Aníbal Cavaco Silva
Aníbal Cavaco Silva was prime minister of Portugal from 1985 to 1995 and its president from 2006 to 2016, the economics professor from the Algarve who took the Social Democratic Party in 1985 as an outsider, won a minority in that October. Then in 1987 he won and 1991 the only two absolute majorities any party has won in the democracy. He governed the ten years of the European money, the structural funds that built the motorways, the bridges, the Expo of 1998 and the schools. They were the years of the growth of four per cent a year that took Portugal from the poorest member to a country with the euro in sight, and of the privatisation of the banks and industries the revolution had nationalised, after he had the constitution's clause against it removed in 1989. There was the labour law that brought a general strike in 1988 and the students to the streets in 1994. He did not smile, spoke of the numbers, and was called the accountant, which was the point. He was born in Boliqueime in 1939, a farmer's son, studied finance in Lisbon and took a doctorate at York, taught at the Catholic University and the New University of Lisbon, ran the Bank of Portugal's research department. He was finance minister in the Social Democratic government of 1980-81 before returning to the university. The party congress of 1985 chose him against the machine's candidate by a few dozen votes. The second majority ended in the recession of 1993 and the bridge blockade of 1994, when the tolls on the Tagus crossing brought the commuters out. He left the leadership before the election of 1995, which the party lost to Guterres. He lost the presidential election of 1996 to Sampaio. The presidency, won in 2006 in the first round, the first for the right since 1974, and again in 2011, was the debt crisis. He sent the second Sócrates government to the polls in 2011 over the austerity package, watched the troika's programme through. In 2015 he kept Costa's left coalition waiting for six weeks before swearing it in, saying he would not have the Communists in government, and then did. He left office in March 2016 and has written his memoirs in four volumes.
- Lived: 1939 CE – ?
- Nationality: Portuguese
- Roles: prime minister, president, economist, politician
