Portuguese politics: The president and the prime minister
How do these two roles co-exist in Portugal?
This piece assumes you have a certain level of knowledge of how the Portuguese government is structured. If, for example, you don’t know what the Assembly of the Republic is, you might not totally understand the implications of the post’s first sentence.
If that’s you, fear not … and click here for an explanation of the basics.
After voting on March 10, 2024 and May 18, 2025 to elect entirely new Assemblies of the Republic (the Portuguese legislative body) and again on October 12, 2025 to elect local officials (mayors, city councilors and the like), Portuguese citizens all over the world will return to the polls on on January 18, 2026. This time, they will be choosing a new President of the Republic.
Even though we can’t vote in the election, the results have the potential to affect our lives so it’s worth paying attention to.
“But wait,” I hear you asking, “doesn’t Portugal have a prime minister? Do they also have a president? Can they do that?”
The answers are yes, yes, and yes.
Portugal has what’s known as a “semi-presidential” government and it’s not alone. There are anywhere from 30-45 other countries1 with this model including Egypt, France, and Ukraine. Confusingly, the duties and methods of selecting the president and prime minister are different in many of these nations.
Turns out there are almost as many ways to run a country as there are countries to be run.
Who knew?2
So let’s focus on how things work in Portugal.3
The president
The current President of the Portuguese Republic is Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, 77.4
He was elected to his position by winning 52% of the votes cast on January 24, 2016 and took office on March 9 of that same year. He served a five-year term as mandated by the Portuguese constitution and was re-elected in a landslide on January 24, 2021, winning 60.67% of the votes cast in the midst of a Covid-induced lockdown.
On the day of his first inauguration in 2016, Rebelo de Sousa officially suspended his membership in the center-right PPD/PSD party. This is apparently not uncommon in Portugal, just as it’s not unusual for the major parties to not officially endorse a presidential candidate - sometimes because they have multiple candidates running, sometimes because they have no candidates running.5
The prime minister
The current Prime Minister of Portugal is Luís Montenegro, 52.
He was appointed to his position by President Rebelo de Sousa and assumed office on April 2, 2024.
The Portuguese president can legally appoint anyone to be prime minister but it’s in the best interests of all involved that the person who actually gets the gig have enough respect/authority/experience that lawmakers will be inclined to follow their lead.6 For this reason, it’s customary that the head of the party winning the most seats in parliamentary elections be named the prime minister. And as we’ve covered in previous posts, on March 10, 2024, Montenegro’s right-of-center AD alliance (a combination of the PPD/PSD & CDS-PP parties) won 80 of the 230 seats in the Assembly of the Republic in the closest elections since the fall of the Portuguese dictatorship in 1974.
Given the AD’s hair-breadth hold on a minority government, Montenegro’s grasp on the prime minister position was somewhat tenuous even before a scandal broke involving a company that he’d founded before entering politics. The details are unimportant for this narrative but the upshot is that Montenegro called for a vote of confidence in his government after two motions to censure him failed in the Assembly of the Republic. Both PS and Chega opposed the confidence motion and President Rebelo de Sousa dissolved the parliament on March 19, 2025, calling for new elections on May 18 and tossing the hot potato back to the Portuguese citizens who would be voting for a new parliament - and potentially a new prime minster - for the third time since January 2022.
The May 2025 elections saw Montenegro’s AD coalition and far-right Chega each gain strength at the expense of the center-left PS party.
President Rebelo de Sousa named Montenegro prime minster again and invited him to form a new government. On June 5 that new government was sworn in.
“This is all well and good,” I hear you saying, “there’s some sort of shared government, great. But how does it work? What do the prime minister and president actually do?”
Good questions.7
In order to provide some context for the answer, it helps to rewind the clock to …
April 25, 1975
Yeah, I know what you’re thinking: Carnation Revolution, overthrow of the dictatorship, yadda yadda yadda. Well, you’re close but wrong. The Carnation Revolution was in 1974.
