Mário Soares was the big winner on November 25th. Today I would refuse celebrations

Joaquim Vieira, author of a biography of Mário Soares, says that the historic socialist leader was a “big winner” on November 25th. However, if he were alive today, he would refuse celebrations in parliament. “I put my hands in the fire.”

Mario Soares was a “big winner” of the November 25thby inspiring the creation of Group of Ninewhich stopped the slide towards a left-wing dictatorship,

However, if he were still alive, would refuse to participate in the celebrations in parliament.

The conviction was expressed to the Lusa agency by Joaquim Vieiraauthor of a biography of Mário Soares – which has just hit bookstores, on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the former president of the Republic, on December 7th.

Despite considering it “very difficult” to guess what Mário Soares’ thoughts would be today, Joaquim Vieira ventures: “I would almost put my hands in the fire to say that he would not agree with this type of celebrations which are being organized in the Assembly of the Republic”.

“Mário Soares would believe, and rightly so, that the founding date, and which is the turning point in History, is the 25th of April, and the 25th of November follows from that date and, therefore, has no dignity to be celebrated at the same level, equivalent to the 25th of April”, he maintains.

Mário Soares saved Abril

The author of “Mário Soares, uma Vida”, who now reveals new data about the former president’s personal life in his final years, has no doubt that the historic and first socialist leader was “a big winner” of the 25th of November .

“He realized that there was a danger of subversion of Abril’s valuesthere was a temptation to build a left-wing dictatorial system very similar to those that existed in the Soviet bloc countries.”

That’s why, “was perhaps the first to publicly stand up to say that it was necessary to make a historical correction in relation to April 25th, which was later carried out by 25 de Novembro”, explains the journalist.

Joaquim Vieira points out the “act of courage” that constitutes the so-called Fonte Luminosa rally, in early July 1975and which intended to warn of the danger of the democratic system slipping into a Soviet-type dictatorship, as in the countries of the then Warsaw Pact (a kind of NATO in Eastern European countries).

The famous Group of Nine

“Mário Soares, more than anyone else, had the intuition to realize that things were going in the wrong direction” and “he was very vehement in denouncing what was happening”.

And “only after that did the moderate military organize themselves against this radicalization of the political process, the so-called Group of Nine”, made up of Melo Antunes, Vasco Lourenço, Pezarat Correia, Franco Charais, Canto e Castro, Costa Neves, Sousa e Castro, Vítor Alves and Vítor Crespo.

The Group of Nine was composed of military personnel known for moderate wing of the Armed Forces Movement (MFA) who, on August 7, 1975, released a document known as the “Document of the Nine”, in which they opposed the socialist models of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, as well as European social democracy.

This group instead proposed a third way, based on “the formation of a broad and solid social bloc in support of a national project of transition to socialism”, but “inseparable from political democracy”.

It is then that the Group of Nine – recalls the author of “Mário Soares, Uma Vida” – “will organize itself and launch the operations of the 25th of November, doing so correction to the democratic, liberal path”, in the style of Western Europe.

Joaquim Vieira highlights that Mário Soares “was a pioneer” in this fight“much more than Sá Carneiro or the CDS” and remembers that the Group of Nine “only comes after” the warnings from the then socialist leader.

Against the solemn session

Curiously, Pezarat Correia and Sousa e Castro refused to participate – former members of the Group of Nine – in the evocative session of November 25, 1975 in the Assembly of the Republic, considering that the date is being distorted and cannot be equated with April 25.

Speaking to the Lusa agency, General Pedro de Pezarat Correia and Colonel Rodrigo de Sousa e Castro, both initial members of the Group of Nine, from the moderate wing of the Armed Forces Movement (MFA), indicated that they had received an invitation to attend the session of the 25 November, but declined.

To Lusa, Sousa e Castro said he had refused this invitation because disagree that the Assembly of the Republic marks the 25th of November and the 25th of April with “the same institutional dignity”.

“The two dates are not comparable. Therefore, from the point of view of an institution like the Assembly of the Republic, there cannot be the same treatment. There shouldn’t be the same treatment”, said Sousa e Castro, who was also Captain of April and member of the Revolution Council.

Asked if he agreed with Vasco Lourenço when he stated that the right was the “main loser” of the 25th of November, Sousa e Castro replied that the date “it was an event that put an end to drifts of extremes”.

“Those who were defeated were the extreme left and the extreme right. It was neither the democratic right nor the left”, he said.

General Pezarat Correia told Lusa that he had declined the invitation to participate in the solemn session because he considered that “the 25th of November that is being celebrated there is not the 25th of November” in which he himself participated.

What happened on that November 25th?

On November 25, 1975, around a thousand paratroopers from the Tancos School Base occupied the Monsanto Air Region Command and six air bases, an act that the Group of Nine considered the indication that a coup could be in preparation by the so-called military left.

The attempted uprising of those military units, associated with sectors of the extreme left, was stopped by a device based on the Amadora commando regiment, under the command of lieutenant colonel Ramalho Eanes.

In the now updated book about the life of Mário Soares, Joaquim Vieira writes that “November 25th would mark the end of PREC and the entry into a phase of democratic normalization, with the consecration of the constitutional project and the carrying out of the electoral acts provided for therein” while “Soares was already emerging as the winner of this delicate historical period”.

As for the origin of the attempt at political radicalization, Joaquim Vieira leaves it open whether it was just military personnel linked to the communists, enthusiasts of the Soviet regime, or the PCP itself, citing statements by the then general secretary, Álvaro Cunhal, and the parliamentary leader, Carlos Brito, denying any relationship with that process.

Cunhal would write, in a book published in 1999 and cited by Joaquim Vieira, that “the truth is that there was never a ‘retreat’ or withdrawal because there was never a coup or attempted coup by the PCP”.

Vieira also highlights the role of Ernesto Melo Antunes, the first subscriber of the so-called “Documento dos Nove”, who would go to RTP after the 25th of November to ensure that the legal existence of the communists was not called into question and that “the participation of the PCP in the construction of socialism is indispensable”, an opinion with which Mário Soares would agree.

Joaquim Vieira does not fail to highlight the role of Ramalho Eanes in the entire process, which would merit Soares’ disagreement.

“On the side of the Nine the name of the then lieutenant crotonel António Ranalho Eanes gained notorietychosen as operational commander of the moderates’ military action, who, at the end of the 25th, launched Jaime Neves’ commands against the revolutionary unit that was the Military Police regiment (behind the Palace of Belém), putting an end to the subversion castense in the capital for the price of the lives of three soldiers”, writes Vieira in the book, not forgetting to write that Mário Soares would classify Eanes’ participation in the 25th of November as “an occasional thing”.