Browsing by Author "Sousa, Francisco da Cruz Ribeiro da Costa Barreira de"
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- Os pactos MFA-Partidos e as origens do sistema de governo da Constituição de 1976Publication . Sousa, Francisco da Cruz Ribeiro da Costa Barreira de; Cruz, Manuel Braga daThe following paper is about the origins, negotiation and content of two Constitutional Pacts brokered between representatives of the main Portuguese political parties and the MFA (Portuguese Armed Forces Movement) during the period which followed the 25 April 1974 military coup in Portugal. The purpose of this exercise was to establish who the author of the system of government written into the 1976 Portuguese Constitution was. Whether it was the representatives elected to the Constitutional Assembly, which began its work on 2 June 1975 – the first Pact had been signed on 2 April, and the elections for this Assembly occurred on 25 April – or whether it was unelected military men in the aforementioned negotiations with then as yet unelected politicians. It was necessary to reconstruct the historical narrative of the period 25 April 1974 – 25 November 1975 in order to deal with the origins and negotiation of both Pacts. Political analysis sufficed to deal with their content. The content of the first Pact was compared with the content of the systems of government inscribed into the Constitution drafts handed by the representatives of the political parties in the Constitutional Assembly in July 1975. Events led to the negotiation of a second Pact after the suppression of a failed Communist coup on 25 November 1975. This Pact was negotiated from 17 December 1975 – 26 February 1976. Both Pacts’ systems of government were compared with each other. Their content was then compared with that of the final Constitution agreed upon by elected representatives in the Constitutional Assembly on 2 April 1976. The conclusion reached is that the MFA was, if not the sole author of the system of government inscribed in the 1976 Portuguese Constitution, certainly its principal contributor. Thesis word count: 60,710, including footnotes.