Headway at Last

"Things are looking better," said a Rio banker. "Things are looking better," agreed an important army colonel. "Things are looking better," chimed in a wealthy ore exporter. It might not show everywhere -- inflation pushed ahead 86.6% in 1964 --but a mood of optimism was spreading across Brazil.

Of course, summer has arrived, and carnival could not be far behind, a carnival that in this, Rio de Janeiro's 400th anniversary year, promises to be a bash of sensational proportions. But that is not it. Brazilians have suddenly realized that the revolutionary government is getting somewhere. After a rocky start, President Humberto Castello Branco is at last making remarkable headway against the country's oversized problems. Items:

> The International Monetary Fund last week announced a $125 million package, its first major dealing with Brazil since 1961. Added to a recent $453 million package from the U.S., it puts Brazil on an impressively sound financial footing.

> The first of a bountiful crop of rice, potatoes and beans, estimated at 30% above last year's level, began to appear on grocery shelves, easing Brazil's chronic food shortage and starting stabilization of food prices after years of headlong advance.

> The government's new National Housing Bank, designed to combat the country's equally critical housing shortage, got its first project under way guaranteeing private loans to builders for 30,000 middle-income homes in Rio alone this year. The bank's target: 18 million houses and apartment units in the next 20 years.

In the first seven months after the revolution, Brazil's notoriously fractious Congress passed a record 237 laws and constitutional amendments, more than a few at government pistol point. Among them were measures to increase taxes, adjust ridiculously low rents, head the country toward a central bank, start a sensible land-reform program, and assure private foreign investors of a square shake. When Congress reopens in two weeks, Castello Branco has another armful of proposals. He intends to let the air out of the government's bloated administrative payroll, a key move against inflation, deliver a plan for development of the destitute northeast region. Most important, he will present Congress with a program to reform Brazil's crazy-quilt electoral procedure.

Under the new setup, which should pass Congress handily, candidates will henceforth be allowed to run for only one office at a time as a representative of only one party at a time. To limit the multiplying number of parties (13 at last count), no new party will be admitted to next year's national ballot unless it obtains signatures from 3% of the 18 million registered voters.

In the future, any party that fails to get 5% of the vote, or to elect at least five Deputies, will be forced to disband or merge with another party. Candidates will not be permitted to register until six months before the voting--and cannot start campaigning until three months beforehand. That may not muzzle the politicians, but with the other limitations, voters at least should find it easier to figure out what goes on.

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