PORTUGAL: A Country Waiting for the Roof to Fall In

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Portugal's headlong plunge toward Communist rule was suddenly stalled last week, first by an outbreak of violence in the northern and central regions of the country, and then by an open split in the ruling Armed Forces Movement (M.F.A.). The split was so serious that it could easily lead to the resignation of the Communist-lining Premier, Vasco dos Santos Gonçalves, and the beginning of a more moderate national policy that the vast majority of the Portuguese people would wholeheartedly welcome. But it could also widen to the point of civil war.

Growing Anarchy. The break in M.F.A. ranks was brought about by moderates determined to halt the gathering momentum toward Communist dictatorship. Led by former Foreign Minister Ernesto Melo Antunes, the moderates issued a petition of protest blaming the radicals—and indirectly the ruling junta—for growing anarchy, political drift and loss in confidence by the majority of the people.

Signed by nine members of the 30-man Revolutionary Council and at least 400 other officers, the manifesto quickly received the support of the commandos, the cavalry school and the paratroopers, as well as the commanders of the central and southern military regions. The junta immediately retaliated by suspending the nine dissident members of the Council for signing it. But at week's end the document was reportedly being circulated freely throughout all three branches of the armed forces, and gathering more and more signatures.

The manifesto flatly rejected as a model for Portugal a "socialist society of the East European type." Yet it warned that the country "will be fatally led" to precisely that model unless it rids itself of "a political leadership that obstinately believes that a vanguard with a very narrow social basis can make the revolution on behalf of all the people." This cannot be achieved, the document went on, "with the present leadership team, in view of its lack of credibility and manifest inability to govern."

The document was aimed point-blank at Gonçalves, the orthodox Communists, the Communist-controlled press and labor unions. Equally determined attacks on the same targets were taking place in the tradition-bound, church-oriented regions of the country. In several towns, bloody clashes between attacking moderates and conservatives on the one side, and Communists and soldiers on the other, left at least three dead and many more wounded.

At Vila Nova de Famalicào, a prosperous market town 20 miles north of Oporto, Communists shot at attacking conservative militants, wounding several. Two days later, troops dispatched to protect Communist headquarters there opened fire and killed two people, a 34-year-old rightist militant and a 19-year-old male nurse named Luis Barroso, a member of the centrist Popular Democrats. Furious, hundreds of anti-Communists broke through an infantry cordon and ransacked the building.