Evolutionary Election

After 26 years of firm Somoza family rule, Nicaragua had someone with a different name at the head of its government last week. In much-heralded "free elections," Luis Somoza, 40, and Anastasio ("Tachito") Somoza Jr., 38, the two brothers who took over the small Central American country in 1956 after the assassination of their father, stuck to their promise that no Somoza would appear on the ballot. But the boys will have a friend in the palace. Elected President by a landslide was former Foreign Minister Rene Schick, 53, hand-picked choice of the Somozas' Nationalist Liberal Party.

The opposition loudly cried fraud, said that the ballot boxes were stuffed before the polls opened, that the government had printed thousands of duplicate registration cards. In the new regime, Luis Somoza will sit in the Somoza-dominated Senate, tough Tachito will still command the national guard, and the only genuine opposition will have no voice in the legislature. Nevertheless, the U.S. chose to regard the election as a small evolutionary step toward representative democracy. In recent years the Somozas have instituted a few tentative reforms, have even permitted the opposition press to have its say. To encourage all concerned, U.S. diplomats let President-elect Schick know that he would be welcome if he wanted to pay an informal visit to Washington.

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