PUBLIC SERVICE: Hard to take him seriously.

«Here comes the mayor

Pedro Santana Lopes takes over from José Manuel Barroso

PORTUGUESE voters feel snubbed. Two prime ministers in a row have quit before delivering promised reforms. Now that José Manuel Barroso has become president of the European Commission they are to have another, whom they have not even elected: Pedro Santana Lopes, mayor of Lisbon.

Mr Santana Lopes's victory in 2001, when he promised a swimming-pool in every neighbourhood, was but a step in the career of a right-leaning populist who exasperates the Portuguese left. His manoeuvring ahead of the 2006 presidential race has attracted more attention than his work as mayor. He became vice-president of the Social Democrats, the dominant party in the centre-right government. When Mr Barroso quit for Brussels, he duly put forward the dapper Mr Santana Lopes as a successor. Yet Mr Barroso and Mr Santana Lopes are old rivals. Mr Barroso has defended the party's social-democratic traditions against the more conservative tendencies of Mr Santana Lopes.

To a moderate socialist like President Jorge Sampaio, the mayor stands for everything his party is against. That is why many urged the president not to give him the job but to hold elections instead. In the end, Mr Sampaio decided that asking Mr Santana Lopes to form a new government would be less damaging than plunging the country into elections two years early. But the president has urged Mr Santana Lopes to press ahead with the reforms Mr Barroso left unfinished, and to sustain fiscal rigour in the face of a soaring budget deficit.

Is he up to the job? José Pacheco Pereira, a critic from his own party, believes not, saying it is “inevitable he will undo the little” that Mr Barroso achieved and try to spend his way to re-election. Others liken Mr Santana Lopes to Italy's Silvio Berlusconi, minus money and media. His only government experience is as a junior minister in the 1990s. What can be expected, says José Manuel Fernandes, editor of the newspaper Público, are surprises, such as Mr Santana Lopes's 1998 announcement that, tired of media gossip about romances and nightclubs, he was quitting public life. A few months later he was elected to the European Parliament, confessing that his love of politics was too strong. It needs to stay that way, for the voters are not in a mood to be spurned again.»

[From The Economist, Jul 15th 2004]