Manuel Fernando da Silva Monteiro (b. Vieira do Minho

Vieira do Minho

Vieira do Minho is a municipality in the district of Braga, in the north of Portugal.The municipality has 21 parishes and a population of 14,474 inhabitants....

, Anissó, 1 April 1962) is a Portuguese

Portugal

Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...

 lawyer and politician.

After winning the leadership of the conservative Democratic and Social Center in March 1992, he moved the party somewhat further to the right and changed its name to the People's Party (PP) in 1995. The renamed party won 9% of the popular vote and 15 deputies, at the legislative elections

Portuguese legislative election, 1995

The Portuguese legislative election of 1995 took place on October 1. The Socialist Party defeated the Social Democratic Party under the lead of António Guterres, elected some months before, but missed the absolute majority by 4 MPs. The Social Democratic party under the lead of Fernando Nogueira...

 held on 1 October 1995. This represented a partial comeback for the party that had been decimated in the Elections in Portugal

Elections in Portugal

Elections in Portugal gives information on election and election results in Portugal.Only the elections since the Carnation Revolution of 1974 are listed here. During the period encompassing the Constitutional Monarchy and the First Republic there were also elections, but only for a limited...

 of 1987

Portuguese legislative election, 1987

The Portuguese legislative election of 1987 took place on July 19. In the last election, in 1985, the Social Democratic Party had achieved a relative majority, thing that made its government very weak, managing to survive in coalition with the Democratic Social Center and the Democratic Renovator...

 and 1991

Portuguese legislative election, 1991

The Portuguese legislative election of 1991 took place on October 6. The Social Democratic Party, under the lead of Cavaco Silva, won a historic third term and won with an absolute majority for the second consecutive turn, achieving a higher share than in the previous election, losing, however, 13...

. Heavy losses in the municipal elections of 1997, however, led Monteiro to resign. He was replaced in 1998 by Paulo Portas

Paulo Portas

Paulo de Sacadura Cabral Portas , commonly known just by Paulo Portas , is a Portuguese politician, party leader of the Democratic and Social Centre – People's Party , a member of the Portuguese Parliament and former Portuguese minister of State, National Defense and Sea Affairs.In 2011, after he...

, his former friend and protégé.

Monteiro left the PP in 2002 following a disagreement with Portas, and founded a new party, the New Democracy Party

New Democracy (Portugal)

New Democracy Party is a liberal conservative political party in Portugal without parliamentary representation. In voting ballots its name appears only as New Democracy, with the acronym unchanged. It is a new party which resulted from Manuel Monteiro separation from the Democratic and Social...

(PND; Partido da Nova Democracia in Portuguese

Portuguese language

Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...

).