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Portugal's election winner set on fast-track to austerity

LISBON : Portuguese election victor Pedro Passos Coelho received orders Monday to move quickly to form a new government

Published June 7, 2011 Updated June 7, 2011 06:30am

1 min

By Shoaib Ur Rehman

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President Anibal Cavaco Silva deemed that Passos Coelho could not afford to wait until he is formally named prime minister before putting together a coalition of his centre-right Social Democrats (PSD) with the smaller conservative CDS-PP.

The PSD took 38.6 percent of the vote in Sunday's polls to secure 105 seats in the 230-seat legislature, while the CDS-PP garnered 24. The two parties, which together would have an absolute magority, last governed together in 2002-05.

Cavaco Silva said after meeting with Passos Coelho for more than 90 minutes, that the government should be proposed even before the final results of Sunday's elections are published on June 15.

The new government will be tasked with pushing through deep spending cuts and economic reforms under an agreement in May with the so-called "troika" -- the European Union, Internatinal Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank -- in exchange for the 78 billion euro

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