The overwhelming victory of António José Seguro in the recent presidential election marks a hinge moment in Portugal’s democratic history. Not merely because of the scale of the result, but because of what it intimates about the country’s political future. At a time when populist extremism has gained troubling momentum and the traditional parties of the democratic center have suffered long attrition, this election stands as a quiet yet unmistakable declaration: two-thirds of the electorate have rejected the logic of permanent, corrosive polarization.

In a nation wearied by media spectacle, by the theatrics of outrage, by the relentless monetization of fear, Seguro’s victory arrives less as triumphalism than as oxygen. It offers no messianic promises, no cathartic ruptures. Indeed, its significance lies precisely in its refusal of such temptations. It affirms moderation, restraint, and a deliberate resistance to the politics of permanent indignation. In an age when volume is mistaken for leadership, such a choice is anything but trivial.

Relatively depolarized, less tethered to rigid party orthodoxies, and associated with a rhetoric of civic ethics and institutional sobriety, Seguro embodies a conception of the presidency as a space of mediation rather than agitation. After years in which public discourse has been progressively colonized by the loudest and most incendiary voices, this election signals a desire to restore democracy to the terrain of the common good.

It is in this sense that one may speak of a true riaggiornamento of national politics. Forgive the ecclesiastical overtones of the term. Just as the Second Vatican Council sought to bring the Church into a renewed conversation with modernity—not by abandoning its foundations, but by recalibrating its expression—so too does this electoral moment gesture toward an updating of democratic centrism. Not a rupture, but a reorientation. Not the erasure of the past, but its rendering newly functional within an increasingly chaotic and undefined present.

What more than three million voters appear to have said is that they do not wish to see the country surrendered to the jackhammer logic of a populism that promises to “smash the system” with theatrical fury. They prefer, instead, the preservation of democratic institutions—flawed though they may be—over the seductive fantasy of institutional demolition. That preference, in itself, is a profoundly political act.

If André Ventura claims the mantle of a “new right,” then the parties of the democratic center must now formulate a new strategic grammar of governance. Seguro himself once observed—in a 2019 interview—that the most effective way to counter the “merchants of fear” is not to imitate them, but to address concretely the material concerns of ordinary citizens. It is a deceptively simple principle, one that the center seems, at times, to have forgotten.

There are, of course, ironies embedded in this moment. In the 2014 leadership debate within the Socialist Party, Seguro publicly denounced what he described as the “promiscuity between politics and business,” warning against the transformation of party structures into conduits for private interests. It is not without a certain historical irony that many figures from that era—including António Costa—now appear in support of Seguro, a reminder of how swiftly political memory can become selective.

Yet the essential point endures. What this victory offers is the possibility—only the possibility—of a politics anchored in public ethics, in the dismantling of patronage networks and privileges, without recourse to populist demagoguery. A politics of principles rather than slogans; of civic responsibility rather than oligarchic convenience; of citizens rather than factions. Perhaps—one dares to hope—this may mark the beginning of a genuinely post-populist chapter in Portugal.

The lingering question is not whether Seguro can transform the system alone. It is whether the parties of the center—above all the Socialist Party, to which I belong—are prepared to rise to the promise this election has quietly, but unmistakably, announced.

Pedro Arruda is a regular contributor to Azorean newspapers. We are thankful that he agreed to have his op-ed translated and available to our readers.

NOVIDADES will feature occasional opinion pieces from leading thinkers and writers in the Azores, providing the diaspora and those interested in the current state of the Azores with a sense of the significant perspectives on some of the archipelago’s issues.

Translated to English as a community outreach program from the Portuguese Beyond Borders Institute (PBBI) and the Modern and Classical Languages and Literatures Department (MCLL).

You can follow his writings in Portuguese online on: https://azoreansplendor.blogspot.com/