Tomás took a much more active role in the government after Caetano took power. While he had given Salazar more or less a free hand, he was not willing to do the same for Caetano. Eventually, Tomás became the rallying point for hardliners who opposed Caetano’s efforts to open up the regime. Caetano’s reforms did not go nearly far enough for a populace that had no memory of the instability and chaos that had preceded Salazar. For instance, he left the presidential election in the hands of the regime-dominated legislature, which re-elected Tomás unopposed in 1972. However, Caetano had to expend nearly all of his political capital to wrangle even these meagre reforms out of Tomás and the hardliners and was in no position to resist when Tomás and the other hardliners forced the end of the reform experiment a year later.