Turmoil at Home, Chaos in the Colonies

Portugal's Premier Vasco dos Santos Gonc,alves clung desperately to office last week. Though his grip grew weaker by the hour, he continued to hang on, and rumors swept the country that his moderate opponents were preparing to stage a coup. At week's end, several military units went on alert.

Gonc,alves' position had grown increasingly shaky as an alliance of anti-Communists sought to oust the leftist Premier from office. In the face of political and economic turmoil at home and a situation bordering on chaos in several of Portugal's remaining colonies, President Francisco da Costa Gomes was finally forced to a decision that he had hoped to avoid. After a late-night meeting with nine military moderates at his seaside residence, Sao Juliao da Barra Fort outside Lisbon, Costa Gomes agreed that his old friend Gonc,alves would have to go--and sooner rather than later.

Distinct Minority. If and when the Premier does depart, the leading contender for his post appears to be General Carlos Fabiao, army Chief of Staff and a political independent. Fabiao was present when the nine moderates, led by former Foreign Minister Ernesto Melo Antunes, met with Costa Gomes. The nine had all been ousted from the ruling Revolutionary Council earlier this month after they circulated a document protesting Portugal's drift toward an Eastern European brand of socialism and calling for a return to a pluralistic political system. The nine claimed to have the support of 90% of the people and 85% of the military. They reportedly demanded that the President get rid of Gonc,alves within a week.

The moderates also presented Costa Gomes with a new document said to have been drafted in cooperation with Security Chief Otelo Saraiva de Carvalho, who was also present at the meeting. Its most important demand was for a return to a coalition government composed of the major parties, with each to be represented in proportion to its showing at the polls in the April election. This would mean that the Socialists and the Popular Democrats, who together won 64% of the vote, would dominate a new Cabinet. The Communists, on the basis of their electoral showing of 12.5%, would become a distinct minority. To win the support of the populist Saraiva de Carvalho, who had previously opposed a traditional party system, the moderates reportedly offered to allow local workers' commissions.

When the meeting broke up at 3 a.m., Costa Gomes, grave and unsmiling, hurriedly drove back to Lisbon's Belem Presidential Palace. A moderate himself who had successfully managed to keep the warring factions within the government at bay since becoming President last October, Costa Gomes seemed plainly resigned to replacing Gonc,alves. At swearing-in ceremonies for 18 junior ministers in Lisbon, he said wearily: "It is not simple to be a member of a government team whose duration is expressed in days." At the same ceremony, a bitter Gonc,alves declared that the crisis would not end with his ouster "because it is not the figure of the Premier that they are out to bring down but the ideas he defends."

On the Defensive. In fact, both appeared to be losing ground swiftly. When the Communist-dominated trade union organization, Intersindical, called a half-hour general strike as a show of support for Gonc,alves, most workers simply stayed on their jobs. Even Communist Party Chief Alvaro Cunhal appeared to be backing off from his staunch support of the Premier. In talks with Costa Gomes, Cunhal said that the Communists would not make an issue of Gonc,alves' ouster. Earlier, at a rally, he conceded that the moderates' manifesto had some "good points."

The wave of anti-Communist violence throughout the conservative north in the past few weeks has clearly left the Communists on the defensive. At least 50 party headquarters have been sacked, six persons killed and hundreds injured. Cunhal himself narrowly escaped injury when a mob attacked a rally at which he was speaking in Alcobac,a, north of Lisbon. Three days later, when the military said it could not guarantee his safety, Cunhal canceled a scheduled rally in Oporto, the country's second largest city.

Both Washington and Moscow took public note of the escalating tensions in Portugal last week. At the American Legion convention in Minneapolis, President Ford declared that detente "is not a license to fish in troubled waters" and that the Portuguese must solve their problems "in an atmosphere free from the pressures of outside interests." Studiously ignoring the Kremlin's substantial aid to Portuguese Communists,* Pravda charged that "NATO interests" and "reactionary forces" were meddling in Portugal and called for solidarity with Cunhal's Communists.

Meanwhile, the climate of uncertainty and impending violence in Portugal was echoed in a number of Portuguese possessions around the world:

> In the conservative Azores (pop. 300,000), thousands of local farmers marched through the streets of Angra do Heroismo, the second largest city in the islands, demanding that the offices of the Communist Party and the leftist Democratic Movement Party (M.D.P.) be closed. After trying to lynch one Communist sympathizer and kicking and beating three M.D.P. members, the mob surrounded the Communist Party headquarters with tractors, then set the building ablaze with Molotov cocktails. Fifteen persons were injured.

> On Portuguese Timor (pop. 650,000) in the Indonesian archipelago, the colonial government radioed that "many dead bodies are lying in the streets" of its capital of Dili. Other reports told of barrages of mortar shells and a continuous small-arms crossfire. Fighting broke out when the Timorese Democratic Union (U.D.T.) seized power two weeks ago to forestall what it said was a coup attempt by the radical Revolutionary Front for an Independent East Timor (Fretelin). At least 100 persons died in the initial outburst, and the toll was expected to go much higher. Lisbon was said to be sending a commission to the island, perhaps to speed up decolonization (Timor had been scheduled to become independent in 1978). At the same time, some 1,400 refugees were being evacuated to Australia aboard a freighter chartered by the Portuguese government, and thousands more crowded the island's beaches.

> Despite Lisbon's attempt to reassert control over the last of its African colonies, bloody fighting continued among three rival liberation movements in the oil-rich territory of Angola (pop. 5.6 million). Portuguese troops managed to restore a semblance of order to Luanda, the capital, and were trying to set up a neutral zone in the coastal city of Lobito. But elsewhere the violence showed no signs of abating. Holden Roberto, leader of the Zaire-based National Front for the Liberation of Angola (F.N.L.A.), vowed a "war to the finish" against the Communist-supported Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (M.P.L.A.). The Portuguese airlift from Luanda continued, but some 40,000 refugees were reported stranded in Nova Lisboa, because tankers carrying aviation fuel for flights were unable to get through from the capital.

* The State Department estimates that the Soviets are helping out to the tune of about $2 million a month. The Pentagon puts the figure at $5 million a month, and the CIA estimates that the Kremlin is pumping in $10 million a month, a figure so high that Secretary of State Kissinger publicly derided it.

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