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Portugal Military Dictatorship
The coup d'état was bloodless because no military units
came
to the aid of the government. On May 30, the president of
the
republic, Bernardino Machado, turned the reins of power
over to
Commander José Mendes Cabeçadas, a naval officer and
staunch
republican, not to General Gomes da Costa, the titular
leader of
the military uprising. This resulted in two months of
behind-the-
scenes infighting among various factions of the military.
The
promonarchist tendency within the May 28 Movement, as the
coup
was called, allied itself with right-wing but not
necessarily
monarchist junior officers who wanted some form of
authoritarian
state. In the hope of preventing the rise of a monarchist
or
authoritarian regime, Mendes Cabeçadas formed a joint
government
with Gomes da Costa on June 1. On June 17, Gomes da Costa
ousted
Mendes Cabeçadas and his followers from the provisional
government. General da Costa's supremacy was temporary; he
too
was ousted on July 9. On the same day, General Óscar
Fragoso
Carmona was named head of the military government.
The military government was now in the hands of
monarchists
and authoritarian officers, and it seemed as if a
restoration of
the monarchy would follow. This was not to be, however,
because
of the reaction that such an outcome could have provoked
among a
substantial number of republicans within the officer
corps.
Carmona, who was both a republican and a devout Catholic,
was
acceptable to a broad range of views. He carefully
preserved a
balance between pro- and antimonarchists and pro- and
anticlerical officers in order to ensure that the military
regime
would survive. On March 25, 1928, General Carmona was
elected to
the presidency of the republic and appointed Colonel José
Vicente
de Freitas, a staunch republican, as prime minister, which
virtually assured that the monarchy was not going to be
restored,
at least not during the military dictatorship.
Carmona named António de Oliveira Salazar, a professor
of
political economy at the University of Coimbra, as
minister of
finance. Salazar accepted the post on April 27, 1928, only
after
he had demanded and had been granted complete control over
the
expenditures of all government ministries. In his first
year at
the Ministry of Finance, he not only balanced the budget
but
achieved a surplus, the first since 1913. He accomplished
this
feat by centralizing financial control, improving revenue
collection, and cutting public expenditures. Salazar
remained
minister of finance as military prime ministers came and
went.
From his first successful year as minister of finance,
Salazar
gradually came to embody the financial and political
solution to
the turmoil of the military dictatorship, which had not
produced
a clear leader. Salazar easily overshadowed military prime
ministers and gradually gained the allegiance of
Portugal's young
intellectuals and military officers, who identified with
his
authoritarian, antiliberal, anticommunist view of the
world.
Moreover, Salazar's ascendancy was welcomed by the church,
which
saw in him a savior from the anticlericalism of the
republicans.
It was also welcomed by the upper classes of landowners,
businessmen, and bankers, who were grateful for his
success in
stabilizing the economy after the financial crisis of the
First
Republic.
Data as of January 1993
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