In Retreat

Trujillo is in retreat. Last week the 68-year-old Dominican dictator emptied his desk and closed his office in the National Palace, where--whether officially President or not--he has ruled the country for 30 years. He fired his brother Hector, who for the past eight years has been stand-in President. He sent his son Ramfis, the onetime tabloid-headline playmate of Kim Novak and Zsa Zsa Gabor, off to Geneva to "advise" the Dominican delegation to a trade conference. He bounced two lesser Trujillos from high government jobs. And he named himself chief Dominican delegate to the United Nations.

In as President the dictator put a longtime henchman, Joaquin Balaguer. 53, lawyer, diplomat and lately Vice President. With his customary rich sense of irony, Trujillo then paid an official call on Balaguer, which featured a 21-gun salute for Trujillo. But Balaguer's acceptance speech to Congress contained an enigmatic reference to the fact that "a regime now 30 years old . . . cannot disappear overnight."

Rafael Leonidas Trujillo's retreat, by taking him out of stage center, left him less vulnerable to the growing pressures against him. They are: certain censure at the midmonth meeting of the Organization of American States for his attempted assassination of Venezuela's President Romulo Betancourt, Washington's feeling that he is an embarrassing anachronism, disapproval from the Roman Catholic Church and opposition from the formerly tame middle and upper classes. If necessary, he can retreat further to the safety of the U.N. corridors in Manhattan. If at that point prudence indicates that the chief Dominican Republic delegate better not go back home, he will have got out alive, safe and rich.

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