This date is exactly one year later and it’s the occasion of the first free elections in Portugal since 1925. A stunning 91.66% of eligible voters went to the polls to elect 250 people to something called a constituent assembly which would serve for one year with the goal of writing a new constitution.
Why did Portugal need a new constitution? Carnation Revolution, overthrow of the dictatorship, yadda yadda yadda.
It may come as a surprise to some people that many countries have had more than one constitution since their founding.8 Portugal, in fact, is on its sixth such document.
“Wow,” I hear you saying, “six constitutions. Well, I guess that makes sense. I mean, Portugal’s, like, almost 900 years old, right?9 So, yeah, a half dozen constitutions in close to a millennium isn’t unreasonable, is it?”
Sure. Except for the fact that the first one was instituted in 1822. It didn’t last very long as another was put into place in 1826. The third appeared in 1838.10
The 1838 document was in use until the Portuguese monarchy was overthrown in a 1910 revolution/coup d’état that led to another new constitution the following year.
What followed has been characterized as “a complex 16-year period in the history of Portugal” known as the First Portuguese Republic. From 1910 to 1926, Portugal had eight presidents and 45 prime ministers.11
In 1926, there was another coup d'état, which ushered in the Estado Novo (Portuguese for New State), more commonly known as a dictatorship under António de Oliveira Salazar.
Óscar Carmona, a military officer, seized control of the government12 and was elected president in 1928. Perhaps not surprisingly, he happened to be the only candidate for the position. Shortly thereafter, he appointed Salazar Minister of Finance. Within a year, Salazar pulled Portugal from the brink of financial collapse, stabilizing what had been a shaky currency and producing a budget surplus. After a series of failed military prime ministers and continued economic stability, Carmona handed the prime minister gig to Salazar on July 5, 1932.
The fifth Portuguese constitution was implemented in 1933 and granted almost unlimited power to the president, including the ability to appoint and dismiss the prime minister. Carmona was re-elected president in 1935 and 1942 without opposition and in 1949 he bullied a potential opposition candidate into standing down before the elections.13 Through it all, he showed little interest in actually governing, leaving Salazar effectively in charge.
This was the constitution that was in effect on April 25, 1975.
(While it’s way beyond the scope of this post, it seems important to note here that Salazar’s authoritarian regime was pretty unpopular by the time of Carmona’s death in 1951 and Salazar had to pull hard on all the skullduggery levers - censorship, rigged elections, constitutional amendments, secret police, assassinations, et al - to ensure he had a compliant president so he could maintain his grip on power until his death in 197014.)
The reason for the last several paragraphs, simultaneously a lengthy tangent and an egregious oversimplification of 150 years of important and fascinating Portuguese history, is to illustrate that the 250 people elected in 1975 had plenty of reference points for things that hadn't worked very well in the past.
Under Salazar, political parties were banned. After the end of the Estado Novo they were legal again and the 1975 elections sent members from seven different parties to participate in the drafting of Portugal’s sixth constitution.
As you can see from the above graphics, the people of Portugal had had enough of authoritarianism. The newly-elected constituent assembly leaned heavily to the left end of the political spectrum. Which didn’t mean their job was easy.
1975 was yet another incredibly fraught time in Portugal. While the initial overthrow of the dictatorship had been largely bloodless, the possibility of civil war loomed large - no fewer than four provisional governments came and went and an unsuccessful coup was launched during the assembly’s work - and despite the overall leanings of the body there was plenty of disagreement over what the new governing document should look like. There was also quite a bit of heckling from the sidelines as military leaders and other high-profile individuals worked to bend the ears and will of the sausage makers.
The constituents were, quite understandably, leery of giving too much authority to any one or two people. Remember that while António Salazar is the name we all know today, anyone in the office of president could have dismissed him at any time during his 36-year reign as prime minister.
They were also concerned about leaving too much power in the hands of the legislative body given the chaos in that branch of government that led to the Estado Novo in the first place.
