Portugal’s democracy founder Mario Soares dies aged 92
LISBON: Portugal’s former president Mario Soares, widely seen as the father of the country’s modern- day democracy, died Saturday aged 92 a fortnight after being admitted to hospital.
The founder of Portugal’s Socialist party, Soares spent decades in politics and spearheaded the country’s entry into the European Union. He was president from 1986 to 1996 after serving as foreign minister and prime minister, and later became a European lawmaker.
Portugal declared three days of national mourning from today and his state funeral will be held tomorrow, the presidential office told AFP.
“We have lost today someone who has so many times been the face and the voice of our freedom, for which he fought all his life,” said the country’s current prime minister and fellow Socialist Antonio Costa.
Soares had been admitted to hospital in Lisbon on December 13, and although his condition initially showed signs of some improvement, he later fell into a deep coma from which he never recovered.
The hospital did not reveal the precise cause of Soares’s death, but relatives say he never fully overcame a spate of illnesses in 2013. His health further deteriorated after his wife’s death in July 2015.
The new United Nations secretary-general, ex-Portuguese premier Antonio Guterres, hailed Soares as ‘one of the rare political leaders who had real stature in both Europe and the world’.
Former Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff said that Soares was ‘adored by the people and respected by his adversaries’.
Born in Lisbon on December 7, 1924, Mario Alberto Nobre Lopes Soares was raised in a family opposed to the dictatorship of Antonio Oliveira Salazar.
His father Joao Soares, a defrocked priest, struggled against the regime for decades, suffering long periods of imprisonment and exile.
Reassuringly portly, Mario Soares was both a charmer and a humanist known for being spontaneous and warm.
A self- defined agnostic, Soares said he believed in ‘humanity and its improvement’, and described himself as being driven by ‘a great desire to live and by immense curiosity’. — AFP