Word: cunhal
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Soares began the final round of the campaign trailing by 21 points. Faced with almost certain defeat, the fragmented left mobilized behind the Socialist candidate. Communist Party Leader Alvaro Cunhal reluctantly endorsed Soares as "the lesser of two evils." A hard-liner, Cunhal instructed rank-and-file party members "to close your eyes and vote for Soares." The Communist vote, which accounted for some 18% of the total, proved to be decisive. Although he had not sought Communist support, Freitas do Amaral charged during the campaign that Cunhal's endorsement raised the danger of "uniting the democratic and nondemocratic left...
Despite Soares' aggressive leadership, many of his backers fear that the austerity moves, which are expected to cost thousands of jobs, will erode his public support. Communist Leader Alvaro Cunhal has already declared war on what he calls Soares' "policies of national disaster." The question, in the words of one Cabinet minister, "is whether Soares will be able to remain the same after the social unrest begins-as it will when our tough measures begin to take effect...
Scares' Socialists, punished by the voters for their dilatory performance while in power, got only 27% of the vote, vs. 35% in 1976. Although the share of the vote won by the Alliance parties was up by 4%, substantial gains were posted by Alvaro Cunhal's pro-Moscow Communists, whose share grew from 14.6% to 19%, reflecting increasing influence not only in industrialized Lisbon but also in the conservative, Roman Catholic north. With the next election due in the fall of 1980, Sa Carneiro must prove quickly that his government can do better than its predecessors in coping...
From the first, Soares had insisted on governing without political alliances. Any compromise, he feared, would further polarize the country's politics. A leftist front involving Alvaro Cunhal's Communists, the most rigid, undemocratic Stalinist party in Western Europe, would alienate the conservative north and scare off sorely needed Western capital. But an attempt to form a coalition with the Social Democrats and the C.D.S.-which Soares last week castigated as "parties of the extreme right"-would have alienated his own party's rank and file. Meanwhile, the Socialists had the unenviable task of trying to right...
...formula worked fairly well for a while. A skillful tactician, Scares secured support from Alvaro Cunhal's Communists on such important measures as regulating strikes, then turned around and gained the backing of Francisco Sa Carneiro's centrist Social Democrats (P.S.D.) and Diogo Freitas do Amaral's rightist Social Democratic Center (C.D.S.) on a Communist-opposed bill that permits the firing of workers for cause...