The Headless Government

Until last week, Brazil had been able to get through ten months of acute political crisis--ever since Janio Quadros deserted the presidency--without much actual disorder. But then her luck ran out. Last week the country suffered its bloodiest outburst of violence in 27 years.

The fighting started during a 24-hour general strike called by labor leaders in support of President Joao ("Jango'') Goulart, who for three weeks has been engaged in a bitter power struggle with Brazil's Congress. In the town of Duque de Caxias, an industrial suburb ten miles from Rio, workers milled in the streets demonstrating against shortages of rice, beans and other staples. A jittery guard fired two shots, one of them hitting a small child. The crowd turned berserk, beat the guard to death, and for two days mobs sacked the town, looting stores and attacking merchants. Before the rioting was over, 42 were killed, 700 wounded.

Roadblocks Everywhere. As nothing else, the sudden anarchy brought home to Brazilians the peril of their patchwork political regime. Because the army and conservative Brazilians considered Goulart a dangerous leftist, he was not allowed to succeed Quadros in the presidency until a parliamentary system was hurriedly devised to confine his powers. The confining proved so effective that neither Goulart nor Tancredo Neves, the Prime Minister with whom he shared office, could get anything done. When they did agree, conservatives in Congress blocked virtually every badly needed reform bill Goulart's government proposed.

In the months since, Goulart has worked hard to prove his moderation and win the conservatives' confidence. When Neves recently resigned to run for the Senate, Goulart wanted to pick a man of his own leftist convictions as Prime Minister. But conservatives in Congress feared that this would destroy the balance of power, and so rejected Goulart's first choice, Foreign Minister San Thiago Dantas.

For his next choice, Goulart shrewdly reached over into the conservative party of ex-President Juscelino Kubitschek, who will be eligible for the presidency himself in the 1965 election and obviously wants to see full presidential powers restored. Goulart picked Kubitschek's man, Auro de Moura Andrade, the president of the Senate, and apparently counted on him to ask Congress for a national plebiscite to do away with the unworkable parliamentary system.

Not in Name Only. Appearing before the Chamber of Deputies to be confirmed (as he was by a vote of 222 to 51), Andrade said he had no right to propose a plebiscite. Furthermore, he did not intend "to become the chief of government in name only." For 36 hours, he and Goulart haggled over the choice of a Cabinet. At last Andrade gave up and agreed to a Cabinet of Goulart's liking--all except the Navy Minister. Goulart would not budge. Andrade could only resign.

At this moment came the general strike that was only supposed to show labor's support of Goulart but got out of hand. The awareness of how close Brazil was to violence seemed to have shocked the nation into realizing how unworkable the share-the-power parliamentary system has proved. At week's end, Goulart asked the Supreme Electoral Tribunal for a plebiscite within 30 days to restore the powers of the President. The country's military brass now gave Goulart their blessing, and it seemed likely that the voters would do the same. Said Rio's respected Jornal do Brasil: "The head must come back to its place. A true power must occupy the vacuum which now exists."

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