Big day for 'Babush': Goans cheer as Antonio Costa, Portugal's new PM, has roots in coastal state

Editor’s Note: This article was original published on 14 November

Portugal’s ‘Gandhi’, 54-year-old Antonio Costa, who has become the new Prime Minister of Portugal after the coalition of leftist parties reached a majority, has a Goan connection.

Kin and supporters of the left-leaning former Lisbon mayor, who won Portuguese hearts and earned the humble moniker after he transformed the fortunes of Mouraria, a drug-infested and prostitution-ridden neighbourhood of the Capital, cannot contain their joy as Costa appears to be just a step away from taking over reins of the debt-ridden former colonial country, which ruled Goa for 451 years.

“Yes, we are definitely proud of how he has managed to reach the top echelons of the Portuguese political sphere,” Antonio’s first cousin, Anna Kaarina Jussilainen Costa told Firstpost.

Anna lives in the more-than-a-century-old Costa ancestral house, one of the many which line the stunning Rua Abade Faria in Margao town, 35 km from Panaji.

Anna’s mother and Antonio’s paternal aunt Sinikka Jussilainen Costa, also has fond memories of Antonio’s Goa sojourns.

“On one of his later visits, some 15 years ago, he came to Goa along with a Portuguese parliamentary delegation. He visited us here. He will succeed and ensure Portuguese does not follow the way of Greece,” she said.

Sinikka says the family used called him ‘Babush’, a commonly used term of endearment in Konkani for ‘little boy’.

But the ‘little boy’ over the years has assumed key positions in the Portuguese government, apart from the incumbent office of Leader of Opposition and Mayor of Lisbon. Antonio has also served as the minister for internal administration, minister of justice, minister for parliamentary affairs among others in his political career which stretches over nearly three decades.

“Now he has made us all so proud… He was always keen on politics. There used to be endless debates between him and his father over political issues,” she says as she recalls his visits to Goa.

While Antonio, 54, is a member of the Socialist Party, his father, poet and writer Orlando was a member of the Portuguese Communist Party in the 1950s, which was banned under the dictatorial regime of Oliveira Salazar.

Born in 1929, in Mozambique, another Lusofonian colony in Africa, Orlando spent his youth in Goa, before migrating to Lisbon at the age of 18, where he was a student and academic by day and a Communist by night.

Antonio, on the other hand, has already been elected mayor of Lisbon thrice in a country where the prestige of the mayoral chair can be judged by the administrative precedent that the Capital’s first citizen has often been invited to attend Cabinet meetings by several Portuguese prime ministers.

Sinikka’s pride stems from the recent developments in the financial crisis-stricken Portugal, where clever political manoeuvring by ‘Babush’, led to the collapse of Portugal’s Pedro Passos Coelho’s centre-right government, thanks to a historic coming together of three main Left parties which won the confidence vote by 123-107 on Tuesday.

Media reports from Portugal suggest very little could thwart the Iberian Gandhi from assuming the chair of prime minister. For Goans like Jose Elmano Coelho Pereira, who has been co-hosting the Semana de Cultura, an annual series of events which showcases and celebrates Goa’s unique Portuguese-influenced culture, Antonio’s success, despite his ethnic origins, means that anything is possible.

“It is definitely a matter of pride that Goans have proven themselves to be the best and capable to reach high positions even in other countries. Antonio Costa has prior to this been the Mayor of Lisbon as well as part of earlier cabinets in Portugal. I’m sure he will do well (as prime minister),” Pereira says.

(The writer is the Goa Correspondent for the Indo-Asian News Service)