Portugal’s president wins second term

Portuguese President Anibal Cavaco Silva has won the first round of the presidential election, heading for another five-year term in office.

According to official results released on Sunday tallying 98 percent of the vote, the center-right Cavaco Silva has won 53 percent of the votes compared to his socialist contender Manuel Alegre, who managed 20 percent, the Associated Press reported.

The results also indicate a low turnout of less than 47 percent by nearly 9.6 million voters eligible to pick from among six candidates.

Many analysts believe the growing public disenchantment with the financial crisis and high unemployment rates following the implementation of fiscal austerity measures in November last year may have largely contributed to the low turnout.

However, the Portugal’s election committee blamed the low turnout on a string of computer failures at several voting stations, which lasted for two hours and hindered officials’ efforts to check the numbers on the cards of some voters.

Cavaco Silva, 71, who is an economist, lecturer and a member of the liberal conservative Social Democratic Party, won the presidential election on 22 January 2006 and has been backed by a conservative minority in the parliament.

Alegre, 74, is a poet and a member of the Socialist Party, who has been campaigning on the platform of opposition to “the dictatorship of the financial markets.”

Portugal’s presidential election was held against a backdrop of growing concerns over the slow pace of economic recovery in the indebted country.

In November, the socialist government of Portugal’s Prime Minister Jose Socrates adopted a belt-tightening austerity budget bill for 2011 to avoid a bailout through deficit-cutting measures.

The government went through tumultuous times after it introduced the package aimed at slashing its budget deficit from 9.3 percent of gross domestic product in 2009, to 7.3 percent in 2010 and 4.6 percent in 2011.

However, the European Commission and the International Monetary Fund forecast Portugal will plunge into recession in 2011 for the second time in three years.