Francisco Pinto Balsemão

Francisco Pinto Balsemão (2012)

Francisco José Pereira Pinto Balsemão ^{? / i} (bornSeptember 1, 1937inLisbon) is aPortuguese journalist, businessman and politician of the conservative current. He wasPrime Ministerfrom 1981 to 1983.

Life

Pinto Balsemão studied law at the University of Lisbon . After completing his studies, he worked as a journalist, in 1973 he was a co-founder of the Expresso newspaper in Lisbon, which played an important role in the phase after the Carnation Revolution and which he headed until 1980. He is co-owner of the Portuguese media group Impresa .

Pinto Balsemão began his political engagement during the time of the Estado Novo as a member of parliament of the then unity party, National People's Action (ANP) . Within the ANP he belonged together with Francisco Sá Carneiro to a group of MPs who advocated a cautious opening and reforms within the dictatorship .

After the Carnation Revolution in 1974, he and Sá Carneiro were among the founders of the conservative People's Democratic Party, which was renamed the Social Democratic Party a short time later . He was elected to the Constituent Assembly and became its vice-president.

When in 1979 a conservative electoral alliance led by the Social Democrats won the elections and Sá Carneiro became Prime Minister, he entered the government as head of the Prime Minister's Office ( Ministro Adjunto do Primeiro Ministro ). When Prime Minister Sá Carneiro was killed in a plane crash on December 4, 1980 under circumstances that have not yet been clarified , Pinto Balsemão became the new Prime Minister on January 9, 1981.

Pinto Balsemão essentially continued the politics of Sá Carneiro, but did not have his charisma . One of the most important successes of his government was the implementation of a series of constitutional amendments that erased some reforms from the socialist phase after the Carnation Revolution. The Revolutionary Council was abolished and the position of parliament and government in relation to the president was strengthened.

The end of the reign of Pinto Balsemão was increasingly marked by clashes within the governing coalition, especially between Pinto Balsemão and the leader of the centrist party Diogo Freitas do Amaral . When the coalition finally broke up, President Eanes called new elections, in which the opposition Socialists became the strongest party. The leader of the socialists, Mário Soares , succeeded Pinto Balsemão in the office of Prime Minister on June 9, 1983.

Despite his electoral defeat, Pinto Balsemão initially remained party leader of the Social Democrats. Since the socialists were unable to win their own majority in the elections, a grand coalition was formed between social democrats and socialists. Within the Social Democratic Party, there is growing resistance to the coalition with the socialists, which is perceived as unnatural, and thus also to Pinto Balsemão, who supports this coalition. In 1985, Aníbal Cavaco Silva finally succeeded in overthrowing Pinto Balsemão as party leader at a party congress of the Social Democrats. The Social Democrats then left the government and became the strongest party in the scheduled new elections, so that Cavaco Silva became Prime Minister.

In 1984 Francisco Pinto Balsemão was elected to the European Parliament.

Pinto Balsemão is a member of the Steering Committee of the Bilderberg Conference .

Businessman

After the death of the dictator Salazar , Balsemão entered the media business and was also successful in business. In 1972 he founded the weekly Expresso , which has become a reference in current Portuguese society. At the time he was convinced that despite the censorship that was still in force, it should be possible to publish a weekly newspaper of high quality. It was also the start of building up his media group Impresa . This was founded in March 1991 as a holding company and has since become the largest Portuguese media group. It includes the television station SIC , the weekly Expresso and the magazine Visão . At the end of 2010, Impresa had a turnover of 271 million euros. The group has been listed on the Lisbon stock exchange since June 2000 .

Francisco Pinto Balsemão is a great-great-grandson of the Brazilian Emperor Peter I (= Peter IV of Portugal) through his mother .

Honors

• 1983: Grand Cross of the Portuguese Order of Christ
• 2006: Grand Cross of the Order of the Infante Dom Henrique
• 2011: Grand Cross of the Order of Freedom

literature

• Francisco Pinto Balsemao , in: Internationales Biographisches Archiv 22/1996 of May 20, 1996, in the Munzinger Archive ( beginning of article freely available)

Web links

• Entry for Francisco Pinto Balsemão in the European Parliament 's database of deputies

Individual evidence

1. ^ Steering Committee . Bilderberg Meetings . Archived from the original on March 11, 2014. Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved October 16, 2010. 
2. ↑ Impresa Annual Report 2010. ( Memento of the original from May 22, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF) p. 3 (English)  

predecessor	Office	successor
Diogo Freitas do Amaral ( acting )	Prime Minister of Portugal 1981–1983	Mario Soares