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Portugal The Prime Minister
The prime minister of Portugal heads the government and
manages the nation's affairs on a daily basis. The prime
minister
chooses or approves cabinet ministers and directs or
coordinates
their actions. The office thus differs from that in
Britain,
where the prime minister is the first among equals.
Moreover, the
entire cabinet bears responsibility for its actions, not
the
prime minister alone. The prime minister also directs the
operations of the armed forces, although the president is
formally the commander in chief. In other matters as well,
the
prime minister is autonomous, and the president has no
right to
direct the prime minister's policies.
Unlike the president, the prime minister is elected
indirectly. As in other parliamentary systems, the prime
minister
is the leader of the largest party in the parliament or
the head
of a coalition of parties. The prime minister's term may
last for
up to four years, through an entire legislative period,
after
which time new elections. However, the prime minister may
call
earlier elections. The prime minister may ask for a vote
of
confidence from the parliament, but he could also be
ousted by a
vote of no confidence or through a leadership change in
his own
party. If a prime minister proves incompetent, loses
support, or
fails to provide needed national direction, the president
may
also request that a new government be formed.
In the ten years following the Revolution of 1974,
Portugal
was governed by nearly a dozen weak and short-lived
governments,
but the number of prime ministers was not large because
all but
two of them headed more than one cabinet. After mid-1985,
however, the political system attained a greater stability
when
Aníbal Cavaco Silva, head of the Social Democrat Party
(Partido
Social-Democrata--PSD), formed first a minority government
and
then a majority government that lasted the whole 1987-91
legislative period. After his party won 50.4 percent of
the vote
in the 1991 national elections, Cavaco Silva formed
another
government that enjoyed an absolute parliamentary
majority.
Data as of January 1993
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