The Partido Popular (known in English as the People's Party) is a Portuguese political party. Led by the outgoing Defense Minister, Paulo Portas, this party holds 12 seats in the 230-member Assembly of the Republic. It is regarded as the most right-wing of the parliamentary parties in Portugal, and has historically been close (albeit unofficially) to the Roman Catholic Church. In the 1980s and early 1990s, its members in the European Parliament used to sit with the European People's Party, but are now affiliated with the Eurosceptic Union for a Europe of Nations.
Founded in 1975 by Diogo Freitas do Amaral, the People's Party has been a relatively small, but significant, player on the Portuguese political scene. It enjoyed its greatest popularity in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when together with the Social Democratic Party and a couple of other parties, it formed part of the Democratic Alliance . In 1983 the Alliance was dissolved, and the People's Party lost 16 of its 46 parliamentary seats later that year. In the general elections of 1987 and 1991, the party was decimated as its supporters went over en mass to the Social Democrats, whose leader, Aníbal Cavaco Silva, appealed to the same constituency as the People's Party- for a time, the party was reduced to four members of parliament, earning the nickname taxi-party. Support for the People's Party held up in local government elections, however, as well as for elections to the European Parliament, and its support in parliamentary elections partially recovered, though not to previous levels, after Cavaco Silva retired and some of the party's former supporters returned to the fold. In the three following elections, it has won between 14 and 16 seats.
In the Portuguese legislative election, 2002 , the failure of the PSD, led by Durão Barroso, to get an absolute majority of MPs, led to CDS/PP participation in government for the first time in almost 20 years. Joining the coalition government, party leader Portas became Minister for Defence. Celeste Cardona became Minister for Justice, while Bagão Félix (a PP fellow-traveller) was chosen to be Minister for Social Affairs.
In the Portuguese legislative election, 2005, the party lost votes and 2 MPs. Combined with the crushing defeat of its coalition partner, the PSD, and the failure of all the aims the party leader, Paulo Portas, had set for the elections, led to his resignation from office.
The party's abbreviation, CDS/PP, comes from Centro Democrático Social, the party's original name.
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