Portugal’s far-right presidential elections candidate André Ventura calls for an end to a parasite and subsidy-ridden state

Text: Chris Graeme, Photos: Fernando Bento (ICPT)

It was the fourth visit as a guest speaker to the International Club of Portugal for far-right Chega leader André Ventura, this time as Chega’s candidate for the forthcoming presidential elections on Sunday, January 18, 2026.

André Ventura, the charismatic, charming and eminently confident leader of Portugal’s far-right Chega party, now the third political force in Portugal in the parliament with 91 seats after garnering 31.8% of the votes at the last general election, is certainly not content to sit on his laurels and decided to run for Portugal’s forthcoming presidential elections in January, 2026.

Certainly a good orator, he has the undoubted ability of an excellent public speaker, a gift he once again displayed to a mixed room of party faithful and entrepreneurs who were evidently in his thrall, captured by his sheer magnetism, and with a clear message, born out, he says, by the polls that showed Portugal needed an alternative to “shake-up” the country. Also standing him in good stead is his legal background.

Once again he gave a political master class in oratory, one that won him numerous rounds of applause, appearing – whether by intention or not – to be a saviour for the Portuguese people in an international  historical landscape where not one far right populist politician, from Adolf Hitler and Mussolini to Jair Bolsonaro, Vladimir Putin or Victor Maduro ultimately succeeded in effectively resurrecting their country’s fortunes. Why? because life’s just not that simple. Ideology and rhetoric cannot raise a country’s economic fortunes. It’s simply not black and white.

But, nevertheless, he goes to the bone in pinpointing Portugal’s long-standing problems, and like a doctor (a quack or otherwise) has a pile of prescriptions that he believes – and this he certainly does – will turn the Portuguese ship of State around and chart it towards more prosperous waters.

Plastic politicians 

Some of Portugal’s ills that have been endemic for decades he rightly highlights. Take weak politicians, cronyism, clientelism, and zombie companies living off the State.

“I think, frankly, that we are sick of plastic, (‘stretchy’) politicians who say what they think people want to hear at that moment, and obviously the best secret for winning is to always please everyone”.

But all politicians do this to a lesser or greater extent. They play to different audiences. They play to the gallery one moment and to the cockles the next to use a theater metaphor. Because one way or another you can never really understand what it feels like to be poor, cheated, robbed, disillusioned, stuck on low-paid salaries and hampered by low productivity, red tape and corruption unless you’re been a victim of it. In this sense, all politicians are actors on a stage playing to their different audiences and André Ventura is no exception.

Beginning with immigration – Portugal has seen around 1.5 million immigrants from wealthy HNWI from the United States to impoverished Bangladeshis flood into the country in under three years – he says that an immigrant and a Portuguese are not the same thing after 10 years, in a clear allusion to the recent changes in the Nationality Law, raising it from five years to 10. “I don’t think that anyone in their right mind can say that they are (Portuguese) and by doing so just pleases both Greeks and Trojans”, he said.

His remedy was to attract the Portuguese young people who left Portugal for better opportunities and salaries overseas. But we live in the EU where we have freedom of labour. The Portuguese have always loved living in other countries and experiencing  other cultures. That’s why they discovered half of the world. Portugal’s companies cannot pay salaries to equal Germany, Luxembourg or France, and the EU does not have a common wage policy, does not pay an engineer in one country the same as in the next. That’s the way it is.

People pleasing  

“Those on the left say: “Well, he (another candidate) is better than Ventura because Ventura is very radical and the other is more balanced.”

“And the right say: “Well, despite everything, the immigrant is not the same. But at the end of 10 years becomes the same, and this pleases everyone, and it’s been like that in Europe for years; those who pleased everyone, won.”

However, he pointed out that the world had begun changing five or six year ago to now because “we began to think that those who aim to please everybody rarely please the country”.

“We are sick of people trying to please everyone. José Sócrates (a Socialist politician and former prime minister currently being tried for corruption) pleased almost everyone but also then robbed practically everyone at the same time,” he aded in reference to Operation Hidden Face (Face Oculta) and Operation Marques that are massive corruption scandals that have been dragging on interminably since José Sócrates was in office 15 years ago.

“I know that I among an elite here today but I’m going to say what I think and even if they don’t like it, they are going to have to listen all the same.”

André Ventura said that the country needed to understand the traumas after the 25th April Revolution in 1974, understand what had happened and realise that the country could rise again.

“They say that everything is fine, and that we’ve made great progress. But we haven’t. We’ve let them take, cheat and mislead… we’ve elected plastic politicians that are useless, who only know how to rob. Some were even reelected municipal mayors. Is that the kind of country that we want? Well good luck to you! We’ll be overtaken by Bulgaria and Romania,” he warned.

André Ventura was, I imagine, referring to long-standing Oeiras Mayor Isaltino Morais and others. In this case, despite being convicted for corruption and bribe taking, Morais was elected mayor again and again by the local people in Portugal’s third wealthiest municipality because he encouraged business but also delivered on his promises to local less fortunate citizens living in the borough.

