Venezuela: After Betancourt

In the past five years, Venezuela's strong-willed President Romulo Betancourt has held his volatile nation together mainly through the force of his bulldog personality. But Betancourt is constitutionally barred from succeeding himself when his term ends next December. What then? Last week Betancourt's Acción Democrática, the country's biggest party, nominated a candidate to carry on. He is Rául Leoni, 57, the party president, an old crony of Betancourt's and, like him, a onetime revolutionary turned democratic reformer.

From their looks, the two might be brothers. Both are bald and portly; in their rabble-rousing university days, they shared each other's clothes, spent time in the same jail, were both packed off to exile by the ruling dictatorships. In the early 1940s Leoni helped Betancourt found A.D. He personally organized its labor wing and was rewarded with the labor ministry (Betancourt was provisional President) in the junta that ruled from 1945 until it was overthrown in 1948. When Dictator Marcos Pérez Jiménez was toppled in 1958 and Betancourt became President, Leoni took over A.D.'s leadership, strengthening the labor and peasant ties that form the basis of the party's strength.

Leoni promises to carry on Betancourt's social and economic reforms, but he has little of Betancourt's magnetism. Dour, shrewd and sardonic, with little personal charm, he is more of a backroom politician than a stump-thumping vote getter. For that reason, many Venezuelans had hoped for a continuation of the joint front between A.D. and the Social Christian COPEI party led by Rafael Caldera, 47, an able and personable Caracas lawyer. A.D.'s insistence on Leoni, whom COPEI regards a party hack, diminishes the chance of a united democratic ticket against the left at election time. Even so, Leoni goes into the campaign a clear favorite to win.

Coolly recognizing his own unpopularity with COPEI and Caldera, Leoni argues that even if they won't help put him in office, they will be bound to support him afterward, and he knows he will need their help and votes if he is to govern effectively. The next regime, says Leoni, should be a coalition even if the party has to go it alone in the election.