The Institution

Old Laureano Gomez rode a wheelchair to the polls in Colombia last week-and rode away from the election a revitalized political strongman. Less than five years ago, Rightist Gomez was ousted by military coup from power as a hated dictator; only six months ago he returned from banishment in Spain. But when he put his leadership of the Conservative Party into the balance against the party's other factions in the voting, the strong-willed ex-dictator, now 69 and weakened by a series of four heart attacks, easily won. "He is," Colombians explained with a shrug, "an institution."

Fifty-Fifty for Peace. Colombia's Conservatives and Liberals went to the elections to pick a Congress, the first after nine years of dictatorship and state of siege. They voted under a very special set of ground rules devised by Laureano Gomez and Liberal Leader Alberto Lleras Camargo. Because Colombian political strife runs readily to bloodshed, the parties agreed to split the seats in Congress exactly half and half.

Conservative voters chose among three slates of Conservative candidates; the Liberals had an official slate plus some splinter candidates. To abet this peacekeeping measure, the ruling military junta firmly banned the sale of liquor for three days, brought out tanks and troops in battle dress. Colombia counted it a historically peaceful poll. Joked a member of the junta: "Maybe we ought to have an election every Sunday."

The prestigious Lleras Camargo slate of Liberals won all of that party's 50% share of 80 Senate and 148 Chamber of Deputies seats. The total vote--1,800,000 for all Liberals, v. 1,400,000 for all Conservatives--clearly showed Lleras' party to be Colombia's biggest. In the intra-Conservative election, Laureano Gomez' chief opponent was moderate-minded Guillermo Len Valencia, who played a bold role last May in dethroning Military Dictator Gustavo Rojas Pinilla (the man who toppled Gomez in 1953). Of the Conservatives' 40 Senate seats, the Gomez group won (depending on the final count) between 26 and 29, the Valencia group 7 to 10. Of the Conservatives' 74 Chamber seats, Gomez won 45 to 50, Valencia 13 to 18. Gomez, Lleras Camargo and Leon Valencia were all elected to the Senate.

Next President? Defeat of his faction was a blow to Leon Valencia. Last year, seeking to amplify the parties' fifty-fifty nonaggression principle to include the presidency, Lleras Camargo and an anti-Gomez faction of the Conservatives agreed upon Leon Valencia as a single candidate for the presidential election set for May 4. But Gomez, on his return from Spain, forced Lleras to reopen the question and agree that unless Leon Valencia won the approval of a majority of the new Congress, he would no longer be the joint candidate. Now Leon Valencia is bitter. "If I had not entered the battle against Rojas Pinilla's dictatorship last year," he said last week, "Gomez would still be in Barcelona." He thereupon announced that if Lleras Camargo and Gomez name some other Conservative as the bipartisan candidate, he himself will also run and thus again open the door to dangerous strife and rivalry.

But if either Lleras Camargo or Gomez had a replacement candidate in mind, the name remained his own secret.

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