LISBON (Web Desk) – Portugal President Anibal Cavaco Silva has appointed Goa-origin Antonio Costa as the new prime minister
He is appointed after the government formed following the October 4 election lasted barely 11 days – the shortest in the country’s history.
Costa’s Socialist Party (PS) did not win the election but he cobbled together a coalition of left parties that has a little more than the majority mark in the 230-member Assembly.
His party finished second, with 86 seats.
Costa’s grandfather, Luis Afonso Maria da Costa, who was born and brought up in Goa, was a descendant of prominent Hindu families who converted to Christianity during the centuries of Portuguese rule.
Portugal was the first western country to colonise parts of India in the early sixteenth century, and the last to leave, on December 19, 1961.
