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Portugal's fiscal health has improved over the course of its bailout program - the deficit fell to 6.4 percent of GDP last year from 10.1 percent in 2010 - but the sacrifices made are now at risk.
The chance of a compromise plan is slim. Austerity policies, such as pay cuts and tax hikes, have already split the two governing coalition partners and angered the main opposition Socialist Party, which wants to change course toward growth measures and is still insisting on early elections.
Coaxing the parties to overcome their differences won't be easy and could backfire by driving them further apart.
"This could go very well or very badly," Jornal de Negocios said in an editorial Thursday.
The three parties said they would consider holding talks, but their perfunctory responses demonstrated how they were stunned by the president's unanticipated proposal, which heralded what will likely be weeks of political jockeying for advantage.
One thing the head of state did seem to get right was catching the mood of the people, as the Portuguese increasingly express ill-feeling toward squabbling politicians.
The politicians "have to unite and to say yes" to the president's proposal, said Maria Luisa Sousa, who was selling fish at Lisbon's Ribeira market, next to the River Tagus. "It doesn't work if the parties pull one way and then the other. They cannot govern that way. We have to have faith now, we will see. It could work."
Market shopper Helena Antunes, 57, was less confident. "Our politicians have no class," she said. "Everybody knows they are the ones that sacrifice people, but they don't sacrifice themselves."
A protest erupted in Parliament when several dozen demonstrators in the public gallery yelled "Resign!" at lawmakers and threw down confetti of red and yellow cards, used in sport to signify admonishments.
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