Basically, Ventura said that countries that are corrupt are generally poor and lag behind those countries that are less corrupt. But Oeiras is not poor by any stretch of the imagination and most countries do not have rampant corruption … rather, the political/cultural/legal structures of the country allow loopholes from which people take advantage.

“Soon we will be like the worst country in Europe. That’s not what I want. I want a different country, one that is able to look in the mirror and see where it has failed and see where it has gone wrong and be able to correct it. Being able to shake it up and also be able to look at some of our current personalities and say you don’t fit”.

But the handsome doctor who wants to cure corruption must first face the unpalatable truth that almost one-fifth of his party’s MPs have or have had run-ins with Portugal’s justice at one time or another.

From among the Chega MPs are those that have been accused to theft, illegal immigration, disobedience, falsifying documents, prostituting minors, drunk driving, and inciting hatred.

The one thing that any would be politician must do to be successful is to have an unblemished, squeaky-clean record and reputation. Without these, it’s better not to go into politics.

Then, he turned to television and its political commentators. “All those who failed in politics are on TV”, Ventura said in an aside to presidential running mate Luís Marques Mendes.

“We can’t continue to have failure., it was a small problem, but now it’s something else. It’s life’s failures, it’s the corrupt, those who rob who appear on the TV so candidly. They cut their hair, seem a bit older, and this spells recovering our failure (not recovering from it).

“I am a candidate that does not want failure back. I want to accept failure and achieve victory. We can’t continue on with failure, we have to get out of this. I listen to what they have to say on the economy and what they think, even those running in the presidential elections. I’m going to say something that then also won’t want to hear. All say that we have to grow and we do have to grow.”

And André Ventura pointed out that Portugal had only grown 1% over the last 30 years and this was “obviously a disaster”.

And it’s true. Portugal has not grown more than 1% on average in 30 years, but the reasons for this have been tackled and are being tackled by this and the previous two governments that have done and are doing all the right things to modernise and streamline the public administration, attract investment, reduce taxes, grow the economy, support exporting companies, slash the national debt and run a budget surplus. They know what the issues are and are at least trying to do something about it, and I can’t see what André Ventura could do that would be different.

Ventura says that Marques Mendes (the opposing PSD candidate) had never grown anything, “He won’t grow the economy or politically and he won’t grow the economy, that’s for sure,”, adding that Portugal couldn’t grow if the same remedies that have always been applied continue to be applied.

But that’s like saying the patient has a headache and needs aspirin when the other parties are prescribing paracetamol – everybody knows the problems and are tying to tackle them, and that includes corruption which in Portugal is often as much about the slow and inefficient public administration than anything else.

It’s why the current government had the balls to acknowledge it and set up a Ministry for State Reform.

A State of Parasites

The Chega leader then came up with two remedies that could help grow the economy and said they might not be attractive but were important – one was getting rid of parasites.

“We have filled our State with parasites – parasites that lived at the cost of the State and only have known how to live off the State.” André Ventura then pointed to some groups.

Those to whom the State gives everything and ignores all others, the small and medium-sized entrepreneurs who suffer but cannot do anything because there are five or six that get political favours to get ahead.

“They are the parasites of the regime, but they are the ones who have financed the regime for many years.”

The second group of parasites fed off a subsidy-dependent economy. “Don’t think I’m talking about this because of the gypsies”, he said. (The far-right leader has long held the belief that the gipsy community in Portugal don’t contribute towards Portugal’s economy and taxes and live off subsidies, using the National Heath Service while selling illegal counterfeit goods in local markets).

“I’m not just talking about the gypsies. As long as we have an economy that tells people “it’s better not to work” and they get Social Security, believe me, we will never have skilled labour in Portugal.

“Because as long as we say to our young people: “it’s better to stay at home and receive €1,000 from Social Security than to have to go to work and receive €1,200 and pay for transport, food, etc.”

“Everything is wrong in this country, and do the math however you want. We will never work as long as we have this culture of subsidy-dependence and state parasitism. That’s what they are, parasites. They are around and they don’t want to leave. They create lobby structures just to lobby, because they know that lobbying is their guarantee for the future. They know that if they have strength with the main parties and those who decide, they will always have their places guaranteed”, he said.

This culture of “jobs for the boys” is a current issue that has existed for 50 years or more, but again there are attempts to change it. You only have to look at the changes made at Portugal’s development bank Banco de Fomento as an example where a young a dynamic CEO has come in and created a team not based on party political affiliation or favours but on expertise, know-how, a proven track-record and merit, and is already seeing results.

It’s not by banning Gay Pride festivals, or stopping sex changes that affect a minuscule percentage of the population that the country’s fortunes are going to be turned around. These are side shows designed to deflect. Hungary and Russia did this and look what basket cases these countries are.

And it’s not by looking for passages in a book compiled over 2,000 years ago from  legends, stories, poetry, songs and potted histories where men live to 900 years and worlds are created in six days that somehow you can mend a country’s fortunes. That’s magical thinking when what we need is good old-fashioned common sense. Do you really have that André? Be honest and look in the mirror again and ask yourself if Portugal’s problems are really black and white or if indeed there are rather a lot of shades of grey?