Paulo Portas - Political Career

Political Career

Paulo Portas joined in 1975 the youth wing of the Democratic Popular Party (PPD, which in 1976 became PSD Social Democratic Party. He would later profess to have been a staunch follower of PPD's founder Francisco Sá Carneiro, who personally signed off on his full PSD membership in 1978. He quietly left PSD in 1982.

In the early 1990s, when he was Director of the "O Independente," Paulo Portas stated more than once on TV that he "did not want to be a politician." But, in reality, he was moving towards the Centro Democrático Social (CDS) party at full speed. He is credited with helping his former college buddy (Manuel Monteiro) assume leadership of the party and with coming up with new party strategies, such as rebranding the CDS as the Partido Popular (PP) in line with several major conservative parties abroad. In 1995, Paulo Portas formally joined the CDS with the full support of Manuel Monteiro, who put him at the top of the party list in the district of Aveiro thus ensuring that he would become a member of the Portuguese Parliament in that year's elections.

In 1998, after the People's Party (CDS-PP) performed poorly in the 1997 elections, Paulo Portas made his move to control the party by first manoevering to get Manuel Monteiro to resign, and then by defeating his hand-picked successor who underestimated Portas by comparing him to Mickey Mouse. This bitter take-over of the party established Paulo Portas' reputation as a cunning politician who does not hesitate to remove those who stand in his way even if they had formerly been his allies.

Upon taking over the CDS-PP, he immediately sought to energize the party and earn himself name recognition by campaigning in more mediatic ways and soon became known by his appearances in public events that earned him the nickname "Paulinho das Feiras" (in english: "Paulie of the fairs"). He is also said to have brought in political marketing experts to enhance his image and that of the party.

In the 2002 legislative elections, the People's Party won 8.8 percent of the vote and 14 Parliament seats, which were sufficient to form a government majority with the Social Democratic Party that won the election. The CDS-PP participated in two coalition governments from April 2002 to March 2005 and Portas served as Minister of State and National Defence in the first (Durão Barroso) and Minister of State, National Defence and Sea Affairs in the second (Pedro Santana Lopes).

In 2005, president Jorge Sampaio called early elections and the two coalition parties suffered a crushing defeat, with the PP losing 60,000 votes and two of its fourteen seats in Parliament. For the next six years, Paulo Portas again became a Member of Parliament and led his party in the opposition to the ruling Socialist Party (PS). He temporarily lost the party leadership in 2005-06 (to José Ribeiro e Castro) but regained it in 2007. His new strategy for the party was to focus on a few major issues (such as agriculture, tax cuts, fuel prices) in order for CDS-PP to retain conservative voters, who, in the past, supported CDS-PP but voted PSD at election time.

In the 2011 elections, Paulo Portas' opposition strategies paied off and CDS-PP achieved its best result in 30 years. The winning party PSD needed CDS-PP to reach a parliamentary majority and the two parties formed a coaliton government. By his own choice, Portas became Minister of State and of Foreign Affairs and secured 2 more minister slots for CDS-PP. As minister, Portas chose(and relished) devoting himself fully to performing his official functions, in particular traveling abroad, while distancing himself from the difficult decisions related to Portugal's economic austerity program. More than once he kept silent or expressed his disagreement with unpopular measures taken by the government to which he belonged.