Chega is an opportunity

Chega is not a tragedy. The tragedy is that they continue to treat him as a pariah, refusing to understand why more than a million Portuguese people voted for him.

If there is discontent with the system, pretending it doesn't exist is a way of feeding it.

The rise of Chega is an opportunity. To say otherwise is to ignore part of the country, its inequalities, insecurities and frustrations, whether social, economic or merely symbolic. To pretend that everything boils down to “hatred”, “ignorance” or “populism” is to not want to listen to the electorate. The tragedy is to insist on the sanitary cordon, which not only failed to contain Chega, but consolidated it. Demonization reinforces the role of victim that André Ventura cultivates with media efficiency and confrontational rhetoric. He skillfully uses the press to express indignation, and social media, particularly TikTok, for provocation.

The real democratic risk is not in voting, it is in the refusal to understand it. Left and right have failed to offer clear answers to real problems — security, housing, representation, immigration, trust in the state.

The pressure that Chega brings today can only have one interpretation and one demand: to produce better executives, to let the country breathe without subservience to the party(ies), to promote a comprehensive national interest, a true culture of merit, to choose better who represents us, to break free from the bureaucratic and oligarchic corset that has transformed politics into a closed career, accessible mainly to those who grow up within the party youth groups, offices and internal structures, and not to those who bring merit, experience or ideas from real life. The emergence of Chega is not the collapse of democracy — it is a symptom of its degradation.

What is the point of repeating that Chega “cannot be normalized” if we continue to protect opaque appointments, crossed favors, and clientelism networks?

When you see broken promises, hotbeds of boys and alternation without change, you don't vote to maintain the system. You vote to shake it up.

Chega must be confronted politically, with concrete proposals, courageous reforms, transparency, and respect for the intelligence of voters. If the traditional parties do not wake up, they will end up talking to themselves, in a country that is no longer listening to them.