Marcelo Caetano - Prime Minister

Prime Minister

In August 1968, at 79, Salazar suddenly suffered a stroke after a fall in his home, and after 36 years as prime minister of the Estado Novo regime, a personal creation, he was removed from power. President Américo Tomás, after weighing a number of choices, appointed Caetano to replace Salazar on 27 September 1968. Tomás never consulted Salazar about this decision. By some accounts, when Salazar died in July 1970, he still believed he was prime minister.

Most of the people hoped that the new 102nd prime minister would soften the edges of Salazar's authoritarian regime and modernize the economy. Caetano moved on to foster economic growth and some social improvements, such as the awarding of a monthly pension to rural workers who had never had the chance to pay social security. The objectives of Caetano's pension reform were threefold: enhancing equity, reducing fiscal and actuarial imbalance, and achieving more efficiency for the economy as a whole, for example, by establishing contributions less distortive to labour markets or by allowing the savings generated by pension funds to increase the investments in the economy. Some large scale investments were made at national level, such as the building of a major oil processing centre in Sines. In 1969, with the replacement of António de Oliveira Salazar by Marcelo Caetano, the Estado Novo-controlled nation got indeed a very slight taste of democracy and Caetano allowed the formation of the first democratic labour union movement since the 1920s. The economy reacted very well at first, but into the 1970s some serious problems began to show, due in part to two-digit inflation (from 1970 and on) and to the short-term effects of the 1973 oil crisis (despite the largely unexploited oil reserves that Portugal had in its overseas territories of Angola and São Tomé and Príncipe that by 1973 were being developed at a fast pace, and were promising sources of wealth in the medium- to long-term).

On the political side, Caetano's power was largely held in check by Tomás, who had been largely a figurehead under Salazar. This was due more to a balance of power and personalities than any constitutional provision. As a result, there wasn't much that Caetano actually could or was willing to do. He considered running for President, which would have given him more power, but dismissed the idea. Caetano made some attempts to blunt the harsher edges of the regime. Among some gestures, the PIDE, the dreaded secret police was renamed the DGS (Direcção Geral de Segurança, General-Directorate of Security). The opposition was allowed to run in the 1969 elections, though it was formally possible since 1945, but again with no realistic chance of winning any seats. The National Assembly during the Estado Novo was not conceived as a chamber for parties, but merely for popular representatives, chosen and elected on single lists. The 1969 and 1973 legislative elections changed little in that practice, and the National Union won all seats, as it happened before.

After Salazar's stroke in 1968, Caetano had taken over the office of Prime Minister and his main slogan was "evolution in continuity", suggesting that there would be a reform of the Salazarist system. His so-called "political spring" (also called Marcelist Spring – Primavera Marcelista) included greater political tolerance and freedom of the press and was regarded as an opportunity by the opposition to gain concessions from the regime. The changes from the "political spring" didn't go far enough for large elements of the population who were eager for more freedom and civil rights and had no memory of the instability that preceded Salazar. However, even these reforms had to be extracted with some effort from the more hardline members of the government, namely Tomás. At bottom, Caetano was still an authoritarian himself, and didn't understand democracy. He was very disappointed that the opposition was not content with the meager reforms that he was able to wring out of the hardliners. Indeed, the elections of 1969 and 1973, as in past elections, were characterized by harsh repression of opposition elements. In 1973, Caetano was pressured by the ultra-right faction inside the Salazarist élite to abandon his reform experiment.

Since the beginning of the 1960s, the Portuguese overseas provinces in Africa had been struggling for independence, but the government in Lisbon was not willing to concede and Salazar sent troops to fight the guerrilla and terrorism of the independence movements. By 1970, the war in Africa was consuming as much as 40% of the Portuguese budget and there was no sign of a final solution in sight. At a military level, a part of Guinea was de facto independent since 1973, but the capital and the major towns were still under Portuguese control. In Angola and Mozambique, independence movements were only active in a few remote countryside areas from where the Portuguese Army had retreated. However, their impending presence and the fact that they wouldn't go away dominated public anxiety. In addition, throughout the war period Portugal faced increasing dissent, arms embargoes and other punitive sanctions imposed by most of the international community.

After spending the early years of his priesthood in Africa, the British priest Adrian Hastings created a storm in 1973 with an article in The Times about the so-called "Wiriyamu massacre" in Mozambique, alleging that the Portuguese Army had massacred 400 villagers at the village of Wiriyamu, near Tete, in December 1972. His report was printed a week before Caetano was due to visit Britain to celebrate the 600th anniversary of the Anglo-Portuguese alliance. Portugal's growing isolation following Hastings's claims has often been cited as a factor that helped to bring about the "carnation revolution" coup which deposed the Caetano regime in 1974.

The combined guerrilla forces of the MPLA, the UNITA, and the FNLA, in Angola, PAIGC in Portuguese Guinea, and FRELIMO in Mozambique, succeeded in their rebellion when their continued guerrilla warfare prompted elements of the Portuguese Armed Forces to stage a coup at Lisbon in 1974. The Portuguese Armed Forces' Movimento das Forças Armadas overthrew the Lisbon government in protest of ongoing war in Portuguese Guinea that seemed to have no military end in sight, as well as in rebellion against the new Military Laws that were to be presented next year (Decree Law: Decretos-Leis n.os 353, de 13 de Julho de 1973, e 409, de 20 de Agosto) in order to cut down military expenses and incorporate militia and military academy officers in the Army branches as equals.