Throughout the night, former and current leaders of the Social Democratic Party reacted to the death of Francisco Pinto Balsemãofounder and number 1 activist who held various roles in the party, in addition to government positions and career in social communicationand who dies at a time when the PSD leads all the main political positions in the country.
Listing Balsemão’s long career as a ruler, as a legislator and as a businessman and journalist, Marcelo stated that Portugal “will never forget” Francisco Pinto Balsemão and classified him as a “visionary, pioneer, creative, determined, hard-working, democrat, social democrat, Europeanist and Atlanticist”.
The prime minister and current president of the PSD, who broke the news to the activists during tonight’s National Council meeting in Lisbon, announced that he intended to declare a day of national mourning on the day that funeral ceremonies are scheduled, and paid “a deep, fair and warm tribute to who is the symbol of our formation, our values and instrument of intervention in our country”.
“Not only through the leadership of the PSD, but also through the leadership of the Government, it helped transform life in the country”, said Luís Montenegro.
Montenegro’s predecessor and also former PSD leader, Rui Rio, recalled the founder of the Impresa group, which owns Expresso and SIC, as a “figure of superior democracy” and highlighted the way he fought for democracy as an independent deputy in the National Assembly, even before the 25th of April and the end of the dictatorship. “The legacy remains the fact that Francisco Pinto Balsemão was the founder of the PSD, and the party has been around for 50 years, in the Government, in the Chambers and everywhere”, stated Rio, speaking to SIC Notícias.
Cavaco Silva, former president of the PSD and former President of the Republic who decorated Pinto Balsemão with the Grand Cross of the Order of Liberty, spoke of a “businessman fundamental to press freedom in our country, as founder of Expresso and SIC”and highlighted the decoration he gave as “the ultimate expression of gratitude for the contribution” of the former prime minister and journalist “to freedom and democracy”.
Speaking to SIC Notícias, another former PSD president and candidate for the Presidency of the Republic supported by the party, Luís Marques Mendes, who was recently supported by Francisco Pinto Balsemão for the next presidential elections, recalled the founder of the Impresa group as “a great friend”, “loyal, supportive, of character”, with an “absolutely remarkable” political life. And he stressed the importance of Balsemão in the 1982 constitutional review: “Even today he has not been properly honored for this”.
To Expresso, Leonor Belezafirst vice-president of the PSD, remembered the times when she was Secretary of State and Balsemão was Prime Minister, times that she shared with “a lifelong friend”. “What I consider to be perhaps his most important legacy is that, having been simultaneously a very prominent politician and a creator of social communication, he always played a very important role in the defense of freedom, in the defense of the media as an entity autonomous from power. A fact in which he was exemplary when he was Prime Minister”, he stressed
The current Minister of the Presidency and vice-president of the PSD reacted to the death of Francisco Pinto Balsemão via Twitter, in a publication where António Leitão Amaro also highlighted Pinto Balsemão as “an essential builder of press freedom, pluralism and liberal democracy”. “He served Portugal as PM, founder of the PSD and one of the largest media groups. His political, civic and free media legacy will endure in history”wrote António Leitão Amaro.
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