Former Portuguese leader and media tycoon Pinto Balsamão dies at 88

Francisco Pinto Balsamão, Portugal’s former prime minister who stepped away from front-line politics to build a national media empire in a tumultuous post-coup period, has died. He was 88 years old.

The website of the Portuguese president’s office and the media group he created, Impresa, said he died late Tuesday, but gave no cause of death.

Pinto Balsamão was a cabinet minister when he was selected by his ruling Social Democratic Party in 1981 to replace its Prime Minister Francisco Sá Carneiro, who was killed in a plane crash. lisbon,

The accident occurred under suspicious circumstances during the political turmoil resulting from the 1974 military coup that ended Portugal’s four-decade dictatorship.

Pinto Balsamão was a co-founder of the Social Democratic Party and one of its leading parliamentarians. social democrat Ruled in a coalition known as democratic allianceWith other centre-right parties.

Pinto Balsamão accepted the position of Prime Minister, leading Portugal’s eighth government in five years. He later described taking the job as “the hardest thing I’ve ever done”.

Amid sharp criticism from within his own party over his leadership, tensions in the ruling coalition, and opposition parties repeatedly attacking him as an unelected leader, Pinto Balsamão resigned in mid-1983.

His legacy as a reformist Prime Minister included the revision of the Constitution in 1982, which sought to eliminate some of the leftist ideological features contained in the 1976 version and free the economy from centralized government. The amendment removed the ban on re-privatisation of nationalized companies in the wake of the so-called Carnation Revolution of 1974.

Pinto Balsamão also negotiated terms with the European Economic Community, now called the European Economic Community. European UnionPortugal joined this group in 1986.

After leaving the government he devoted himself mostly to building the weekly newspaper Expresso, which he founded in 1972 and which remains one of the most respected newspapers in the country.

“Portugal has lost one of its most important personalities in the last 60 years,” the Portuguese president said. marcelo rebelo de sousa Said in a statement.

Born on September 1, 1937, Pinto Balsemão graduated in law from the University of Lisbon and completed his mandatory two-year military service, during which he edited the Portuguese Air Force magazine.

He became a lawyer and also worked part-time at the daily paper Diario Popular, in which he had a 16% stake which he had inherited from his father.

After Diario Popular was sold, Pinto Balsamão invested the proceeds in creating Expresso, which was based on British weekly newspapers. Despite the dictatorship’s censorship, Expresso’s investigative journalism and liberal ideas contributed to the fall of the dictatorial regime.

While the dictatorship of Antonio Salazar was still in place, Pinto Balsamão entered the National Assembly as an independent in 1969 – a toothless body with no executive powers, which the government used to tarnish its reputation abroad. He was part of a well-known liberal class of members who were pushing for the adoption of a democratic system of government in Portugal.

Following the introduction of democracy by the Carnation Revolution, he took a seat in the Constituent Assembly, charged with writing the new constitution, and joined Parliament in 1979.

As Prime Minister, he paid an official visit to the United States in December 1982 and met President Ronald Reagan at the White House. At the time, Western Europe and the US still had a wary eye on Portugal, which had ceded its future to NATO and the EEC after the coup, but where the more radical ones seeking an alliance with the Soviet Union still had a mainstream voice.

Expresso became the foundation of Pinto Balsamão’s media group, Impresa, which at one time included more than 30 newspapers and magazines, television and online channels, and other publishing and printing interests.

In 1992 he launched the country’s first private television channel, SIC, which soon became the leading channel.

He told his biographer, Joaquim Viería: “Everything I have done in life has had as its constant theme and main objective… the fight for freedom of expression in general and, in particular, the right to inform and be informed.”

Pinto Balsamão served as President of the European Publishers Council and led the European Institute for Media. He also held senior positions in other European media groups.

He is survived by his second wife Mercedes, five children, and several grandchildren.