Portuguese prime minister resigns

On 15 May 1918 the first government of Sidónio Pais in Portugal, formed after the December coup, came to an end. A British chronology of the war records under this date Pais’s resignation as prime minister, and under 16 May the appointment of João Tamagnini de Sousa Barbosa as secretary of state for the interior. In reality this was a change of system, not an ordinary cabinet crisis. Pais, since 9 May president elected by popular vote, had no intention of handing control of the government to anyone else. According to Portuguese lists of governments he ceased to be president of the Ministry, that is prime minister, as soon as he took office as president, and on 15 May the existing cabinet was dismissed and a new one appointed, headed by himself as head of state.

Ministers become secretaries

Since 11 December 1917 Pais had combined the post of prime minister with the portfolios of minister of war and foreign minister, and from 27 December he had also exercised the functions of president. Decrees issued in the spring of 1918 without parliament, later called by historians the “constitution of 1918”, turned the First Portuguese Republic into a presidential republic. The president was now both head of state and head of government, and the members of the cabinet were no longer called ministers but secretaries of state. They were answerable to the president, not to parliament. The office of prime minister disappeared. The British chronology notes that between 15 May and 23 December 1918 no one held it, and its duties were performed by the secretary of state for the interior. Portuguese lists simply state that during this time the government was headed by the president.

Tamagnini Barbosa

On 15 May the 34-year-old João Tamagnini Barbosa, an engineer officer born in Macau, minister of the colonies in Pais’s first government and in its last days also acting minister of war, became secretary of state for the interior. He replaced Henrique Forbes de Bessa at the interior. The war portfolio went to Amílcar Mota, the navy to José Carlos da Maia, finance to Francisco Xavier Esteves, and foreign affairs were to be handled by Joaquim do Espírito Santo Lima. The new cabinet was dominated by members of the presidential National Republican Party, founded in April, but it also included non-party men and, after the autumn reshuffle, monarchists as well.

The government of secretaries of state lasted almost to the end of the year. In the autumn, in October 1918, Pais reshuffled it, and after the assassination in which he was killed at Lisbon’s Rossio station on 14 December, it was Tamagnini Barbosa who became prime minister on 23 December. For now, however, in mid-May 1918, Pais held more power in his hands than any Portuguese leader since the days of the absolute monarchy, and his government had to contend with high prices, strikes and the question of reinforcements for the Portuguese Expeditionary Corps, shattered in April on the Lys.