Francisco Sá Carneiro
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| Image:Francisco Sá Carneiro.jpg | |
| Order: | 8th Prime Minister of Portugal (since the Carnation Revolution) |
|---|---|
| Term of Office | January 3, 1979 - December 4, 1980 |
| Predecessor: | Maria de Lourdes Pintasilgo |
| Successor: | Diogo Freitas do Amaral |
| Date of Birth | June 19, 1934 |
| Place of Birth: | Oporto |
| Date of Death | December 4, 1980 |
| Place of Death: | Camarate |
| Political Party: | Social Democratic |
Francisco Manuel Lumbrales de Sá Carneiro (pron. IPA /Template:IPA/; Oporto July 19 1934 - Camarate December 4 1980), was Prime Minister of Portugal for eleven months in 1980.
A lawyer by training, he became a member of the puppet National Assembly, where he became one of the leaders of the "Liberal Wing", which attempted to work for the gradual transformation of António de Oliveira Salazar's dictatorship into a normal Western European democracy.
In May 1974, a month after the Carnation Revolution, Sá Carneiro founded the Popular Democratic Party (PPD), together with Francisco Pinto Balsemão and José Magalhães Mota, and became its secretary-general. The PPD was soon renamed the Social Democratic Party (PSD); despite Sá Carneiro's original claims to be leading a left-of-centre party, he and the party soon drifted to the right. He was minister without portfolio in a number of provisional governments, and was elected as a deputy to the Constitutional Assembly the next year.
In 1976, he was elected to the Assembly of the Republic. In November 1977, he resigned his office as president of the party, only to be reelected to that office the next year.
In the general election of late 1979, he led the Democratic Alliance, a coalition of his Social Democratic Party, the right-wing Democratic and Social Centre Party, and two smaller parties, to victory. The Alliance polled 45.2 percent of the popular vote and gained 128 of the 250 seats in the Assembly of the Republic; 75 of these were from the PSD. President António Ramalho Eanes subsequently called on him to form a government on 3 January 1980, and formed Portugal's first majority government since the Carnation Revolution of 1974. In a second general election held in October that year, the Democratic Alliance increased its majority. The Alliance received 47.2 percent of the popular vote and 134 seats, 82 of them from the PSD. Sá Carneiro's triumph appeared to augur well for the presidential election two months later, in which Sá Carneiro was supporting António Soares Carneiro (no relation).
His victory was short-lived, however. On 4 December 1980, en route to a presidential election rally in Oporto, his plane crashed into a building in Camarate soon after take-off from Lisbon Airport. Eyewitnesses said they saw pieces falling from the plane a moment after takeoff. Rumours have continued to fuel conspiracy theories that the crash was in fact an assassination, but no firm evidence has come to light.
Dependent to a considerable extent on Sá Carneiro's personal popularity, the Democratic Alliance was unable to maintain its momentum in the wake of his death. Faced with a national crisis, the public rallied around the incumbent President, António Ramalho Eanes, who easily defeated the Alliance candidate in the presidential election a few days later.
The airport of Oporto, to which Sá Carneiro was heading, has been named after him, despite objections that it would be in bad taste to name an airport after someone who died in a plane crash.
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