SOARES, MRIO (ALBERTO NOBRE LOPES)

born Dec. 7, 1924, Lisbon Socialist politician and lawyer, who became president of Portugal in 1986, becoming the country's first elected civilian head of state in 60 years. His father, Joo Lopes Soares (d. 1970), had been a liberal republican, often jailed or exiled during the dictatorship of Antnio Oliveira Salazar. The young Soares studied at the University of Lisbon and at the Faculty of Law, Sorbonne, Paris, becoming a student activist and thereafter taking up a law practice defending political dissidents. By the time that the Army-imposed, right-wing dictatorship fell in 1974, Soares had been jailed 12 times and twice experienced exile, in So Tom (1968) and Paris (197074). In 1964 he and others founded a clandestine society, the Portuguese Socialist Action, which by 1974 had transformed into the Portuguese Socialist Party (Partido Socialista Portuguesa). From 1974 to 1975 Soares was foreign minister in the new but still military-controlled government and oversaw the negotiations for freeing Portugal's overseas colonies. In 1976 he became the first constitutionally elected prime minister since the 1974 revolution (serving 1976, 197678, and 198385) and in 1986 became the first civilian head of state (president) since 1926, ending 60 years of Army overlordship. Soares authored a number of books on philosophy and politics, including a partly autobiographical work, first published in Paris, Le Portugal baillonn: un tmoignage (1972; Portugal Muzzled: A Testament; Eng. trans. Portugal's Struggle for Liberty).