Chairman of the Board

Tanned from a vacation at his 600-acre ranch near the Caribbean. President Gustavo Rojas Pinilla returned last week to the chilly Colombian capital of Bogota. In sunny spirits, he plunged into his work at the palace. One night, tall in a well-fitting, medal-spangled general's dress uniform, he presided with rare good humor at the annual presidential reception for the diplomatic corps.

General Rojas had a heartfelt reason for such an unaccustomed show of good will. In the past five months he has made a dizzying personal comeback. Last September his military regime was so shaky that Bogota rumors announced his downfall hourly. High armed-forces officers were quietly picking a junta to take over. Instead, Rojas got them to agree to an overhauling of his dictatorship that would restore its authority and acceptability. By last week he had succeeded.

In bowing to military pressure, Rojas gave up his former position as unchallenged strongman of Colombia. He is now a kind of chairman of the board, and other military men increasingly share in the making of policy.

Letting Down. General Rojas first took power in 1953, when he ousted an unpopular Conservative President. That act put a stop to backlands guerrilla fighting by the opposition Liberals and earned Colombia's gratitude. But his soldiers were not content to be the force supporting a mainly civilian regime. Instead, generals and colonels became Cabinet ministers and governors; sergeants became village mayors. The politicos understandably balked; the rural fighting resumed (TIME, Dec. 31). Rojas cracked down, banning meetings and closing newspapers.

The military regime tried to regain its popularity by sponsoring a mammoth welfare agency, fixing and enforcing minimum wages, building roads and schools. But the military men also lavished benefits on themselves: U.S. jet planes, Swedish destroyers, post-exchange luxuries. Rojas and other high officers profited by the easy loans and business tips that their power brought them. As the President's affluence grew, so did his ego; he started a Third Force political party, requiring followers to take an oath of loyalty "before God" to him. Rojas attacked old-party politicians with rising fury, and when six army trucks loaded with explosives inexplicably blew up last August in Cali. killing 427 and wounding 2,317, he made the intemperate blunder of charging the opposition with sabotage.

With that tasteless accusation as a spur to discontent, all the economic and political bills against the regime suddenly began to fall due. Most alarming, in 98% Roman Catholic Colombia, was the displeasure of the church. Crisanto Cardinal Luque. the saintly and unbending primate, considered the Third Force dangerous and its oath blasphemous, and said so in a pastoral letter. The cost of military extravagance--$250 million in one year alone --was revealed as part of a huge foreign debt (TIME, Oct. 22). Citizens grumblingly yearned for the basic freedom that by and large prevailed under Liberal and Conservative politicians.

Coming Back. Deeply worried, a select circle of highly critical military governors, Cabinet ministers and troop commanders held a secret meeting with Rojas. Rojas was instructed to:

P: Appease the cardinal by giving up the Third Force.

P:Relax press censorship, encourage banned newspapers to publish again. P:Make an all-out effort to get the foreign commercial debt paid.

P:Call a long-adjourned constitutional assembly back into session, and let the opposition blow off steam.

P:Explain publicly his profitable business operations while in office.

And as perhaps the most stringent order of all, the officers warned Rojas to give up any possible plans for reforming the constitution so that he could succeed himself when his term expires in 1958.

Rojas made good, or at least made a good try, on all the dictated measures. To get the trade debt paid, he fired the unlucky Minister of Finance who had sanctioned excessive military purchases, and sent into the job a bright young banker named Luis Morales Gomez. In an earnest television speech, the President denied any undue enrichment in office. The press in Bogota is freer than it has been in years. The assembly has duly debated. And the offending Third Force was unceremoniously junked, pleasing Cardinal Luque, who says: "Our relations with the government are cordial--for the time being."

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