Brazil: More Time

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By their own ground rules, Brazil's revolutionaries were supposed to hold an election Oct. 3, 1965, and then turn the country back to a popularly elected President. Contemplating all the things wrong with Brazil, the new civilian and military leaders considered that too little time to work out the necessary reforms. Last week the Brazilian Congress extended President Humberto Castello Branco's term and set the election for Nov. 15, 1966. A second vote, scheduled for this week, will make it official.

The electoral reform bill, as proposed by Castello Branco last month, originally made no provision for extending the President's term. He wanted revision of the electoral laws to require that a presidential candidate win a popular majority for election; if no candidate had a majority, Congress would then pick a winner. But many of the revolution's leaders seized upon the provision as a chance to extend the President's term.

The man most bitterly opposed to the idea was Carlos Lacerda, the mercurial Guanabara state governor and a front-running candidate in any future presidential election. Returning from a trip abroad, Lacerda had two cordial meetings with Castello Branco, then turned around and stormed that "a revolution that hides from the people is no longer a revolution but a coup." His invective fell on deaf ears; many of Lacerda's own U.D.N. Party members in Congress rebelled and joined other Senators and Deputies in a majority approval of the bill.

Castello Branco can well use the ex tra months. In a series of TV broadcasts last week, the President and his Cabinet described how much has to be done. Brazil's state-owned railway system is losing $1,000,000 a day, the social security system, which still owes $40 million on last year's debts, cannot meet present commitments, and the country's overall federal deficit this year will reach $425 million—one of the highest in Brazil's history.