The Technocrat

A surprise choice as Premier

"Portugal has a new manager," exclaimed Walter Marques, a director of the Bank of Portugal, last week. So it had. President Antonio Ramalho Eanes had ended a two-week-long government crisis by tapping his favorite industrial technocrat, Consulting Engineer Alfredo Nobre da Costa, 55, to follow Socialist Party Leader Mario Soares as Premier.

Selection of Nobre da Costa was Eanes' way out of the bind bestowed on him by Soares, whose party holds 102 seats in Portugal's fractious 263-member parliament. Eanes fired Soares when the fragile governing coalition came apart as a result of restiveness on the part of the supporting Social Democratic Center Party, a more conservative-leaning group than the Socialists. Soares did not want to go. As leader of the largest single parliamentary bloc, he felt that Eanes would have to call him back to mediate the standoff resulting from his departure, or else call elections not scheduled to be held until 1980. Soares, Portugal's first freely elected Premier since the April 1974 revolution, was as surprised as everyone else by Eanes' choice -- and more bitter than many. He said the move was "unconstitutional."

Not necessarily. Although Portugal's constitution constrains the President to "take into consideration the results of elections," Eanes seems to take the interpretation that he can ask anyone he wants to be Premier -- so long as that person can form a Cabinet, present an acceptable program to parliament within ten days and then survive a confidence vote. His choice of Nobre da Costa indicates Eanes' feeling that administrative competence is more desirable at the moment than political popularity. Nobre da Costa is being presented to the country as a transitional Premier with a mandate to restore confidence in the floundering economy and prepare for elections.

Nobre da Costa has no political following, but his specialty is managerial competence. Politically independent, but more centrist than the Socialists, he has managed to survive all the vicissitudes of Portuguese politics, largely as a result of his administrative skills. Educated in Lisbon and London, Nobre da Costa has been called a "supertechnocrat." For many years an employee of the Champalimaud industrial empire, Portugal's second largest financial complex, he once served as Minister of Industry in Soares' government -- at Eanes' insistence. Nobre da Costa is known as a free-enterpriser who gets things done no matter how many toes he has to step on. Says an auto executive: "I didn't exactly reach for a bottle of champagne when he was named [Premier], but I must admit that he will inspire confidence among businessmen."

That is something Portugal needs badly, with inflation at an annual rate of 21%, hefty loans outstanding from the International Monetary Fund and the prospect this year of 3% economic growth. The question is whether Nobre da Costa can live with a parliament dominated by parties considerably to the left of him politically. Eanes thinks that Nobre da Costa can -- and since no one, including Soares' Socialists, is anxious to have elections right now, he may be right.

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