40 years of Cavaco Silva's influence

Aníbal Cavaco Silva was sworn in for the first time as Prime Minister of Portugal on November 6, 1985. At the time, aged 46, the newly elected President of the PSD, consecrated leader at the famous PSD Congress in Figueira da Foz, won the 1985 legislative elections with just over 25% of the vote: the starting gun had been fired for the Cavaquismo era, which appears in the history of Portuguese politics as an era of its own, almost separable from the Second Republic itself.

Back in 1985, little was expected of Cavaco Silva as Prime Minister, and his government was not expected to have a long life. As Cavaco Silva rightly recalled in his speech on November 5th , "Deputy Manuel Alegre said that it was a government destined to die."

On November 6, 1985, the 10th Constitutional Government began, succeeding the Central Bloc Government led by Mário Soares between 1983 and 1985, with Carlos Mota Pinto, leader of the PSD, as Deputy Prime Minister (who was succeeded, for a brief period, by Rui Chancerelle de Machete). A period of political paralysis, financial crisis, economic stagnation, and a total absence of a reformist spirit.

It should be noted that Cavaco Silva was not an unknown or a complete outsider to Portuguese politics, having already served as Minister of Finance and Planning in Sá Carneiro's AD government between 1980 and 1981. However, he was, at the very least, an unlikely candidate, and therefore his election as President of the PSD was a great surprise, when everything suggested that the winner would be João Salgueiro, a motorcyclist (from the so-called Coimbra Group), who advocated agreements with the PS, much like the Central Bloc that had been in place until then.

Cavaco Silva was against this idea of ​​Central Bloc agreements and was determined to break with this line that the PSD had followed since 1983, which, together with the announcement that he had agreed with Freitas do Amaral to support his presidential candidacy in 1986, earned him victory in the famous Congress where he had only gone to "break in" his new Citroën BX.

A hesitant supporter of Cavaco in Figueira, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa even guessed at the time that "if Cavaco comes, he'll stay there for 10 years". Mário Soares' reaction to Cavaco Silva's election as President of the PSD was much more interesting : "That professor? Who does he think he is, coming from who knows where?" , and he accused him of "not having a curriculum" . Meanwhile, the defeated João Salgueiro said that "[a] lot of asylums are full of fake Napoleons".

In 1985, with a minority government, amidst great political turmoil caused, in part, by the newly created PRD party, whose leading figure was Ramalho Eanes. This political turbulence led to a motion of censure against his government in 1987, approved by the opposition, which caused his downfall. What is certain is that this red card to Cavaco Silva's first government turned out better than expected, and Cavaco Silva won the 1987 legislative elections with an absolute majority, in a resounding fashion: 45.8% of the vote, a 20% increase compared to the 1985 elections. In 1991 he was re-elected, again with an absolute majority – 45.3% of the vote.

Mr. Silva – as Alberto João Jardim, who in 1985 encouraged him to attend the Figueira da Foz Congress and who at that Congress obtained the signatures he needed to formalize his candidacy for the PSD, called him at one point – was Prime Minister for 10 years, 8 of which were with an absolute majority.

Those 10 years were the most prosperous economic years for the country. Cavaco did something that, at the time, the Socialist Party was incapable of doing: reforms. It was precisely with this intention that Cavaco Silva said from the beginning that he did not need agreements with the Socialist Party. Cavaco reformed the country in several areas: infrastructure, health, education, taxation, and of course, the economy. In 1987, Portugal grew by 6.8%, maintaining values ​​close to that until 1990.

It is true that during this period the famous European funds for European integration arrived in Portugal, but Cavaco did not simply receive them: he implemented reforms, modernized the country. He elevated the country to the European level of cosmopolitanism and contemporaneity. What other Portuguese government has even made a tenth of the reforms that Cavaco Silva made (except for Passos Coelho's, which he did in an exceptional political context)?

Isn't it telling that the only Prime Minister who came close to Cavaco's time in office – António Costa, who was Prime Minister for 8 years – even went so far as to say "don't talk to me about structural reforms"?

Cavaco Silva, a contemporary of Thatcher, Reagan, Clinton, Bush Sr., Mitterrand, Helmut Kohl, and Felipe González, brought to Portugal a new world: Europe, globalization, economic dynamism, and the opening of borders (not just physical ones). But, beyond catapulting Portugal in its position in the world and in Europe, Cavaco Silva, as Prime Minister, cultivated above all a new way of doing politics and of being (or not being) a politician.

Cavaco Silva was impenetrable, solitary, even distant. He didn't yearn for consensus; instead, he asserted his convictions. He was a statesman. He wasn't vulgar, and, according to himself, he wasn't a politician. He didn't care about the elites and barons of national politics because he didn't belong to them and wasn't born from them. He wasn't a crony of the Lisbon court – he was an economist and university professor, the son of a gas station owner from Boliqueime. He always cultivated the image of an anti-politician, someone who came from outside, who was only on a mission and who didn't make politics his profession.

Ignoring the popular commotion that sometimes arose, ignoring the farcical criticisms and the ignominy of the media of his time, but rather focusing on his convictions, his decisions, and the sense of right and wrong of someone who was never wrong and rarely had doubts. This famous phrase, supposedly uttered by Aníbal Cavaco Silva, while perhaps demonstrating some arrogance, symbolized the political persona he built over decades: the impenetrable decision-maker, immune to the intrigues of the political court and the media.

It is therefore curious that Cavaco Silva is, today, indisputably the greatest politician of contemporary Portuguese democracy, as we know it today – note the period I am referring to, because it is undeniable to me that Mário Soares and Sá Carneiro are, without a doubt, the greatest politicians of the post-revolution era.

If we consider only the period after 1982, when democracy was consolidated with the end of the tutelage of the Council of the Revolution, Cavaco Silva is the major figure. 10 years as Prime Minister. 10 years as President of the Republic. A reformist. Absolutely majority-based, and never interested in being consensual.

It gave rise to a new political class in the 80s and 90s, with Durão Barroso, Braga de Macedo, Leonor Beleza, Fernando Nogueira, Mira Amaral, Miguel Cadilhe, António Capucho, Manuela Ferreira Leite, Marques Mendes, Álvaro Barreto, Laborinho Lúcio, Pedro Santana Lopes, Luís Filipe Menezes, and Castro Almeida. A political class that is still considered the ultimate reference in Portuguese politics today.

Even as President, although many today, unfairly, do not appreciate him, he always preserved the dignity of the office. He did not vulgarize it. He made discretion, silence, and sobriety his greatest weapons – when he spoke, we all listened. In institutional settings, however, he did influence and pressure political actors. It was under his leadership that Portugal experienced one of the most defining moments in its history – surviving the financial collapse.

Cavaco Silva is, therefore, an entity. With an undeniable historical weight. With an immovable political authority. With an aura of a senator that, at 86 years old, makes any room fall silent to listen to him. He belongs to the golden age of Portuguese, European, and world politics.

On November 5th, the Portuguese government honored these 40 years of Cavaco Silva's presidency, and rightly so. Portugal owes much to Aníbal Cavaco Silva, who created European Portugal, the modern Portugal of the 21st century. If today we are a developed country, it is important that posterity remembers that we owe much of it to Cavaco Silva's presidency.