Pedro Santana Lopes - Gaffes

Gaffes

Santana Lopes is known for his Quaylesque gaffes, which include:

• claiming that the non-existent Chopin violin concertos were his favourite pieces of classical music;
• having his secretary send a postcard to Brazilian author Machado de Assis, who died in 1908;
• calling a press conference to announce a threat on his life when in fact he had received a teaser mailing for a book titled Cuidado com os Rapazes ("Watch out for the boys");
• announcing that he would leave politics in protest at his private life being parodied on a TV show, if the President didn't intervene (he didn't);
• seeming to have missed a formal reception for the Mozambican Minister of Foreign Affairs in order to attend a fashion show;
• postponing the inauguration of some of his Secretaries of State in order to attend a wedding;
• appearing lost in the middle of his inauguration speech, with long and embarrassing silences, confusing pages and looking nervous (he said in an interview to the Expresso newspaper that it was hot that day, people had already fainted in the audience and he himself wasn't feeling too well, so he'd tried to cut the speech short);
• in the Portuguese Parliament, in 2008, saying that the country was emitting too many kilowatts of carbon dioxide. The latter is a substance and thus is measured in tons; a kilowatt is a power unit.