Rumblings from an Earthquake

Why did a mild earthquake shake Lisbon one morning last week? "It was caused," according to a local joke, "by the general putting his big foot down on the political parties." The officer in question was General Otelo Saraiva de Carvalho, the tough, outspoken boss of the military security force, and the earthquake occurred just as he was making his way to a special assembly of the ruling Armed Forces Movement (M.F.A.). There was only one solution to the party bickering that was "causing division and making the people suffer," declared the general, expressing a view that is increasingly accepted as the Armed Forces' own party line. The solution, he said, was direct leadership of the nation by the M.F.A.--"bypassing the party leaders and linking up directly with the people."

There is no doubt that the military is steadily assuming more and more power in Portugal and that the dominant faction is the one represented by radicals like Saraiva de Carvalho and Admiral Antonio Rosa Coutinho. Recently the admiral proposed that a new political party be organized from the ranks of all the leftist parties, including both the Communists and the Socialists--and the general said it would be even better to bar the parties' existing leaders from "getting in the way." As part of the process of establishing direct ties with the people, the military assembly discussed proposals for the M.F.A. to form councils of workers, soldiers and sailors as well as committees "for the defense of the revolution." Then the officers disbanded again without reaching a decision.

Futile Effort. A week earlier the fight between the Socialists and Communists, who are allied to the radical faction of the M.F.A., had seemed headed toward a showdown (TIME, June 2). Communist printers had forced the closing of the Socialist newspaper Republica, and Socialist Leader Mario Soares had vowed that he would attend no more meetings of the Cabinet, in which he is a Minister Without Portfolio, until the newspaper was allowed to resume publication. His vow raised the threat that the Socialists, who won 38% in the last elections but hold no real power under the present system, might walk out of the military-dominated government and thereby strengthen the hold of the radicals.

Republica remained closed last week, even though the government's press council agreed with the Socialists that the press law had been broken by the printers' action in taking over the paper. But after a trip to Paris, where he held strategy conferences with European socialists and after a meeting with the Revolutionary Council at week's end, Soares decided to end his brief boycott of governmental activities. Because of the dangerous situation in Angola, where 39 people had been killed in renewed fighting between the several Angolan liberation movements, Soares joined the government's decolonization committee in a so far futile effort to find a way of pacifying the colony before it becomes independent on Nov. 11.

This did little to pacify General Saraiva de Carvalho, who insisted that Soares' social democratic friends in the rest of Europe were simply a "cover for international capitalism," and that "the socialism we are constructing in Portugal could spread like wildfire." The appreciative Communists staged a massive street demonstration in support of the M.F.A. But at midweek, Saraiva de Carvalho's forces cracked down not on Soares' Socialists but on the Maoist M.R.P.P. (Movement for the Reorganization of the Party of the Proletariat). In Lisbon, Coimbra and other cities, the police arrested more than 350 members of the M.R.P.P. Among the charges: spreading "false Maoist leftism," kidnaping, and beating and arresting several people during the previous week, including two American Marine guards from the U.S. embassy.

Premier Vasco dos Santos Gonc,alves had already left for Belgium to attend the NATO meeting and talk with President Ford. Upon his arrival in Brussels, he said that he had gone there to tell the truth about matters in Portugal. Though he did not say so, the truth was that matters were still confused but that the prospects for the future of Portuguese democracy remained bleak.

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