elections : Victory for the media-austerity candidate

João Camargo — 2016-01-26T07:36:10Z

This week's presidential election represented a defeat for the left, as Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, TV's most known commentator for the past ten years in the country, was elected President of the Republic. The Socialist Party, divided in two faction candidates (pro-left and pro-right, that is, for and against the current Socialist Party Government, supported in Parliament by the left), summed up 27,8%. The Communist Party's backed candidate didn't go beyond 3,95%, while the Left Bloc's backed candidate, the MEP Marisa Matias, achieved a 10,1% result, coming up third and achieving it best presidential result ever.

- IV492 - January 2016 / Portugal, New parties of the left

An unlikely deal for the Left begets victories and exposes all contradictions

João Camargo — 2016-01-11T14:29:24Z

After the Portuguese general election last October it seemed unlikely that the actual outcome could have made such a long run. The Socialist Party, led by Antonio Costa, had to choose between its utter surrender to the center-right or a shift to the left, pressured by the relative majority of the right-wing coalition that governed in Portugal during the troika years on the one side, and a rising left on the other.

- IV492 - January 2016 / Portugal

The Portuguese election: quicksand in the center, an emboldened left and a desperate president

João Camargo — 2015-10-24T09:21:30Z

This article was updated by the author on the 23rd of October 2015.

- IV489 - October 2015 / Portugal, New parties of the left

Theaterpolitik of the Troika takes over

João Camargo — 2013-07-18T07:25:06Z

A plot such as the one that has been happening in Portugal for the last two weeks could not have been written by the worst soap opera writers of all time. Politics and democracy have left the building. Portugal has been stripped of any sort of political rationale and the successive episodes and plot turns every day can tell how unsustainable the current government and majority are.

- IV462 - July 2013 / Portugal