The final document, which came into effect on April 25, 1976,15 marked the start of Third Portuguese Republic16 and opens with the following preamble:
On the 25th of April 1974 the Armed Forces Movement crowned the long resistance and reflected the deepest feelings of the Portuguese people by overthrowing the fascist regime.
Freeing Portugal from dictatorship, oppression and colonialism represented a revolutionary change and the beginning of an historic turning point for Portuguese society.
The Revolution restored their fundamental rights and freedoms to the people of Portugal. In the exercise of those rights and freedoms, the people’s legitimate representatives are gathered to draw up a Constitution that matches the country’s aspirations.
The Constituent Assembly affirms the Portuguese people’s decision to defend national independence, guarantee citizens’ fundamental rights, establish the basic principles of democracy, ensure the primacy of a democratic state based on the rule of law and open up a path towards a socialist society, with respect for the will of the Portuguese people and with a view to the construction of a country that is freer, more just and more fraternal.
Meeting in plenary session on 2 April 1976, the Constituent Assembly does hereby pass and decree the following Constitution of the Portuguese Republic:
The entire document is notable for its ideological language17 as well as for carving out a significant governance role for the military and creating the dual presidential-parliamentary system in place today.
Article 113, Section 1 of the Constitution of the Portuguese Republic enacted in 1976 states: Sovereign bodies shall be the President of the Republic, the Council of the Revolution, the Assembly of the Republic, the Government and the courts.
Article 186, Section 1: The Government shall consist of the Prime Minister, the Ministers, and the Secretaries and Under-Secretaries of State.
The “Council of the Revolution” was, in essence, the military. The armed forces overthrew the dictatorship; they were in charge at the time of the assembly, and they were granted a powerful seat at the governance table.18 The council acted as an advisory board to the president and had, among other abilities, the power to rule on the constitutionality of legislation both before and after it was enacted. This council was dissolved in 1982 as part of a series of constitutional amendments and was replaced by a constitutional court, which still exists today and plays an important role in the governance of the nation.
Today’s version of the constitution says this in Article 110, Section 1: The President of the Republic, the Assembly of the Republic, the Government and the Courts are entities that exercise sovereignty.
Thus, today there are four sovereign entities in Portugal: a judicial branch (the Courts); a legislative branch (the Assembly of the Republic); an executive branch (the Government), which is headed by the prime minister; and the President of the Republic.
None of which answers the question you asked 87 paragraphs ago, namely: what do the prime minister and president actually do?
The role of the prime minister
Prime Minister Luís Montenegro is the head of the Government, the Chief Executive, the Big Cheese, the Top Dog.
Like Elon Musk, Tim Cook, or Mark Zuckerberg, his is the name you know even if it’s not entirely clear what he does day-in, day-out.
He’s (probably) not sitting at desk hunched over a spreadsheet but it’s his responsibility to ensure the nation’s budget is presented on time and passes muster with the Assembly of the Republic. He’s (probably) not a constitutional scholar but if proposals that come out of his administration are shot down by the courts, the fingers point at him. That sort of thing.
Regarding the specific duties of the PM, the constitution says this:
Montenegro also sits on the Council of Ministers and recommends the appointment of the other ministers (the president makes the actual appointments) and any deputy prime ministers, of whom he is in charge.
Appointed by the president, a prime minister serves a four-year term19 and there are no limits to the number of terms one can serve. A PM can lose their job if the president resigns or dissolves parliament.
The role of the president
President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, as established a few paragraphs back, exists outside the executive, legislative, and judicial branches. He is a rock. He is an island.20
While it’s common for his role to be described as “mainly ceremonial,” Rebelo de Sousa has a few extraordinary powers that play an important part of the system of checks and balances built into the constitution.
Most obviously, he appoints the prime minister. This usually happens following a general parliamentary election, of which there have been four since Rebelo de Sousa took office in 2016. After each election, Rebelo de Sousa met with the heads of the political parties represented in the newly-elected Assembly of the Republic and then invited someone to form a government by naming them prime minister.
