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Portugal seeks way out of recession in parliamentary elections
Socialist leader and Prime Minister Jose Socrates has also vowed to stick with a modernizing social and economic reform program that has antagonized many, especially trade unions.
The center-right Social Democratic Party, the main opposition, says public works will saddle future generations with debt. It wants to facilitate more private enterprise, including through tax breaks.
Recent opinion polls have indicated voters prefer the Socialist option, with 38 percent to 30 percent for the Social Democrats. Some 9.4 million people were eligible to vote. The Portuguese economy contracted 3.7 percent in the second quarter compared with the same period last year. Some 500,000 people -- just over 9 percent of the work force -- are unemployed.
Over his past four years in power Socrates has imposed reforms that have included raising the civil service retirement age from 60 to 65 and introducing an evaluation system for schoolteachers. Reforms are needed because Portugal has become one of the European Union's laggards -- despite receiving billions in EU development aid since joining the bloc in 1986.
Though it was one of the founding members of the euro currency now used by 16 nations, it has mostly failed to move with the times. Its productivity and education levels are among western Europe's lowest. It remains shackled by labor laws introduced by radical leftist governments in the years after the 1974 Carnation Revolution ended a four-decade dictatorship.
Portugal is western Europe's poorest country, and about a third of workers take home less than 600 euros (US$880) a month after tax, according to the National Statistics Institute.
Socrates' attempts at an economic makeover have placed Portugal among the continent's pioneers in the development of clean energy and electric cars. He has also put hundreds of thousands of computers in schools. Social Democrat leader Manuela Ferreira Leite, who is seeking to become Portugal's first elected woman prime minister, also proposes reforms but she says they must go deeper and pursue broader consensus.
With neither of the main parties expected to secure more than half the seats in the 230-seat Parliament, the winner may rule as a minority government or seek an alliance or a coalition with a smaller rival -- the conservative Popular Party, the Communist Party/Green Party coalition, or the Left Bloc. Only one minority government has survived its full term since democracy was introduced 33 years ago. Before the 2005 Socialist win, Portugal had three governments in three years.
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