Former Premier Anibal Cavaco Silva, trailing in polls before Sunday's presidential elections, warned of a "pink" threat to Portugal if Socialist Jorge Sampaio won the ballot.
A victory for Sampaio, a former Lisbon mayor, would give Portugal a government and president of the same political hue for the first time since democracy was restored in 1974. Socialists won October's general elections.Since 1974, voters had viewed the presidency as a counterweight to government, electing a head of state of a different party than the dominant party in Parliament.
But Cavaco Silva is burdened with an economic slump that hit his government in recent years. Sampaio's main election theme was to fight for "solidarity, strength, development and stability."
Socialist President Mario Soares, a defender of civil rights and tolerance, must step down after two consecutive terms in office.
In interviews published in Saturday's weekly Expresso, Sampaio seemed quietly confident of victory, while Cavaco Silva issued a last-minute warning not to allow the Socialists to dominate politics.
"With everything pink, I don't see anything good ahead for Portugal," Cavaco Silva said. "If we have the total concentration of powers in Portugal, we could see intolerance and arrogance."
Sampaio said he was "as confident as at the start of the campaign," and hadn't even considered what he would do if he lost.
Final opinion polls last weekend gave Sampaio a lead of up to 15 percent over Cavaco Silva, who headed three center-right governments for a decade until his Social Democrats lost the October vote.
Although latest predictions showed Cavaco Silva closing the gap, Sampaio was still the favorite, especially after two other leftist candidates withdrew from the race and endorsed him.