Pintasilgo seeks highest office in Portugal

Press, 30 July 1985, Page 10

Pintasilgo seeks highest office in Portugal

By

DAVID REID of Reuter

(through NZPA) Lisbon Maria de Lourdes Pintasilgo, a 55-year-old scientist, diplomat and Portugal’s first woman Prime Minister in 1979, is now seeking the highest office in this traditionally male-dominated country — the Presidency. She formally declared her candidacy at a meeting in a Lisbon hotel on Sunday, pledging to “make the unworkable work” and solve the country’s economic and social crisis. She rejects charges that her concept of promoting consensus to avoid “political strangulation” is Utopian, promis ling a new style of Presidency which would open new horizons to the hard-pressed Portuguese people. For five months she was Europe’s second woman Prime Minister after Britain’s Mrs Thatcher. Both graduated as industrial chemists and worked in industry.

“We have always had the habit of imitating the English,” she Joked after being appointed' Prime Minister six years ago; “We only developed a taste for port after the British produced it.” Miss Pintasilgo, a spinster, was once chief engineer at a giant textile plant. She became a member of Portugal’s delegation to the United Nations in 1971 and 1972, her country’s Ambassador to the United Nations educational, scientific and cultural organisation from 1975 to 1979, and adviser to the outgoing President, Antonio Ramalho Eanes. In spite of her reputation as an intellectual, she has a ready wit, a warm smile and what even her enemies have described as a magnetic personality. She is also a militant Catholic and was president of the world congress of Pax Romana in England in 1955 as well as a leading member of Graal, the powerful Catholic women’s

organisation. She is viewed with suspicion by many Catholics and the Right-wing of Portuguese politics, who have accused her of defending policies fundamentally contrary to Catholic doctrine, such as the legalisation of abortion. She is generally recognised, however, as having done much to restore the dignity of Portuguese women. Largely through her efforts as a Government Minister after the 1974 revolution, Portuguese women now have an equal say with their husbands on the disposal of the family home and the education of children. They can work where and when they want to and obtain a passport without seeking their husbands’ permission. The 1978 civil code, largely her brainchild, anulled the concordat with the Holy See, enabling those married in the Catholic Churck to be divorced. Even

partners in broken civil marriages no longer had to find grounds such as adultery to obtain divorce as a six-year separation rule was introduced. Miss Pintasilgo is not a member of any party and she rejects the Leftist label often pinned on her by opponents. But she is still accused by the Right of being a “Third World Marxist” with support among the ranks of the powerful Portuguese Communist Party of the hardliner, Alvaro Cunhal. She retorts that she has support from independentlyminded people from Right, Left and Centre, above party considerations. When she was chosen as a caretaker Prime Minister by President Eanes in 1979, a Lisbon weekly noted that she had entered history as the first woman to govern Portugal since Queen Maria II in 1853. The magazine quoted her as saying:“Better to be queen for an hour than a duchess all your life.” i