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00:00 Well, to tell us a little more about what's happening in Portugal, our Europe editor,
00:03 Armand Georgian, is with me. And Armand, walk us through what's likely to happen next,
00:08 because I understand it'll be a while before a government is formed.
00:11 Yeah, I mean, in terms of the procedure, we still have to wait for the results to be counted for
00:17 Portuguese living abroad. And actually, there are four seats still to be distributed based
00:22 on that result, which won't be published until March the 20th. So we have, what is it,
00:28 around 10 days before we actually know the final result. And in this situation,
00:33 those four seats are significant, because remember, there's only two seats now between the two main
00:39 blocks as things stand at the moment. So you've got the Democratic Alliance, the centre-right on
00:44 79 seats, the socialists on 77 seats. So we still have to factor in these four extra seats. Is that
00:53 going to change the overall balance? Well, maybe it will change the balance between the socialists
00:58 and the centre-right. It doesn't change the fragmentation of the Portuguese political
01:04 system, which we've seen in many other countries as well in elections. And we've also seen as a
01:10 result of that fragmentation, for example, in the Netherlands, it takes a very long time to
01:15 form a coalition. The talks are still going on after months. In Spain, after the same kind of
01:20 fragmentation of the political scene, yes, there was a coalition agreement, but it's clearly very
01:25 fragile because of the demands of smaller parties, so to speak. So I think we're looking at probably
01:30 quite a protracted, potentially protracted period of negotiations in Portugal. But certainly after
01:36 March the 20th, when, as I said, these votes from abroad will be known, that's when the President
01:41 of Portugal will formally begin consultations to see who should form the government, who should try,
01:48 I should say, to form the next government. And I understand that this could be some time away,
01:53 but I think the big question that lots of people want to understand right now is,
01:57 will the far-right be part of that government whenever it's formed?
02:01 Well, at the moment, the centre-right says no. So Luis Montenegro, he's still
02:07 insisting on this effectively kind of cordon sanitaire around the far-right. And it's
02:14 interesting, he says no governing coalition with the far-right Chega party, but also no
02:19 deals with them. So that seems to be ruling out, for example, the Swedish scenario where you had
02:25 also a breakthrough of the far-right, but they didn't enter government. What they do have is a
02:30 supply and confidence agreement with the governing coalition in Sweden. So far,
02:36 Luis Montenegro seems to be ruling out that option. But it's interesting to see what
02:41 Chega is doing to try to make itself more palatable to Portuguese voters. So now,
02:46 André Ventura, the head of Chega, he says he's prepared to drop some of the more
02:53 controversial stances that his party has, for example, chemical castration of some sex offenders.
03:00 And this reminds me a lot of what Geert Wilders in the Netherlands did after he had his breakthrough
03:06 in the Netherlands. He started to drop some of the more controversial things, the ban on mosques,
03:12 for example. He said he could definitely compromise on that. So Chega will certainly do what it can
03:17 to try to get into government, because it's clear, the maths is clear, on paper at least,
03:24 the right plus the far-right would have a majority in the Portuguese parliament. So I think it
03:30 depends on ultimately what happens with the other parties and whether Luis Montenegro decides to
03:36 maybe change his tune further down the line. We'll have to see, obviously. Politics is a slippery
03:45 thing. So we'll have to see. But even if Chega is kept out of power and kept out of any informal
03:52 agreement, it still has these 48 seats, and with still four more seats to be counted, as I said,
03:59 they're clearly a force that can't be ignored. And what they're now looking at also is to building
04:04 these European alliances with the likes of the national rally in France. And we've had reactions
04:10 from Marine Le Pen today of the national rally here to say congratulations to Andre Venturi. We
04:17 look forward to building this block in the European Parliament in the elections on June 9th to expand
04:23 the European conservatives and reformists at the expense of traditional parties or centrist parties.