Double or Nothing

Juan Peron has his own technique for silencing critics without making too many martyrs. Two weeks ago, Radical Party Leader Moises Lebensohn received a one-year "conditional" jail sentence for showing "disrespect" to Peron in a campaign speech. The condition: Lebensohn goes free, but if he speaks out again in the next five years, he can look forward to serving a double term.

Last week another Radical leader, Martin Michel Torino, co-owner of the closed opposition newspaper, El Intransigente, in Salta, was arrested for the same "crime": disrespect for public officials. The specific charge against Torino was insulting the police of Salta--no mean feat for a publisher whose newspaper has been shut down by order of the government since December 1949.

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