Dangerous Deadlock

Unsettled Chile had a Congressional election last week which settled nothing. The rightists won control of the Senate by one seat. The leftist Democratic Alliance carried the Chamber of Deputies by an undependable majority of three.

The indecisive result might prove a tragedy for Chile. Her ailing President (he suffers from stomach ulcers), Juan Antonio Rios, blocked by a hostile Congress, had made little progress in curing the country's numerous ills. No. 1 problem: a soaring inflation.

Desperately, Chile needed vigorous leadership. Nitrates and copper supported her shaky economy. Both were booming now, but both would have trouble meeting postwar competition. Chileans feared that soon after peace was declared, her mines and nitrate plants would close throughout her desert north, flooding the fertile south with hordes of unemployed.

Chilean democrats worried as they eyed the new, deadlocked Congress, which promised no more action than its predecessor. Their Popular Front Government still existed, in spite of rightist gains. But all their neighbor countries--Argentina, Peru, Bolivia--were governed non-democratically. Unless Chile's drifting President and bickering Congress got together, the problems following peace might result in a retreat to dictatorship.

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