Ready to Go?

For a quarter of a century ascetic Premier Antonio de Oliveira Salazar has slaved 18 hours a day, six days a week, giving the Portuguese the sternly ordered rule he thinks best for them. The least the little economics professor expected in return was public admiration, and for a surprisingly long time for a strongman, he got it. But though his budgets are tidily balanced, his people are still poor, and increasingly fed up with the lack of freedom and the harsh police methods of Salazar's paternal dictatorship. Portugal's money is stronger than the dollar, and prices are stable because the government holds down wages, but one-third of Portugal's 9,000,000 people live in villages with neither paved roads nor electricity. Last week Lisbon was afire with reports that the old leader, hurt and bewildered by mounting criticism, was thinking of stepping down.

Things have gone so far that the feeble opposition party, a band of quarreling liberal septuagenarians united briefly last year under General Humberto Delgado (now in Brazilian exile), recently asked official permission to hold a congress to select an "alternate" government should one be needed soon. Salazar refused their request and went before television cameras at week's end to insist that the great mass of the Portuguese people are behind him. But reports of his imminent departure persisted. If he is really bent on getting out, he would want to hand-pick his successor. Likely candidates: respected ex-President Francisco Higino Craveiro Lopes, known as "The Man Who Never Smiles," and strapping (6 ft. 2 in.) Pedro Teotonio Pereira, Salazar's right-hand man and current Minister of the Presidency. Pereira once quarreled with Salazar but has since made his peace with him. Both men are considered more liberal than Salazar.

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