Jose Manuel Vieira Coelho da Mata (born Santa Cruz

Santa Cruz, Madeira

Santa Cruz is a municipality, a parish and a city in the eastern part of the island of Madeira. Much of the municipality is mountainous and apart from residential areas, farmlands and orchards cover the remainder of the land...

, 22 July 1952) 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...

 politician. He was a member of the Portuguese Communist Party

Portuguese Communist Party

The Portuguese Communist Party is a major left-wing political party in Portugal. It is a Marxist-Leninist party, and its organization is based upon democratic centralism. The party also considers itself to be patriotic and internationalist....

 until 1999, and still calls himself a communist "who evolved". He was substitute deputy of the Legislative Assembly of Madeira for the New Democracy Party, taking office in 2008. He became famous for the incident in which he showed a Nazi flag to the Parliament as a protest against the Social Democratic Party

Social Democratic Party (Portugal)

The Social Democratic Party , is a centre-right liberal conservative political party in Portugal. It is commonly known by its initials, PSD; on ballot papers, its initials appear as PPD/PSD, with the first three letters coming from the party's original name, Democratic People's Party...

 refusing to commemorate the Carnation Revolution

Carnation Revolution

The Carnation Revolution , also referred to as the 25 de Abril , was a military coup started on 25 April 1974, in Lisbon, Portugal, coupled with an unanticipated and extensive campaign of civil resistance...

.

Coelho was New Democracy

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...

's candidate for the Presidency

President of Portugal

Portugal has been a republic since 1910, and since that time the head of state has been the president, whose official title is President of the Portuguese Republic ....

 in the 2011 election

Portuguese presidential election, 2011

The 2011 Portuguese presidential election was held on January 23, 2011. This election resulted in the re-election of Aníbal Cavaco Silva to a second term as President of Portugal. Turnout in this election was very low, where only 46.52% of the electorate cast their ballots...

. He won 4.5% of the vote, coming fifth, which was considerably better than expected or forecast by pre-election polling. In Madeira

Madeira

Madeira is a Portuguese archipelago that lies between and , just under 400 km north of Tenerife, Canary Islands, in the north Atlantic Ocean and an outermost region of the European Union...

, Coelho reached second place, with 39% of the votes.
In March 2011, he joined the Portuguese Labour Party (PTP), of which he became the vice-president. He was a candidate for the 2011 parliamentary election

Portuguese legislative election, 2011

A general election was held in Portugal on 5 June 2011 to elect all 230 members of the Assembly of the Republic. Pedro Passos Coelho led the center-right Social Democratic Party to victory over the Socialist Party, led by incumbent Prime Minister José Sócrates...

, but the PTP won only 0.3% of the vote.

Footnotes