Pedro Santana Lopes
Pedro Santana Lopes (
pron. IPA //) (full name:
Pedro Miguel de Santana Lopes) born
June 29,
1956 is a
Portuguese politician, and was
Prime Minister of Portugal from
2004 to
2005. He is currently a Member of the
Portuguese Parliament.
Santana Lopes was born in
Lisbon, and graduated in Law from the
University of Lisbon, where he was leader of the students Union. He joined the Portuguese
Social Democratic Party (PSD) in
1976, and has remained a member ever since.
In
1979, he became legal advisor to Prime Minister
Francisco Sá Carneiro, and has presented himself as a follower of his for all his political life.
In
1986, he became Assistant State Secretary to Prime Minister
Aníbal Cavaco Silva, an office he left the next year to lead to PSD list to the
European Parliament, where he remained for two years of his five-year-term.
In
1991, Cavaco Silva appointed him
Secretary of State for
Culture. Leaving office, he became president of
Sporting Clube de Portugal, and later the
Mayor of
Figueira da Foz (the only time that he has ever completed a term in office) and then of
Lisbon. During this period he also earned a living as a sports and political commentator; in
1998, he announced his withdrawal from politics, following a comical sketch in private TV station which presented him and his private life in a very unfavourable light.
After three unsuccessful attempts to become leader of his party, Santana Lopes finally rose to vice-president under
José Manuel Durão Barroso, a man who had once called him
"a mix of [astrologer] Zandinga and [sports commentator] Gabriel Alves." When Durão Barroso
July 2004 resigned from his office as Prime Minister and party leader to take up the
Presidency of the
European Commission in early July
2004, Santana Lopes became the head of the PSD. Because the PSD was the major partner in the
coalition government at the time, the Party proposed Santana Lopes for the post of Prime Minister, a position to which he was formally invited by president
Jorge Sampaio on
July 12 2004.
Santana Lopes' leadership was made difficult by a number of inherited economic and political problems. When the PSD had first taken power, the country's economy was in a poor state, with a rising government-spending deficit. Partially because of policies focused on public expenditure of the previous governments (led by
Aníbal Cavaco Silva (PSD) and
António Guterres of the
Socialist Party) and the
early 2000s recession had left the country's economy in a poor state. According to the
Economist Intelligence Unit on 11th January 2005,
"Portugal became the first country to breach the EU's ‘excessive deficit' rule with a budget deficit of 4.4% of GDP in 2001, well above the 3% of GDP ceiling set by the EU's Stability and Growth Pact." The situation inherited by Santana Lopes was little better, as the previous government led by Barroso had been able to comply with European Union directives regarding the deficit only by the sale of publicly owned assets. Santana Lopes himself failed to gain a reputation as a competent Prime Minister. His unusual rise to power, as Barroso's successor rather than by election, contributed to these difficulties. Although his appointment was in fact constitutional, he was not a Member of Parliament but only a
municipal leader, as the Mayor of
Lisbon, and many columnists thus saw him as an illegitimate Prime Minister, a view shared by a large section of the public.
Santana Lopes' short career as Prime Minister began inauspiciously, with some members of government being shuffled between departments on the same afternoon as the government was being inaugurated. His Minister of Defence
Paulo Portas was taken by surprise during the ceremony when he was announced as the
Minister for National Defence and Sea Affairs. Portas' look of surprise when the change was announced was broadcast live on television.
Santana Lopes' period in office was also marked by chaos in the allocation of teachers to schools (more than a month after classes officially started, and resulting from alleged incompetence of the IT provider (designated during the previous Government); the problem was swiftly solved by another small provider), and by claims of pressure exerted on the press, including arranging for the replacement of the information director of the public television channel
RTP, and pressing private television channel
TVI to tone down the criticism of him by a political commentator,
Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, a former leader of his own party, who consequently left the channel.
The beginning of the end of the Santana Lopes Administration occurred on
November 30, when President Sampaio announced that he was going to dissolve the Portuguese Parliament and call
early elections for February 2005, after Henrique Chaves, a Santana Lopes loyalist, resigned after four days as minister for sport, claiming that Santana Lopes lacked "loyalty and truth".
Santana Lopes announced the resignation of the government on
December 11. This resignation did not, however, have any immediate practical effect, since the government continued in a caretaker role until the election. He went on to lead his party to their worst result in parliamentary elections in Portugal; the election of
20 February was won by the
Socialist Party led by
José Sócrates, with whom Santana Lopes had debated every Sunday for one year on the public television station, RTP. Despite expectations that he would follow his coalition partner,
Paulo Portas, and resign on election night, he only announced that he would leave the leadership two days later.
Two days after the inauguration of the new government, he returned to complete his term as Mayor of Lisbon. However, when his party failed to endorse him as a candidate for the
2005 municipal elections, he resigned his office one month before the vote, to assume office as Member of Parliament, which he immediately suspended. The place of Mayor was occupied by the Vice-Mayor, António Carmona Rodrigues, who was elected Mayor in 2005 municipal elections.
Santana Lopes is divorced, and has five children by three ex-wives.
Santana Lopes is known for his
Quaylesque gaffes, which include:
* claiming that the non-existent
Chopin violin concertos were his favourite piece of classical music;
* having his secretary send a postcard to Brazilian author
Machado de Assis (died
1908);
* calling a press conference to announce a threat on his life when in fact he had received a teaser mailing for a book titled
Cuidado com os rapazes ("Watch out for the boys");
* announcing that he would leave the political field in protest for his private life being parodied in a TV show, if the President didn't intervene (he didn't);
* seeming to have missed a formal reception to the Mozambican Minister of Foreign Affairs in order to attend a fashion show;
* postponing the inauguration of some of his vice-ministers in order to attend a wedding;
* appearing lost in the middle of his inauguration speech, with long and embarrassing silences, confusing pages and looking nervous (he said in an interview to newspaper Expresso that it was hot that day, people had already fainted in the audience and he himself wasn't feeling too well, so he tried to cut the speech short).
Co-author with
José Manuel Durão Barroso:
Sistema de Governo e Sistema Partidário, Livraria Bertrand, 1980.
Os Sistemas de Governos Mistos e o actual Sistema Português, Difel Editorial, 2001.
