Revolutionaries Denounce Electoral Farce in Portugal and Call for Boycott

Featured image: Poster put up by Anti-Imperialist Action calling for the electoral boycott in Portugal. Source: Nova Aurora.

Yesterday, January 18, presidential elections were held in Portugal. Nova Aurora reports that this is the fourth electoral farce in less than one year in the country. And there is one important detail: “This election is particularly important, as it comes after the powerful general strike on December 11, when millions of workers mobilized in defense of their fundamental rights” (all the excerpts are translated unofficially by us).

Additionally corruption is rampant in Portuguese politics, and Nova Aurora explains that “In less than three years, two governments have fallen due to their own mismanagement, hiding the usual cases of corruption that plague all of their rotten institutions.” Of the elections held in the last year, there were three national elections and one regional election (Madeira). The masses face this new election with clear distrust and demoralization towards the institutions of the old State. Nova Aurora explains that the masses are living in unprecedented poverty, with 18.6% of the Portuguese people living in poverty or social exclusion, and this is the situation for 38.1% of the migrants. Migrant workers in the countryside live in a situation of particular exploitation, health care faces increasing privatization, and labor rights face constants attacks from the old State, “through the so-called ‘liberal package’ ordered by the European Union (mainly German imperialism).”

Faced with this situation, the working masses in Portugal are fighting and resisting, as demonstrated by the general strike, which Nova Aurora describes as “a powerful general strike that mobilized 3 million people: even though they faced repressive attacks by the police, scrutiny by Montenegro (Prime Minister of Portugal), and sabotage by the yellow union leaderships of the General Union of Workers (UGT) and the National Inter-Union (CGTP-IN).” Moreover, this strike was the largest in the country’s history.

The masses’ rejection of the old State has been repeatedly clearly shown, for example in the 2019 legislative elections, there was a total of 51.4% of blank and invalid votes and abstentions. In the May 2025 elections it was of 48.5%.

Regarding the importance of the boycott, Nova Aurora points out that “the boycott should not be an end in itself, but part of a tactic of mobilization, politicization, and organization of the people for the struggles of today and those that will inevitably come.”

Nova Aurora concludes as follows: “For revolutionaries and the combative popular masses in Portugal, the task in the 2026 elections is clear: to transform diffuse abstention into conscious and organized boycott.” and in turn points out that “The real solution is not at the ballot box, but in the revolutionary struggle of the masses and the work of the revolutionaries who are with them, a political fact that will gradually forge a solid advanced detachment of the working class that will ultimately achieve this goal.”

The full article can be read here:

Anti-Imperialist Action put up posters in Porto against the presidential electoral farce that took place yesterday.