Charm & Temper

Chileans could expect a shower of sparks for the next six years. If Congress approved charming, explosive Gabriel Gonzalez Videla's 50,000-vote plurality (not a majority) in last week's elections, Chile would be getting its liveliest president in many a political moon.

Gonzalez, now 47, first got his fireworks reputation when, as a young champion of peoples' rights, he played cops & robbers with Dictator Carlos Ibanez' police. Arrested, he begged permission to blow his nose, instead sprinted two blocks to the Radical Club, where fellow members protected him. As late as last year, quick-tempered Sr. Gonzalez slung an inkwell at a fellow Senator in a congressional free-for-all.

Between blowoffs, Gonzalez ran a law practice, served off & on in Congress and did his share of hard work in building up the Radical machine. In 1937, he was a key figure in the creation of the leftist Popular Front (Radicals, Socialists, Communists) which the next year put liberal Pedro Aguirre Cerda in the presidency. As a reward, Gonzalez went to France as Ambassador--which probably cost him the presidency in 1942. For Juan Antonio Rios captured control of the Radical Party in his absence (and after Aguirre Cerda's death) and Gonzalez' hurried return from Vichy, three days before nominations were to be filed, was too late.

Gonzalez' friends have predicted that he would go further left than his Popular Front predecessors in pushing land and other reforms. But his first acts have been conciliatory. With an eye toward the powerful Catholic Church and his conservative Congress, Gonzalez conferred with the Cardinal, denied that he threatened "social revolution."

Would Gonzalez' Communist pals force a change in Chilean foreign policy? No, answered Gonzalez. Chile would maintain its friendship with the U.S., would protect foreign capital and welcome more.

This week, Gonzalez' attractive blonde wife Rosa and his two teen-age daughters were bustling about their six-room apartment, anticipating the move to La Moneda (Chile's White House) on Nov. 4. Moving day would not be too burdensome. La Moneda is only across the street.

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