🇵🇹 Portugal's politics and elections 2.0

[JimJamUK]

PAN presents their election manifesto:

PAN leader, Inês Sousa Real, presented this afternoon, in Porto city, the party's manifesto for the 30 January elections. Sousa Real labeled the manifesto as "progressive", "ecofeminist" and "animalistic", adding that her goal is to create a more "empathetic and inclusive" society. The main policies are the following:

- Inclusion in the Constitution of an animal protection clause;
- Lower the voting age to 16 years old;
- Creation, or reconfiguration, of two ministries: Ministry of Economy and Climate Change and the Ministry of Environment, Biodiversity and Animal Protection;
- Creation of the kingfisher figure, to ensure protection of rivers;
- Program to "deseucalypt" the Portuguese forests;
- Stop licenses to explore lithium mines;
- Connect all district capitals by railway by 2030;
- More investment in the NHS and creation of a public net of veterinary hospitals;
- Abolish bullfighting;
- Increase spending on Education, up to 6% of GDP, and lower the number of students by class;
- Tax reform by reviewing the number of income tax brackets;
- Corporate tax reduction to 17%
- National minimum wage at 905 euros by 2026;

Can you explain more about PAN’s overall ideology? It generally seems like a normal left of centre animal rights/environmentalist party and supported the previous centre left government, but also backs some tax cuts similar to the centre right and hasn’t ruled out backing a government by the latter. This seems slightly unusual combination.

[JimJamUK]

First of all, welcome to the forum

You just summed up what PAN is. They seem like center-left, but their position is more like Syncretic, and actually they defend that the left-right divide is ancient history, and are willing to talk to either the PS or PSD, and their policies reflect that, but I'm of the opinion that they would work better with the PS rather than the PSD. But, the PS in this campaign isn't very keen in conceding stuff, and PAN is letting the door open to the PSD.

Thanks, long-time lurker but thought I'd finally start posting

Those are fair explanations, particularly about the PS making a conciliatory campaign difficult. It makes sense that they would want to avoid being pigeonholed as left wing in order to try to appeal to pro animal/environment voters who don't consider themselves as left wing (and there is already competition from more overtly eco-socialist parties on the left anyways), but it seems obvious they would get more of their agenda done with the left and the 'tax cuts combined with spending increases and more regulation' bit seems a tad populist/not well thought through.