LuÃs Marques Mendes
Luís Manuel Gonçalves Marques Mendes ( born September 5, 1957 in Azurém, Guimarães, Portugal) is a Portuguese lawyer and politician of the Social Democrats. Marques Mendes has held several offices in the Social Democratic cabinets after 1985, and from 2005 to 2007 he was President of the Portuguese Social Democrats.
Life
Luís Marques holds a law degree with Lizenziatur ( licenciatura ) from the University of Coimbra. A little later he began even his political career, first as a councilor of the town Fafe near Braga ( 1980-85 ), member of the Social Democrats, he was already 16 years old. Later, he served as vice president of community Fafe ( 1997-99 ) and worked as mayor of Oeiras ( 1988-2005 ). From 1985 Marques Mendes also worked at the national level, initially appointed him Prime Minister Aníbal Cavaco Silva 1985 State Secretary to the Minister of Parliamentary Affairs Fernando Nogueira in his first Cabinet. In 1987 he joined and became the new Secretary of State for the Council of Ministers. In the third Cabinet Cavaco Silva (1992-1995), he was assistant to the Prime Minister with the rank of minister and was again in charge of parliamentary affairs.
After the 2002 parliamentary elections, which won the Social Democrats, the Prime Minister-designate José Manuel Durão Barroso appointed him as the new Minister of Parliamentary Affairs. This department he headed from 2002 to 2004.
Since 1987, Marques Mendes is a member of the Portuguese Parliament, he moved depending on the choice on lists of different electoral districts a (Braga, Viana do Castelo and Aveiro). From 1996 to 1999 he was leader of the Portuguese Social Democrats. After the 2005 parliamentary elections, after Pedro Santana Lopes resigned all his offices, Marques Mendes won in a runoff election for the party presidency against Luís Felipe Menezes with 56 percent of all votes. The party he led then two years, in 2007 he resigned due to internal disputes, since he could not pacify the two wings of the PSD, and had from the beginning a strong intra-party opposition. Luís Felipe Menezes was elected on 27 September 2007 as his successor.
Since 1982 Marques Mendes is married to his wife, he has two children.