Portuguese President Jorge announced on Friday he was dissolving parliament and calling snap elections on Feb. 20, a poll that could be a rout for the ruling centre-right Social Democrats. Less than five months after taking office, Prime Minister Pedro Santana Lopes's party is well behind the opposition Socialists. "Given the diversity of proposals that were presented to me, I will schedule elections for next Feb. 20," Sampaio said in a broadcast address. He said Santana Lopes's government had been marked by "a series of episodes that decisively overshadowed the credibility of the government and its capacity to confront the crisis that it is living". Santana Lopes's brief tenure was marked by a minister's bitter resignation, slumping polls, a negative outlook from the Standard & Poor's credit rating agency, and allegations of government interference with the media. Political uncertainty has gripped the nation of 10 million people even as the recovery from recession shows signs of losing steam. Gross domestic product shrank 1.2 percent from the second to the third quarter, the National Statistics Institute said on Thursday. --more 2340 Local Time 2040 GMT
