Downfall of a Marxist General

For the past two months, a bitter division within the Armed Forces Movement had brought government in Portugal to a virtual standstill and the country perilously close to civil war. Focus of the dispute was General Vasco dos Santos Gonc,alves, 54, a close ally of Communist Party Boss Alvaro Cunhal and a woolly-minded Marxist ideologue who favored the creation in Portugal of a socialist state along Eastern European lines. Last week in an apparent victory for moderate forces within the M.F.A., Gonc,alves fell from power. In the face of virtually open rebellion by non-Communist officers in the army and air force, Gonc,alves -who the previous week had lost his post as Premier -gave up his appointment as chief of the general staff of the armed forces. In addition, he and three radical colleagues were dropped from membership in a new, powerful, 19-man Revolutionary Council.

The fall of Gonc,alves represents the most devastating setback that military radicals and their Communist supporters have suffered since the start of the April 1974 revolution. The new Revolutionary Council appears to lean solidly toward the moderate-center; it contains seven moderates, eight swing officers and only four known cohorts of Gonc,alves. Last week's actions also apparently restored the Council to its role as supreme arbiter of the revolution; its power had been eclipsed since the creation in late July of a ruling triumvirate composed of Gonc,alves, President Francisco da Costa Gomes and General Otelo Saraiva de Carvalho, chief of the internal security forces. "There is no triumvirate," said Saraiva de Carvalho at week's end.

Gonc,alves' fall was triggered -inadvertently -by Costa Gomes. After first bowing to moderates' pressure two weeks ago and dismissing Gonc,alves as Premier, he then sought to appease the radicals by naming Gonc,alves as chief of the general staff -the country's top military post. This move set off an increasingly hostile reaction within the M.F. A. The first ranking officer to speak up against Gonc,alves' appointment as chief of the general staff was the air force commander, General Jose Morais da Silva, who spoke out against the general's Red connections. "A revolution made by 80% of the Portuguese people," he said, "cannot be transformed into a dictatorship by 20% of the Portuguese over the other 80%."

Annoyed by this insubordination, Costa Gomes summoned Morais da Silva to Lisbon's Belem Palace to deliver a reprimand. But then the army chief of staff, General Carlos Fabiao, also spoke out against Gonc,alves. The bearded Fabiao called an all-day meeting of army officers at Tancos, 80 miles north of Lisbon, to discuss the situation. "Speaking in the name of the army," Fabiao told newsmen before the convention, "I doubt that the figure of Vasco Gonc,alves contributes anything to the unity of the army -to the contrary."

Gonc,alves rushed to Tancos to make an emotional plea for support, but he soon sensed that the mood of the meeting was strongly against him. "I came here to engage in selfcriticism, not to provoke disunity. Since this is not understood, I'm going away." By a 4-to-l margin, the army assembly voted to press for Gonc,alves' ouster. So did a similar convocation of air force officers; they backed General Morais da Silva's argument that Gonc,alves' appointment "could lead to a dictatorship of the minority." On the other hand, Gonc,alves was supported by another convention of officers representing the navy, which has traditionally been the most radical of the three services.

Boycotts and Shouts. The denouement came late Friday, when Costa Gomes convened the M.F.A.'s General Assembly at Tancos, hoping to gain its backing for the appointment of Gonc,alves as chief of the general staff. But the meeting was boycotted by delegates from both the army and the air force, which sent only their chiefs of staff to represent them. It degenerated into a shouting match. Seeing how little support he had, Gonc,alves accepted the inevitable and -in the euphemistic phrase of the official communique -"declined the place of chief of the general staff."

With Gonc,alves out of the way, Premier-designate Admiral Jose Batista Pinheiro de Azevedo -a leftist who seems acceptable to the military's moderate and radical factions -may now be able to assemble his Cabinet. He had been stalled because the Socialists and Popular Democrats, who together polled 64% of the vote in April's election, refused to participate in any government so long as Gonc,alves retained any significant power. Although the Communists will suffer greatly from Gonc,alves' demise, they have tried to limit the damage by distancing themselves from him. Last week the party newspaper Avante called editorially for "a broad-based government" in which the major political parties would participate. Visiting Costa Gomes early in the week to discuss formation of a new Cabinet, Communist Leader Cunhal agreed that it should represent more of the 80% of the population that Air Force Chief Morais da Silva had talked about.

Periodically during the past two months, rumors of a right-wing coup have circulated in Lisbon. Last week those fears came to the surface again when a familiar but unexpected figure suddenly showed up in Europe. Flying into Paris from exile in Brazil -disguised, for diplomatic reasons, as "Antonio Ribero, writer" -was General Antonio de Spinola, who had led the revolution until radical officers forced his resignation last September. As recently as a month ago, the reappearance on the scene of the discredited conservative general would have provoked chuckles in Lisbon. If the situation remains uncertain, the monocled general might be tempted to fly into anti-Communist northern Portugal, demand elections and a new National Assembly -and point out that his swan-song speech warning against the country's slide toward anarchy had proved all too prophetic.

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