IT IS AN election that almost nobody except the main party leaders wanted. But when the Portuguese vote on May 18th, for the third time in a little over three years, they face some important issues. One is whether they can engineer stable and decisive leadership to deal with the social dislocations accompanying a vigorous economic recovery from the grim years of austerity that followed the financial crisis of 2008. Another, common to many European countries, is whether they can preserve a habit of pragmatic consensus that in Portugal is under threat from Chega (”Enough!”), a fast-growing hard-right party. They will also decide how much importance they give to ethics in public life.