Portugal's government quits
2004-12-12 08:36
Lisbon - Portugal, already reeling from an alarming economic decline, plunged deeper into crisis when the conservative government quit a day after the president dissolved parliament and called an early general election.
The chaos in government will translate into months of political paralysis that Portugal, one of the European Union's poorest nations, can ill afford. The crisis will only further delay essential and long-deferred reforms devised to halt the nation's economic slide.
Prime Minister Pedro Santana Lopes announced the government's decision on Saturday after an emergency cabinet meeting. It was a rebuke to Socialist President Jorge Sampaio, who said on Friday he was dissolving parliament and convening early elections on February 20.
Sampaio already announced his intention to call elections after weeks of feuding within the cabinet. A series of public gaffes and organisational foul-ups had beset Santana Lopes' conservative administration since it took office in July.
Sampaio said on Friday he had been forced to act to resolve "a grave crisis of credibility and instability" in the government.
Caretaker government
"It would be bad if after last night's words from the president we kept the same posture and attitude," Santana Lopes said.
"We will undertake our responsibilities, but as a caretaker government. I present here the resignation of Portugal's 16th Constitutional government."
He said he would meet Sampaio on Monday to formalise the government's resignation.
Santana Lopes, a former mayor of Lisbon, replaced Jose Manuel Barroso, who left office four months ago to become president of the European Commission.
At the time, Sampaio rejected appeals from opposition parties for a general election. However, Santana Lopes' term in office has been riddled with problems.
The school year was delayed by weeks because the education ministry was late assigning teachers to schools; the finance minister Antonio Bagao Felix publicly disagreed with Santana Lopes over tax cuts; and the government locked horns with the media for allegedly trying to muzzle its critics at newspapers and TV networks.
Third PM in eight months
With Portugal facing the prospect of electing its third prime minister in eight months, a lack of political continuity is damping hopes for economic recovery. Portugal, one of the European Union's smallest and poorest members, is being left behind by the rest of the bloc.
Recent figures show the country's economic growth has lagged behind the EU average for the past four years and indicate it will continue to do so for at least another two, despite billions of dollars in development aid from EU headquarters in Brussels, Belgium.
The economy is such a mess that Portugal, one of the original 12 EU nations, trails newcomers Slovenia and Cyprus in gross domestic product.
It currently is flailing to find a way out of a recession that was the worst in the EU last year, when the economy contracted 1.3%.
- AP