LISBON, Portugal — Francisco Pinto Balsemão, a former prime minister of Portugal in a turbulent post-coup period who withdrew from front-line politics and created a national media empire, has died. He was 88.

The website of the Portuguese president's office and the media group he created, Impresa, said he died late Tuesday but provided no cause of death.

Pinto Balsemão was a Cabinet minister when he was chosen in 1981 by his governing Social Democratic Party to replace its prime minister, Francisco Sá Carneiro, who had been killed in a plane crash in Lisbon.

The crash occurred in murky circumstances during political turmoil still rippling from a 1974 army coup that had ended Portugal’s four-decade dictatorship.

Pinto Balsemão was a co-founder of the Social Democratic Party and was one

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