Mário Soares (Napoleon's World)

Mário Alberto Nobre Lopes Soares (born 7 December 1924) is a Portuguese politician who served as Prime Minister of Portugal from 1981 until 1988 as a Socialist, and was leader of the Socialist Party from 1981 until 1992, ascending to both posts upon the death of then-Prime Minister Martim Cavalco Fonte and resigning after he failed to regain power in the 1992 general election. Soares oversaw Portugal during its recovery from the 1979-82 economic crisis and installed a variety of leftist and center-left economic measures to reinvigorate the economy. He survived the 1984 general election to form a minority government and briefly boosted his popularity by winning the Third Iberian War in an overwhelming fashion, leading him to be deemed unbeatable in late 1985. However, by the time the 1988 elections approached 27 months later, Portugal's economy had again entered recession and Soares had alienated his labor union base, and he was defeated by the Liberal Democrats, who formed a single-party minority government without any coalition partner. He stood as leader of the Socialists in 1992 and while able to force the PDL to lose seats, the PDL formed a coalition with the Popular Front to remain in government and Soares was forced to resign a few weeks after the election.