Dignidad Again

When Argentina's 100% Peronista Senate met last week to consider a list of high army officers recommended for promotion, it noted a glaring omission: the name of Brigadier General Juan D. Peron. Summoned to explain the slight, Army Minister Franklin Lucero reported that the President had brilliantly fulfilled the requirements for promotion to major general, but had expressly ordered his name excluded from the list. "However," cried Lucero, "unless Congress remedies this situation, the President will find himself in an inferior status to his own fellows, purely because of his scruples."

Without further ado, the Senate sent its presiding officer, Admiral Alberto Tessaire, off to the Casa Rosada to plead with the President. When this failed, the Senators marched in a body to his residence to renew their plea. This time he was ready with a little speech. "Ethics," he told them, "must be above law. President Peron and General Peron are inseparable. In no instance will I as President sign a promotion for General Peron."

Nothing daunted, the Senators went into secret session and confirmed the original list, adding Brigadier General Peron's name at its head. That left the President in a pretty pickle. How could he be so immodest as to make himself a major general? How, on the other hand, could he be so selfish as to return the list unapproved, thus holding up the promotions of 60 worthy officers? At week's end he found a neat solution: President Peron scratched out General Peron's name, then signed.

In other matters involving the presidential dignity, Peron moved even more decisively. For printing summaries of a "disrespectful" speech by ex-Deputy Atilio

Cattaneo (TIME, Dec. 26), he haled the proprietors of Buenos Aires' staunchly independent newspapers La Prensa and La Nation into court on libel charges. Other papers were also punished for opposition to his regime. Salta's outspoken El In-transigente found its newsprint supply cut off and so did Buenos Aires' tabloid Clarin. In Cordoba, inspectors found the printing plant of the firmly anti-Peronista Jesuit daily Los Principios "insanitary," and peremptorily padlocked it. This week Los Principios and Clarin had been allowed to resume publication, but a congressional committee closed the Communist daily La Hora, charging it with "anti-Argentine activities."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.