Per

"In view of the situation reigning in the country, I feel obliged to decline the offer of the front." With that terse statement, Juan Domingo Peron last week renounced the presidential candidacy offered him by the Justicialist Liberation Front, a coalition of his supporters. Minutes later he boarded a plane for Paraguay, the country that had given him political asylum following his ouster in a coup 17 years ago.

It was an anticlimactic end to what Peron had hoped would be a return to power after twelve years of exile in Madrid. He had entered Argentina 28 days earlier like a returning folk hero. He exited like a rejected ward heeler, frustrated by the refusal of Argentina's current strongman, Alejandro Lanusse, to rescind an edict requiring presidential candidates to have been in Argentina on Aug. 25 (Lanusse announced last week that he will not be a candidate either). Peron had also been hurt by defections within his own Justicialist Front. Four parties dropped out amidst arguments about sharing the lesser candidacies. With the others gone, the front could expect to win only about 40% of the vote in March.

Peron's leavetaking was a shabby affair. The streets around his suburban Buenos Aires home were virtually deserted as his motorcade of 20 cars pulled out for Ezeiza Airport. Instead of the tens of thousands who were turned back by troops ringing the airport when el lider returned to Argentina, less than 200 were on hand for his departure.

Peron sat huddled in the back seat of his car with his wife Isabelita while a document announcing his noncandidacy was distributed. When he was ready to leave, there was no sleek, chartered Alitalia jetliner like the one that had brought him to Argentina. This time he was a common commercial passenger on a seedy Electra C of Lineas Aereas Paraguayas.

Though Peron had left Argentina --to visit Paraguay, Peru and Spain, according to an aide--confusion remained behind. More important, Peron had endorsed no candidate for President, and left his Justicialist Party bickering over the choice. The Front initially refused to accept Peron's decision to decline the candidacy and promised to launch a legal appeal action to place his name on the March ticket. At week's end, though, the Front suddenly reversed field and picked a top Peronista henchman, a sometime dentist named Hector Campora, 63, as its candidate. Technically, Campora also is ineligible for the presidency under the rules of the Lanusse edict, since he spent several days in Madrid during the fall visiting Peron.

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