To the Brink of Chaos Again

The march of 60,000 construction workers on Lisbon's Sao Bento Palace last week started out like the countless other protest parades and rallies that are a recurring feature of life in Portugal these days. But then the leftist-led hardhats added a new twist. Massing on the steps of the legislative palace, they blocked the doors of the building in which 150 members of the constituent assembly were laboring over a new constitution. They also backed huge trucks against the entrances to Premier Jose Pinheiro de Azevedo's official residence next door and warned that Premier and assembly would remain prisoners until they lifted a wage freeze and authorized 30% annual pay increases for the construction men, totaling $240 million. After 37 hours as a prisoner in his residence, Pinheiro de Azevedo reluctantly agreed and the siege was ended.

The humiliating demonstration of leftist power threatened to bring down the sixth revolutionary government in 18 months. With the motto "Discipline! Discipline!", Premier Pinheiro de Azevedo, a moderate, has been trying since he assumed office two months ago to restore government authority and military subordination to it, which had gradually collapsed during the previous five governments. So far he has had little success --and last week's surrender to the hardhats was a case in point.

Popular Support. Portugal's construction industry has been moribund since the April 1974 revolution. Partly this is because many builders were speculators who kept afloat on the basis of loans from now nationalized banks that have cut off their credit lines. There has also been so much chaos in Lisbon that the government has been unable to accept several million dollars worth of loans from the U.S. for housing projects that have yet to materialize.

With thousands of construction men already out of work, the government estimates that the new wage increases will wipe out many of the remaining private building firms.

Pinheiro de Azevedo has managed to rally popular support for his brand of compromise politics. Aware of this, the left last week moved stridently to block him. A rally by Socialists and Popular Democrats in Lisbon's Terreiro de Pac,o Square in support of the Premier's programs was interrupted by radical leftist hecklers and then panicked by charging military police, who fired over the crowd and flailed spectators with rifle butts. After tear gas was mysteriously touched off, Pinheiro de Azevedo concluded his remarks with weepy eyes and wet cheeks.

Popular Democratic Leader Francisco Sa Carneiro and other moderate politicians charged that the siege of Pinheiro de Azevedo's residence was part of a Communist plot to overthrow this government and install a militant left-wing regime. Communist Boss Alvaro Cunhal answered that his party sympathized with the construction workers' strike but disapproved of the lock-in of Pinheiro de Azevedo. In fact, the Communists control the hardhats' unions, and there was little doubt that the protest march had been timed to coincide with Angolan independence. Premier Pinheiro de Azevedo, President Francisco da Costa Gomes and other moderates in the Armed Forces Movement favor a coalition government for Portugal's former colony that would involve all three liberation movements. The Communists support the Marxist, Soviet-backed M.P.L.A. faction that rules Luanda, and by such tactics as the siege of Sao Bento hope to bring down the government and form a new one in Lisbon that backs their ideological allies in Africa.

People's Army. The leftists seem to be convinced that Pinheiro de Azevedo's hold on the country is still fragile enough to be smashed. The Premier looked forceful two weeks ago when loyal troops blew up Radio Renascenga, a Catholic broadcasting station that leftists had seized to beam antigovernment propaganda. But then Air Force General Jose Morais da Silva tactlessly explained that it was necessary to destroy the station because not enough trustworthy troops were available in Lisbon either to seize and hold it or else fend off radicals while the broadcasting equipment was removed.

At week's end, Portugal was again slipping dangerously close to civil war or at best another government shakeup. In Lisbon's Military Academy the Goncalvista, a group of 60 radical officers who remain loyal to former Premier Vasco dos Santos Gonc,alves, who was deposed two months ago by the armed forces in favor of Pinheiro de Azevedo, met openly to propose a "people's army" and "people's assembly."

In past crises, the Armed Forces Movement (M.F.A.), the group of officers who engineered the revolution 18 months ago, has ultimately stepped in to damp down the troubles. This time the movement was as fractured as the country, leading one Socialist to ask desperately last week, "Where is the M.F.A.? Are they in Portugal? Are they on vacation?" They were in Portugal, to be sure, but not very effectively. Instead of dispatching troops to free his beleaguered Premier, Costa Gomes appeared on television to moralize ("Anarchy is the ally of reaction") and appeal for "serenity and reflection." General Otelo Saraiva de Carvalho, who heads the internal security forces and fancies himself an Iberian Fidel Castro, was away in the south praising the revolutionary spirit of Communist farm workers and assuring them that "Otelo is with the povo [people]." In past confrontations, Saraiva de Carvalho has cannily shifted from faction to faction, depending on the advantage. The fact that he was with "the people" this time was proof enough that the government was in trouble.

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