The Rule-Breaker

The trouble with General Humberto Delgado was that he was not following the script. Gesticulating wildly, he told a crowd of 2,000 in a Lisbon high school that he stood for "the persecuted intellectuals, the university graduates without means of work, the abandoned artists, the writers intimidated by the censor, the technicians denied the possibility of giving their best, the muzzled journalists --in fact, all that in other countries represents a true level of culture."

The crowd roared back: "Humberto! Humberto! Humberto!"

"To the present government," shouted Delgado, "we repeat what we said in Oporto: 'We're tired of you, we're tired. Get out, get out--retire, retire!'"

As the jubilant crowd poured from the high school into Fontana Square, scarcely 50 yards from the U.S. embassy, greyclad Republican Guards on horseback charged with flashing sabers. Shots rang out; stones were flung; 50 people were injured. In Delgado's lusty campaigning last week. Portugal saw more mob violence and bloodshed than in all the previous 25 years of the paternal dictatorship of scholarly Premier Antonio de Oliveira Salazar.

The Baby-Kisser. Periodically, Benevolent Despot Salazar permits Portugal to vote for a rubber-stamp National Assembly or a tame President. The elections are always won by Salazar's National Union Party, and the rules are peculiar: 1) the opposition may campaign for only 30 days, 2) traditionally, the opposition presidential candidates withdraw before election day, 3) anyone who is in opposition must submit to being labeled Communist. 4) Portuguese law firmly prohibits demonstrations of any kind in the streets.

The candidates for this year's presidential election, scheduled for June 8, are Salazar's man, Admiral Americo Tomas, who is not even bothering to campaign, a left-wing lawyer named Arlindo Vicente, and the rule-breaking Humberto Delgado. An Air Force general who long and loyally served the regime ("A government of tyranny. I know. I was in it for 30 years"), Delgado, 52, spent the last five years in the U.S. as Portuguese Military Representative to NATO. His handshaking, baby-kissing tactics may result from his having witnessed two U.S. presidential elections, but his tubthumping, demagogic oratory seems uniquely his own.

There is a revivalist touch to his speechmaking: he starts slowly and sanely, ends up at a lung-bursting fever pitch that even includes personal attacks on Salazar himself: "I'll throw him out!" He has also challenged Salazar in the ex-professor's own field, economics: "Where did all the money go that we got for the cork, the wolfram, the sardines that we sold to both sides during the war? Only into the hands of the hundred privileged families!"

The Menace. General Humberto Delgado's old friends in the government now view him as "slightly mad" and "over-ambitious." Salazar's National Union Party, unable to pin the Communist label on a career officer, has instead called Delgado "a public menace.''

Delgado may surprise observers by still being around on election day. and still a candidate, but no one expects him to win the presidency. Yet a few fissures are showing this spring in the glacial calm that has usually characterized Portugal in the past quarter-century. Said a middle-aged Lisbon businessman: "I've always supported Salazar because he brought us peace and quiet, and I like peace. But these elections are completely different. I think people are getting tired, not of Salazar, but of the other fellows in his government."

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