Portugal faces post-poll crisis

PORTUGAL’S center-right Social Democrats had little time to savour their return to power yesterday, launching immediately into getting a ruinous debt burden under control.

Social Democrat leader Pedro Passos Coelho scored an emphatic win at the ballot box on Sunday, with his party collecting 39% of the vote to 28% for the second-placed Socialist Party, which had governed for the past six years.

Passos Coelho takes over as prime minister later this month with Portugal in the middle of a financial crisis.

His new government inherits a record jobless rate of 12.6% and an expected economic contraction of 4 % over the next two years.

The clock is also ticking on a long list of painful austerity measures that have to be adopted swiftly.