Portuguese gov't resigns ahead of elections
(Agencies)
Updated: 2004-12-12 10:48

The Portuguese government resigned on Saturday to avoid turf battles with President Jorge Sampaio in the run-up to snap elections in February.

Center-right Prime Minister Pedro Santana Lopes, in office less than five months, said his government would run the Iberian country in a caretaker status until the Feb. 20 vote.

Santana Lopes' Social Democrats could face a rout in the elections since they badly trail the opposition Socialists in opinion polls.

"We are defining our status. We are not running, we're staying at our post," the prime minister, flanked by his cabinet, said in a televised address.

Santana Lopes said his resignation along with his cabinet was a reaction to Sampaio's warning on Friday in scheduling the snap elections that the government would be "politically limited" ahead of the polls.

"It would be bad if the government were to hear the president's words and keep the same attitude," said Santana Lopes, who defended his government's performance.

He will meet Sampaio on Monday to formalize the resignations. Santana Lopes said he had canceled a summit meeting with French leaders set for Monday in France.

Sampaio dissolved parliament on Friday and set elections, saying instability in Santana Lopes' government threatened to damage Portugal, Western Europe's poorest country.

Santana Lopes's brief tenure was marked by a minister's resignation, slumping polls, a negative outlook from the Standard & Poor's credit rating agency, and allegations of government interference with the media.

Santana Lopes, then number two in the Social Democrats, took over as prime minister when Jose Manuel Barroso left Portuguese politics in July to head the European Commission.

Sampaio had agreed to Santana Lopes taking over without elections. However, he warned that Santana Lopes would be under scrutiny to follow Barroso's policies.

Instead, Santana Lopes loosened an austerity program that Barroso had designed to close a budget gap that breached euro currency zone limits in 2001.

Political analyst Antonio Jose Teixeira said caretaker status would clarify the boundaries within which Santana Lopes could act and reduced areas of potential conflict with Sampaio.

"With this done, Santana Lopes clearly has a status of caretaker, it's more self-limited, more defined during a time period until elections held," he told private TSF radio.

February's elections will usher in Portugal's fourth government since late 2001. Polls had been scheduled for 2006.

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