The Restoration

Decking their streets and buildings with flags to symbolize a mood of national optimism, Colombians last week voted 18-to-1 for a novel experiment in government. They approved a constitutional amendment for a long cooling-off period in which all offices will be split equally between the long-warring Liberal and Conservative parties. At elections for the next twelve years, members of each party will choose only their own party's 50% delegation to Congress, departmental legislature and municipal councils. The executive branch will divide political appointments, half to each party, will name Supreme Court justices the same way.

The first election is to be held early next year, and the Congress chosen then will select a President. Presently favored by all but right-wing Conservatives is Guillermo Leon Valencia, a middle-of-the-road Conservative. He will take office Aug. 7, and the ruling five-man military junta has promised for its part to step out on that date.

The truce plan is largely the work of Alberto Lleras Camargo, the Liberal President of Colombia who was in office in 1945 during the election from which most of Colombia's recent political misery grew. A split among the Liberals let the minority-choice Conservative candidate win. Four years later, panicky Conservative leaders closed Congress, put Colombia under a state of siege, imposed their most forceful caudillo, Laureano Gomez, as President. Bitter interparty rural fighting, in which 20,000 died, finally led to a military dictatorship under General Gustavo Rojas Pinilla. Modest, brainy Alberto Lleras, meanwhile, moved to Washington and a prestigious appointment as Secretary General of the Organization of American States.

Peace Voter. In 1954, Lleras gave up his plush OAS post, returned to Bogota as a private citizen. Talking and writing, he made himself the sober advocate of truce in the passionate political war, of a return to political sanity. Then, flying to Spain, he sat down amicably with exiled Laureano Gomez, once furiously hated by all Liberals, and persuaded him to agree to the essentials of a plan for sharing power between the parties. The truce, giving promise of responsible civilian government in the future, played an important role when the present caretaker military junta took over from Rojas Pinilla last May. Last week's plebiscite certified the success of Lleras' long effort.

Will Congress, split 50-50, be able to work effectively? Won't the parties clamor threateningly for the more important Cabinet posts? Lleras knows well that his truce may collapse over just such stumbling blocks. His answer: "No one has thought that other courses could be harder--for example, living eight years under a state of siege. But we have just done that, and I do not see why we cannot now coexist peacefully, rebuilding the country, for twelve years." A crippled beggar in Bogota spoke for most Colombians when asked if he knew what the plebiscite issue was. "I know," he said, "that yes means peace and no means violence. I want peace."

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