Marcelo Caetano

Marcelo José das Neves Alves Caetano (17 August 1906 – 26 October 1980) was a Portuguese politician and scholar.

He was the second and last leader of the Estado Novo after succeeding António de Oliveira Salazar.

He also eased press censorship and allowed the first independent labor unions since the 1920s.

A conservative politician and a self-proclaimed reactionary in his youth, Caetano started his political career in the 1930s, during the early days of the regime of António de Oliveira Salazar.

Caetano soon became an important figure in the Estado Novo government, and in 1940, he was appointed chief of the Portuguese Youth Organisation.

Caetano progressed in his academic career at the university, published several works and lectured law.

In jail for political reasons, Álvaro Cunhal, a law student, the future leader of the Portuguese Communist Party, submitted his final thesis on the topic of abortion before a faculty jury that included Caetano.

Between 1944 and 1947, Caetano was minister of the colonies, and in 1947, he became the president of the executive board of the National Union.

There were indeed three generations of militants of the radical right at the Portuguese universities and schools between 1945 and 1974 who were guided by a revolutionary nationalism partly influenced by the political subculture of European neofascism.

The core of these radical students' struggle lay in an uncompromising defence of the Portuguese Empire in the days of the fascist regime.

While opposition candidates were theoretically allowed to stand (as had been the case since 1945), they were subjected to harsh repression.

He also served as president of the Corporative Chamber between 1949 and 1955.

From 1955 to 1958, he was the minister attached to the presidency of the Council of Ministers and was the most powerful man in the regime after Salazar, who was approaching the age of retirement.

Their relationship was tense at times, which stopped Caetano from being a clear successor.

He returned to his academic career and maintained formally-important political functions such as the executive president of the National Union, Caetano became the ninth rector of the University of Lisbon from 1959, but the Academic Crisis of 1962 led him to resign after protesting students clashed with riot police in the campus.

On the other hand, students who supported the regime tried to boycott the anti-regime activism.

He served as prime minister from 1968 to 1974, when he was overthrown during the Carnation Revolution.

He was the son of José Maria de Almeida Alves Caetano and his first wife Josefa Maria das Neves.

Graduated as a Licentiate and later a Doctorate in Law, Caetano was a Cathedratic Professor at the Faculty of Law of the University of Lisbon.

In August 1968, Salazar suddenly suffered a stroke after a fall in his home.

After 36 years in office, the 79-year-old was dismissed by President Américo Tomás.

After weighing a number of choices, Tomás appointed Caetano to replace Salazar on 27 September 1968.

However, no one informed Salazar that he had been removed as leader of the regime that he had largely created.

The opposition was allowed to run in the 1969 election.

Even with those reforms, the conduct of the 1969 and 1973 legislative elections was little different from past elections over the previous 40 years.

The opposition was barely tolerated.

By some accounts, when Salazar died in July 1970, he still believed he was prime minister.

The economy reacted very well at first, but in the 1970s, some serious problems began to show, partly because double-digit inflation started 1970 and partly because of the short-term effects of the 1973 oil crisis despite the largely-unexploited oil reserves, which Portugal had in its overseas territories in Angola and São Tomé and Príncipe that were being developed and promised to become sources of wealth in the medium to long term.

Caetano's political power was largely held in check by Tomás, more by a balance of power and by personalities than any constitutional provision.

On paper, the president's power to remove Salazar had been the only check on his power.

Tomás, like his predecessors, had largely been a figurehead under Salazar, but he was not willing to give as free a hand to Caetano.

As a result, there was little that Caetano actually could or would do.

He considered running for president himself but dismissed the idea.

Although Caetano had been one of the architects of the Estado Novo, he took some steps to blunt the harsher edges of the regime in the so-called "political spring" (also called Marcelist Spring – Primavera Marcelista).

He referred to his regime as a "social state" and changed the name of the official party, the National Union to the "People's National Action" (Ação Nacional Popular).

The PIDE, the dreaded secret police, was renamed the DGS (Direção-Geral de Segurança, General-Directorate of Security).

Many people hoped that the 101st prime minister would soften the edges of Salazar's authoritarian regime and modernise the economy.

Caetano moved to foster economic growth and some social improvements, such as the awarding of a monthly pension to rural workers who had never had the chance to pay social security.

The three objectives of Caetano's pension reform were to enhance equity, reduce the fiscal and actuarial imbalance and achieve more efficiency for the economy as a whole such as by establishing contributions that were less distortive to labour markets and allowing the savings generated by pension funds to increase the investments in the economy.

Some large-scale investments were made at the national level, such as the building of a major oil processing center in Sines.