Francisco de Sá Carneiro
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| Francisco Sá Carneiro GCTE, GCC, GCL | |
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| In office January 3, 1980 – December 4, 1980 |
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| President | António Ramalho Eanes |
| Preceded by | Maria de Lourdes Pintasilgo |
| Succeeded by | Diogo Freitas do Amaral |
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| Born | June 19, 1934 Porto |
| Died | December 4, 1980 (aged 46) Camarate |
| Political party | Democratic Alliance (Social Democratic) |
| Spouse | Isabel Maria Ferreira Nunes de Matos de Sá Carneiro (first wife) Ebbe Merete Seidenfaden "Snu" Abecassis (not married) |
| Occupation | Lawyer |
Francisco Manuel Lumbrales de Sá Carneiro , GCTE, GCC, GCL (pronounced [fɾɐ̃ˈsiʃku sa kɐɾˈnɐiɾu]; Vitória, Porto, July 19, 1934 - Camarate, December 4, 1980), was Prime Minister of Portugal for eleven months in 1980. He was the third of five children of José Gualberto Chaves Marques de Sá Carneiro, born at Barcelos on August 31, 1897, a lawyer, and wife Maria Francisca Judite Pinto da Costa Leite, born on March 29, 1908.
A lawyer by training, he became a member of the puppet National Assembly, where he became one of the leaders of the "Liberal Wing", which attempted to work for the gradual transformation of António de Oliveira Salazar's dictatorship into a normal Western European democracy.
In May 1974, a month after the Carnation Revolution, Sá Carneiro founded the Popular Democratic Party (PPD), together with Francisco Pinto Balsemão and José Magalhães Mota, and became its secretary-general. The PPD was soon renamed the Social Democratic Party (PSD); despite Sá Carneiro's original claims to be leading a left-of-centre party, he and the party soon drifted to the right. He was minister without portfolio in a number of provisional governments, and was elected as a deputy to the Constitutional Assembly the next year.
In 1976, he was elected to the Assembly of the Republic. In November 1977, he resigned his office as president of the party, only to be reelected to that office the next year.
In the general election of late 1979, he led the Democratic Alliance, a coalition of his Social Democratic Party, the right-wing Democratic and Social Centre Party, and two smaller parties, to victory. The Alliance polled 45.2 percent of the popular vote and gained 128 of the 250 seats in the Assembly of the Republic; 75 of these were from the PSD. President António Ramalho Eanes subsequently called on him to form a government on 3 January 1980, and formed Portugal's first majority government since the Carnation Revolution of 1974. In a second general election held in October that year, the Democratic Alliance increased its majority. The Alliance received 47.2 percent of the popular vote and 134 seats, 82 of them from the PSD. Sá Carneiro's triumph appeared to augur well for the presidential election two months later, in which Sá Carneiro was supporting António Soares Carneiro (no relation).
His victory was short-lived, however. On 4 December 1980, while on his way to a presidential election rally in Porto, the Cessna 421 he was on crashed into a building in Camarate soon after takeoff from Lisbon Airport. Eyewitnesses claimed they saw pieces falling from the plane just moments after it took off. Rumours have continued to fuel conspiracy theories that the crash was in fact an assassination, but no firm evidence has come to light.
Dependent to a considerable extent on Sá Carneiro's personal popularity, the Democratic Alliance was unable to maintain its momentum in the wake of his death. Faced with a national crisis, the public rallied behind the incumbent President, António Ramalho Eanes, who easily defeated the Alliance candidate in the presidential election a few days later.
The airport where Sá Carneiro was heading has been named after him as Francisco Sá Carneiro Airport, despite objections that it would be in bad taste to name an airport after someone who died in a plane crash.
In recent news, one former bodyguard has come forward and revealed that there was a payment made for sabotaging the plane which resulted in the Prime Minister's death. However he refuses to reveal who the people behind this are. In Portuguese law, after 25 years have passed and no one has been found guilty of the crime in question, the person involved can come forward without any repercussions.
He was married to Isabel Maria Ferreira Nunes de Matos, born at Miragaia, Porto, on October 1, 1936, and had five children:
- Francisco Nunes de Matos de Sá Carneiro, unmarried and without issue
- Isabel Maria Nunes de Matos de Sá Carneiro, unmarried and without issue
- Maria Teresa Nunes de Matos de Sá Carneiro, married to Artur Manuel de Abreu Nogueira, and had two sons:
- Francisco de Sá Carneiro e Nogueira, born at Santo Ildefonso, Porto, on November 9, 1986
- Lourenço de Sá Carneiro e Nogueira, born at Santo Ildefonso, Porto, on December 7, 1988
- José Nunes de Matos de Sá Carneiro, born in Cedofeita, Porto, on April 1, 1963, married at Luso, Mealhada, on September 8, 1991 Isabel Maria Guedes de Macedo Girão, born at Ramalde, Porto, on January 25, 1965, and had an only daughter:
- Inês de Macedo Girão de Sá Carneiro, born at Santo Ildefonso, Porto, on March 21, 1992
- Pedro Nunes de Matos de Sá Carneiro, born in Porto on September 12, 1964, married to Maria Benedita de Matos Chaves Pinheiro Torres, of the Barons of a Torre de Pero Palha, born on May 28, 1967, and had an only daughter:
