António Costa resigned as prime minister on Tuesday, ending a phase that began almost eight years ago, after he became the target of a lawsuit investigating the lithium and hydrogen sectors.
“The dignity of the role of Prime Minister and the trust that the Portuguese have in institutions is absolutely incompatible with the fact that someone who is the Prime Minister is under suspicion for his integrity, good conduct or is the subject of a criminal case. ‘, declared António Costa, who would serve as head of government for eight years on November 26.
Considered a skilled political negotiator, António Costa took office on November 26, 2015, after that year’s parliamentary elections, which the PS lost, but managed to form a minority government supported by the left-wing majority in parliament, an unprecedented solution which became known as device.
Today, after the Public Prosecutor’s Office revealed that the head of the executive branch is the target of a Supreme Court investigation into lithium and hydrogen projects, António Costa made a statement to the country, after being twice accused by the President of the Government received. Republic, to tender his resignation and make it clear that he will not re-apply for the position of Prime Minister.
“It is clear that this is a phase of life that is over,” said Costa, who led three PS governments, the current one of which had an absolute majority and was marked by several controversies.
After four years of construction, Costa led the PS to victory in the October 2019 parliamentary elections, but without an absolute majority and the agreement for parliamentary support for the left not being reissued, António Costa’s second executive finally fell. of the ‘leader’ of the 2022 state budget.
The President of the Republic, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, decided to dissolve the Assembly of the Republic and scheduled early parliamentary elections in January 2022.
The result of this vote was an absolute majority for the PS that few expected, but this last government led by Costa was marked by many resignations, controversies and affairs, but also by a new phase in the relationship between the palaces.
One of the issues that most shocked the PS executive was TAP, whose investigative committee and its developments even led to an institutional conflict between Costa and Marcelo due to the fact that the Prime Minister did not accept the resignation of the Minister of Infrastructure, João. Galamba, a reading with which the President of the Republic did not agree.
António Costa, president of the Lisbon City Council between July 2007 and April 2015, took the first step towards becoming the leader of the PS by defeating his predecessor, António José Seguro, in the primaries – the first open to supporters – held in September 2014, and was subsequently identified as the Socialist candidate for Prime Minister.
Elected general secretary of the PS without direct opposition on November 22, 2014, the decision to enter this race for socialist leadership came after the European elections of that year, arguing that “the historic defeat of the PSD/CDS- coalition did not correspond to a victory for PS of identical size” and the expression that it was “a narrow victory” became famous.
In his first year as leader of the PS, he was confronted with unfavorable factors, such as the successive episodes surrounding the arrest of former Prime Minister José Sócrates, to which Costa responded by defending a strict separation between justice and politics.
He had previously declined to succeed José Sócrates in June 2011, following the defeat of the Socialists in the parliamentary elections in June that year, but in early 2013 he was about to run for the leadership of his party and ultimately supported down.
Son of journalist Maria Antónia Palla and writer and advertising engineer Orlando Costa, Goan and PCP activist, António Luís Santos da Costa was born in Lisbon on July 17, 1961.
At the age of ten, he was already writing television reviews for Século Ilustrado under the pseudonym “Babuch” (boy, in Konkani dialect, from Goa) and says that at the age of 12 he decided to become a socialist. It was also at this age that the police character Perry Mason ‘convinced’ him to become a lawyer.
At the age of 14, he joined the Socialist Youth (JS), a structure in which he began political activities, always closely monitored by the current United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), António Guterres, and achieved particular fame in the academic movement and by encouraging the Democratic Left Convention in 1985.
Graduated in Legal-Political Sciences from Lisbon’s Faculty of Law and with a postgraduate degree in European Studies from Catholic University, he was the politician with whom Mário Soares said he identified most ‘as a young man’ from the mid-1980s linked to sampaísmo, from which it distanced itself only during the governments of Guterres.
António Costa interned at Jorge Sampaio’s law firm, became the national leader of the PS by his hand in 1986, as part of a team led by Vítor Constâncio, always supported Sampaio for the leadership of the party and was his campaign manager at the presidential elections. 1996 elections.
Costa, Minister of Parliamentary Affairs and Justice in the two governments led by Guterres, remained one of the main faces of the Socialists from 2002 onwards, heading the Socialist bench in Parliament during the leadership of Ferro Rodrigues.
In 2004, he ran for the European Parliament in second place on the PS list, in an election in which the Socialists won an absolute majority in mandates, but in which the head of the list, former Finance Minister Sousa Franco, died in the 2004 elections. in the middle of the campaign, after incidents between socialists at the Matosinhos auction.
With José Sócrates as leader of the first socialist government with an absolute majority, Costa was the “number two” of that executive branch, fulfilling the functions of Minister of State and Internal Administration.
Benfiquista, agnostic, married and with two children, António Costa is defined as a confident, restless, persistent and temperamental politician.
He bangs the table and raises his voice in the most heated discussions and is praised for his political skill and negotiating ability, while others call him “maneuverable and Machiavellian” and even compare him to the Russian Rasputin, for the pleasure he gives him in to play. games behind the scenes.
Source: DN
