LISBON - Portuguese voters cast ballots Sunday in a presidential election with polls indicating former centre-right prime minister Anibal Cavaco Silva is far ahead of his five left-wing challengers. Cavaco Silva, who oversaw a period of economic growth as a Social Democrat prime minister between 1985 and 1995, has 52-53 percent support, more than the 50 percent needed for a first round win, four polls published Friday showed.
His closest challengers are Socialist lawmaker and poet Manuel Alegre, 69, running as an independent, and former prime minister and two-time president Mario Soares, 81, who has the backing of the Socialist Party he helped found. The split left-wing field also includes Communist Party leader Jeronimo de Sousa, the chief of the far-left Left Block, Franciso Louca, and Antonio Garcia Pereira who heads the tiny Communist Party of the Portuguese Workers.
Cavaco Silva, 66, is credited with introducing economic reforms as prime minister that, combined with the arrival of billions in aid from the European Union which Portugal joined in 1986, helped lift living standards in the nation of some 10.5 million. |