Jorge Sampaio, former president of Portugal, has died | He was 81 years old and a key figure in Portuguese democracy

Former President of Portugal and key figure of socialism in the return to democracy of this country, Jorge Sampaio, has died at the age of 81 after being hospitalized for two weeks with breathing problems. The Portuguese government emphasized its humanist view of politics and declared three days of national mourning.

The death of who was a emblem of Portuguese democracy It took place in the capital Lisbon and was confirmed by his family, who accompanied him in the last days of an internment in which the heart diseases with which the ex-president had lived for years were aggravated.

Who was Jorge Sampaio

Sampaio was born in Lisbon on September 18, 1939 and he was president of Portugal between 1996, when he won the elections in the first round, and 2001, when he was re-elected for a second five-year term. In recent years he has reached the peak of a political career that began in the first years of Portuguese democracy, in the 1970s.

He was then special envoy from The United Nations for the Fight against Tuberculosis and high representative of the Alliance of Civilizations. In recent years he has devoted himself to Global platform for Syrian students, which he founded in 2013 and which he still chairs.

“What would you like the people in your life to learn?” They asked him in one of his last interviews. “Resilience,” he replied. Never give up. Even if it is very weak. You still hope that the next day you will still be here, that the night has not ended with us. “

Aftermath of Sampaio’s death

The Portuguese government in charge of Prime Minister, Socialist António Costasaid three days of mourning while finalizing details of the funeral with Sampaio’s family. “He carried out his duties with a civic sense of activism and conviction” that his job was “one more way to exercise citizenship,” the president said.

He was also known for his historic rival, the curator Marcelo Robelo de Sousa. “It showed that you can be born privileged and turn your life towards the disadvantaged, always struggling with serenity”, he declared and defined it as “A great lord of democracy and a great lord of the common homeland”.

Reactions to his death have come from all political backgrounds, highlighting him as a key figure in major national agreements in Portugal. “He knew how to build bridges on the left which allowed new projects in the country and which made him the mayor of Lisbon and later the President of the Republic”, explains the coordinator of the Left Bloc, Catarina Martins.

From the right, the leader of the conservative PSD, Rui Rio, has also agreed to claim this political origin, but also the “excellent” agreement with Sampaio, of which public life takes stock. “exceptionally positive”.

A history of training and activism

Sampaio spent part of his childhood abroad, between United States and England, an experience that marked him, and which was interrupted as a teenager, which took place in Lisbon, where he also obtained his law degree in 1961.

It was in this decade that his political agitation woke up, in particular protesting when he was a student and one of the protagonists of the academic crisis of opposition to the dictatorship, a context in which he participated in the creation of the Revolutionary action movement, radical left.

Already graduated, he got involved in defense and political prisoners, and participated in resistance movements who bet on a democratic alternative with a socialist base.

He would set out to realize this vision after the Carnation Revolution, April 25, 1974, which brought democracy to Portugal. Sampaio was involved in the founding of the Movimiento de Izquierda Socialista (MES, for its acronym in Portuguese), but his presence was nevertheless short-lived due to disagreements with his background.

Then his tone got more subdued, and he came out his profile as a man of encounter and agreements, which makes it a link between democratic institutions and the moderate wing of the Armed Forces Movement, the engine of the revolution.