The adventure of the “liberal wing” – From illusion to disbelief: from General Humberto Delgado’s campaign to the Marcelista spring and his friend Francisco Sá Carneiro
Like many of his generation, Francisco Balsemão’s first political experience was General Humberto Delgado’s campaign for the 1958 presidential elections. “I saw the police knocking and I didn’t like it”, he said in the interview that marked the 40th anniversary of the Expressin January 2013. It was the awakening of a political consciousness complemented by the reading of Sartre, stimulated by a girlfriend he had when he was 24, 25 years old. The politicization course was developed in Popular Diary, where he lived with journalists who had suffered their opposition to the regime, such as Mário Ventura Henriques, a communist militant – and where he was “massacred every day” by Censorship.
Balsemão ended up making forced visits to the political police headquarters, because of the tourism page of the Popularwhich he shared with a journalist “marked” by PIDE. “I had two interrogations, the second of which lasted eight hours.” The most they did to him was threaten that they would arrest him. Less bad.
To “Marcelista spring”
In 1968, Salazar fell from his seat and Marcello Caetano succeeded him as Presidency of the Council of Ministers. The new head of the Government began his term in a “state of grace” fueled by everyone – and there were many – who believed in the imminent opening of the regime.
It was never known whether Caetano himself believed in the “Marcelista spring”. But the truth is that, with the 1969 legislative elections approaching, the president of the Council made a point of reserving, on the National Union lists, a quota of seats in the future National Assembly. To occupy them, he invited a group of cadres, almost all young, not affiliated with the single party and known for defending the liberalization of the political system, with their eyes set on developed Europe.
The leader of this “liberal wing” was the Cascais lawyer José Pedro Pinto Leite, former leader of the student association at the Faculty of Law of Lisbon and president of the Luso-German Chamber of Commerce. It included, among others, the Porto lawyer Sá Carneiro; the president of the Order of Doctors, Miller Guerra; the young Azorean jurist Mota Amaral; Joaquim Magalhães Mota – another lawyer; and the administrator of Popular Diary Francisco Pinto Balsemão. He set conditions: he wanted to see guaranteed the independence – particularly in relation to the Government – that he would have in the new position. Having received these guarantees, he agreed to include his name on the lists of candidates, “especially because I had Zé Pedro Pinto Leite, one of my heroes at Pedro Nunes, goalkeeper for the football team”.
When the X Legislature of the Estado Novo began its work, in 1969, the deputies sat in the hemicycle, as usual, in alphabetical order. Side by side on the bench were two parliamentarians from the new “liberal wing”: Francisco José Pinto Balsemão, 32 years old, elected by the Guard, and Francisco Manuel Sá Carneiro, 35 years old, from Porto. They didn’t know each other, they became friends.
Less than a year later, in July 1970, 38-year-old Pinto Leite died in a helicopter crash during a working visit to Guinea. Sá Carneiro succeeded him as informal leader of the “liberal wing”.
Elected secretary of the Assembly’s Foreign Affairs Committee, Balsemão spoke in the plenary discussing measures aimed at the development of the Serra da Estrela tourism region and asking questions to the Government about the conservation of the national road between Penhas da Saúde and Seia. The deputy began by defending the interests of the circle that had elected him to S. Bento.
“Subversive” proposals
But even in the 1st Legislative Session (1969-1970), he began to deal with hot topics in national politics: asked questions about the likely date for sending the announced press law proposal to the Assembly. In an aside to an intervention by Sá Carneiro, he protested against the cuts made by the Censorship in press reports relating to his previous intervention. The duo Sá Carneiro-Pinto Balsemão was formed and would become a talking point in the following years.
In the 1970-1971 legislative session, Balsemão signed, with Sá Carneiro and other members of the “liberal wing”, a constitutional revision project. It was a breath of fresh air in the outdated “parliament” of the Estado Novo. The document contained proposals that were little less than subversive: if approved, it would enshrine the implementation of public freedoms and individual rights and guarantees. That is, it aimed to reform the regime from within, creating conditions for a democratic transition. In other words: he was doomed to lead.
Despite this, Balsemão committed himself to discussing the Government’s constitutional review proposal and the projects of other deputies. He presented a proposal to amend the law on religious freedom and intervened on the proposed law to protect national cinema and theatrical activity.
Still in 1971, he was co-author, with Sá Carneiro and the “usual suspects”, of a press law project defending the abolition of Censorship and the autonomy and responsibility of newsrooms. It didn’t pass.
Lost illusions
In January 1972, Balsemão, Sá Carneiro and José Correia da Cunha (also from the “liberal wing”) visited political prisoners in Caxias. Following that visit, those deputies denounced the conditions of detention to which political prisoners under the custody of the General Directorate of Security (DGS, the new name of PIDE) were subject and presented a proposal for an investigation into the actions of that political police. It was a scandal in S. Bento.
The 4th legislative session was brief for most deputies from the “liberal wing”. Balsemão also participated in the debate on the media, advocating the creation of radio and television laws. But the “Marcelista spring” had come to an end. After getting lost in a maze of hesitations, Marcello Caetano opted for continuity.
The reaction of the ultras in the Assembly, torpedoing all the proposals of the “liberal wing”, proved that the regime was irreformable. At the beginning of 1973, Sá Carneiro and Balsemão knocked on the door.