Additionally, Rebelo de Sousa has key responsibilities regarding new laws, which don’t take effect without his say-so. When a piece of newly-passed legislation hits his desk he has some interesting choices. He can:
“promulgate” the law, essentially issuing a proclamation stating the law is now in effect. Without this step, there’s no law.21
veto the legislation. Depending on the type of law that is vetoed,22 either an absolute majority or a two-thirds majority is needed in the assembly to override.
send the law to the constitutional court for a ruling on its constitutionality. If the court gives it a thumbs-up, the president can then choose to promulgate or veto it. If the court deems all or part of the law unconstitutional, the Assembly of the Republic can take it up again in an attempt to address the specific issues identified by the court.23
Rebelo de Sousa is also authorized to dissolve the Assembly of the Republic and can do so essentially whenever24 and without cause. Disbanding the assembly does not necessarily mean there will be a new prime minister - indeed, Montenegro was re-named to that post after the 2025 elections triggered by Rebelo de Sousa’s dissolution of the parliament - but since it results in a new general election it’s not a step to be taken lightly.
Rebelo de Sousa is also the Commander-in-Chief of the Portuguese military and can if he wishes override the Minister of Defense on military affairs.25 He also appoints ambassadors and ratifies international treaties.26
Among other things. You know what? Here:
The president serves a five-year term and is voted in by a majority of the ballots cast during a presidential election. If an election does not result in one candidate receiving 50% +1 of the vote,27 there is a runoff election between the top two candidates three weeks later. The president cannot be elected to more than two consecutive terms; however, the constitution does allow for someone to serve more than that as long as there is a five-year gap between a second and third term. The president may be removed from office if convicted of a crime committed in the exercise of its functions.
While Rebelo de Sousa’s role may be ceremonial on a day-to-day basis, he can singlehandedly disband two of the other three sovereign entities in charge of the nation of Portugal. Not only can he, he has. More than once.
It’s a pretty important job.
In conclusion
So now that we have an idea of how power is divided between the president and the prime minister, where does that leave Portugal? Technically, Montenegro and Rebelo de Sousa are from the same political party. Could they team up and rule with an iron fist for 20 years like Carmona and Salazar?
The short answer is not legally, no. The biggest check on that is right here:
Which is why there’s a presidential election in Portugal later this month and Rebelo de Sousa’s name won’t be on the ballot.
Let’s recall, though, that Óscar Carmona took over in a coup d'état.28 He marched in and said, “I’ve got a lot of guns. Anybody wanna have a go at me?” Nobody had the power to stop him from naming himself both president and prime minister and writing a new constitution that granted him sweeping authority. Carmona’s 25 years as president were, technically, legal. He was, technically, elected to the office four times. It seems pretty clear, though, that he had no interest in actually running the government, he just wanted control over the person who did. But even Carmona had trouble keeping a prime minster - three people held that post between April 18, 1928 and July 5, 1932, when he appointed Salazar.
The best way to prevent a coup is to create a society where nobody feels a need to topple the government. At the end of the day, it’s about amorphous concepts like “fairness” and “justice” and “the consent of the governed.” All anyone can do is create rules and an enforcement mechanism. If people see the rules as fair, they’ll obey them. And those who don’t get chased after by people with guns. If enough people and/or the people with the most guns start seeing the rules as unfair, that’s how governments can fall.
Did the constitution of 1975 create that kind of society? Well, the document has lasted 50 years so far, longer than four of its five predecessors. It’s been modified twice but the bones remain intact. Those 50 years have been a relatively stable period in Portuguese history - from a governance standpoint at least. That said, things have been a bit messy since 2022.
Which is why this month’s election is important. Our next installment of the politics series will take a closer look at that election. Who’s running? What are the issues and the implications?
That’s all for now.
Love from Lisbon,
Scott
Depending on the day - things can change surprisingly quickly - and your source. And whether or not your source is keeping up with the day.
I suppose if there was a way that everyone agreed was best, there wouldn’t be as much of a need for this article.
What? Were you expecting something else? Was it the title of the post?
Amusing side note - this is what happened when I googled to double-check his age:
Hit the like button when you get it.
