Fatal Flaw

In all the vast expanse of his fatherland, no more ardent or versatile Peronista ever breathed than Oscar Ivanisse-vich, 45, onetime Argentine Ambassador to the U.S. As a surgeon he had removed the appendixes of both President and Señora Perón. As a poet he had composed the official party march, Peronista Boys. As Minister of Education, he distributed to his schoolchildren a saccharine pamphlet on Evita, "The Good Fairy of Argentina." Every morning on entering his office he bowed low to his patrons' pictures on the wall.

Yet somehow, in all of "Ivan's" ardor and devotion, there seemed to be a fatal flaw. He liked to run the Ministry of Education in his own way and he stubbornly resisted the demands of party politicos with axes of their own to grind. From the standpoint of the Casa Rosada, Oscar Ivanissevich was beginning to seem a little too independent.

This suspicion grew into a certainty early this month during a bitter Peronista campaign against Deputy Juan Casella Piñero of the Buenos Aires provincial legislature. Casella, a Radical, had been found guilty of remaining seated during a rising tribute to Argentina's liberator, José de San Martin. The entire Peronista propaganda machine swung into action to have Casella expelled. As Minister of Education, and as chairman of the current Year of San Martin celebrations, Ivanissevich was ordered to schedule one hour of speechmaking in the schools to blot out Casella's insult to the liberator.

Ivan refused. An editorial in Eva Peron's own evening Noticias Gráficas announced the inevitable decision: "The authorities who control education have taken no step whatsoever [to counter] the terrific insult . . . Those whose task it is to look after the national culture and pUrity of national virtues have failed."

Last week Perón accepted Ivanissevich's resignation. Ivan had already retired to the sleepy provincial capital of La Rioja (pop. 15,000). For the immediate future, Oscar Ivanissevich planned to stick to poetry and medicine.