Sidónio Pais elected president

On 9 May 1918 Sidónio Pais was proclaimed President of the Portuguese Republic and took office with a mandate from a general election. Since December 1917, when after his coup d’état he had assumed the functions of head of state by decree of his own government, he had exercised them provisionally, “until a new election”. Now he could invoke the votes of the electorate. The British chronology of the war records his election under 9 May, but the election itself took place on 28 April; on 9 May the result was announced and Pais officially became president.

An election without rivals

Under the constitution of 1911 the president was elected by parliament. Pais changed these rules by decree, without asking anyone’s consent. A decree of 11 March 1918 gave the vote to all male Portuguese citizens who were 21 or over and had lived in the country for at least six months, without the former literacy requirement. A decree of 30 March regulated the direct election of the president. The first direct election of a head of state in Portugal’s history, and the only one in the time of the First Republic, took place on 28 April, together with the parliamentary elections.

Pais was the only candidate. The three main republican parties, Afonso Costa’s Democrats, the Evolutionists and the Unionists, boycotted the vote. The boycott paralysed the polling stations in the morning, because the electoral boards were to be chaired by councillors of the last municipal councils, and these consisted almost entirely of members of the opposition parties. Instead of at nine, voting in many places began only at around eleven, once the boards had been made up on the spot from those present. Pais cast his vote at about half past twelve in the Belém district of Lisbon, in civilian clothes, in mourning for his recently deceased brother. According to the official website of the Portuguese presidency he received 470,831 votes; some works give a slightly smaller figure. No Portuguese politician had ever had such support before.

The parliament of the “New Republic”

The parliamentary elections were won by the National Republican Party, founded in April by Pais’s supporters. According to Portuguese tallies it won 108 of the 155 seats in the Chamber of Deputies. The monarchists came second with 37 seats, and a few seats went to Catholics and independent candidates. The Senate was to consist partly of elected senators and partly of representatives of economic and professional organisations. This was the base on which Pais intended to build a presidential system, called the “New Republic” by his supporters.

Taking office opened the way to a reconstruction of the government. The existing cabinet, in which Pais had been since December President of the Ministry, that is prime minister, as well as minister of war and of foreign affairs, was to make way for a team of secretaries of state answerable directly to the president. The election, however, did not bring calm. The country was suffering from high prices and food shortages, the republican opposition did not recognise the legality of Pais’s rule, and after the defeat on the Lys in April it was becoming ever harder to provide replacements for the Portuguese Expeditionary Corps in France.