What would happen in the US if nobody had either an (R) or a (D) after their name? How would we know who to vote against?
Which probably means I’m out of the mix for the foreseeable future.
And thank you for helping me keep this post on track.
It certainly did to me.
Actually 883, as Portugal was founded in 1143.
Let’s pause briefly, down here in the relative tranquility of the footnotes, to sit with the instability implied in this paragraph. Three constitutions - three different ways to run a government - implemented in the span of time it takes an American fetus to become of legal driving age.
😱
Technically, this happened in a countercoup as there were two coups d'état in the space of three weeks. There were two failed coup attempts a few months later as well. Good times.
Dictators gonna dictate.
Although he had been out of power since 1968 due to health issues. A cerebral hemorrhage and subsequent coma led to his dismissal by then-President Américo Tomás. Salazar recovered from the coma after a month and regained lucidity. It is believed that those closest to him never told him he had been sacked, allowing him to continue to “rule” until his death two years later.
Yes, April 25 is a BFD here in Portugal.
Government 101: in a republic, power lies with the people. There are elections to fill important offices. As opposed to a monarchy or other system where power is inherited or claimed by divine right. Technically, the Estado Novo was a republic as there were presidential elections every seven years. Were they free and fair? No, but they still happened. Hence the Estado Novo is also known as the Second Portuguese Republic.
“open up a path towards a socialist society” raised a few eyebrows and the document contains numerous other explicit references to socialism
Not to mention a name check right in the first sentence of the document.
The track record of Portuguese PMs actually serving that long is not good. Of the 90 that have ever been appointed, only 14 (16%) have made it to the four year mark (including Salazar, of course). To be fair, among the 14 PMs who’ve served since 1976, five (36%) are members of the 4+ year club. The last 50 years have been relatively stable.
gratuitous Simon & Garfunkel reference
So I’m super curious to know who actually reads footnotes. There’s some good stuff in these, things that are too juicy to leave out but don’t fit well into the flow of the article. Like the bit up there in #14 about Salazar thinking he was still running the country for two years before he died. Amazing, right?
Amy rarely reads the footnotes, even when she’s proofing my posts. She only read them on the last post because Ryan mentioned one in a comment. Does anyone else read these or am I basically only entertaining myself down here? If you see this, do me a solid: leave a comment and work either “promulgate” or “skullduggery” into it somehow. Then I’ll make you a charter member of the Footnote Readers Club (FRC). Ryan, you’re already in.
And we can get deep in the weeds quite quickly on this phrase. Ask me how I know.
Rebelo de Sousa has used this option at least twice since we’ve been here. Once on legislation intended to legalize the practice of euthanasia in Portugal, a practice he personally opposes. Parts of the legislation were deemed unconstitutional on multiple occasions but eventually it gained the approval of the Constitutional Court. Rebelo de Sousa then promulgated it. More recently, he sent the assembly’s proposed immigration reforms to the constitutional court. Some of the measures were given the ok, others were not.
Unless it’s within the first six months of a new legislature, the last six months of the president’s term, or there is a declared state of emergency.
This led to a situation in 2003 where President Jorge Sampaio personally opposed the war on Iraq and, over the objections of Prime Minister José Manuel Barroso, forbade the deployment of the Portuguese Army to that conflict.
Despite, interestingly, not being able to leave the country for more than five days without permission from the Assembly of the Republic.
It’s pretty common for presidential elections to have 5 or more candidates on the ballot.
countercoup
Very good, thorough explanation. I do read the footnotes (but then, I'm a recovering academic). I think one potential headline for this is, "Watch out, a new government could decide to rewrite the constitution."
This is the best description, not just of the Portuguese political system but of the history behind it, that I’ve seen anywhere. Originally coming from the US with its two party system, the multiple parties here came as a (very positive) shock. I was first here in 1976, during the first free elections to the Assembleia— there were something like 30 parties on the ballot, ranging from the Marxist-Leninist-Trotskyites on the left to the Monarchists on the right. An amazing and hopeful time.