The Rightists Take Command

The revolutionary left in Portugal has been seriously ailing ever since the collapse of an abortive coupled by radical paratroop units in November. Last week what one Lisbon daily called the "death certificate" of the left was signed--in the form of a 70-page government report that blamed the botched uprising on a wide array of leftists in the military, the labor movement, the Communist Party, the press and the now defunct COPCON security forces. The night after the report was released, flamboyant former COPCON Chief Otelo Saraiva de Carvalho, who had served as part of Portugal's short-lived ruling troika (TIME cover, Aug. 11) was arrested at his home outside Lisbon. Saraiva de Carvalho, who had been demoted from general to major after his ouster from COPCON, protested his innocence. Said he: "My imprisonment must be part of an offensive by the right to eliminate all of the obstacles that stand in its way."

Saraiva de Carvalho is the self-designated "Fidel Castro of Europe" who was responsible for festooning Lisbon with red carnations during the 1974 April revolution that overthrew former Premier Marcello Caetano. His arrest indicated how far to the right Portugal has moved since last November. Some 150 high-ranking military officers and government officials have been imprisoned for alleged involvement in the fall revolt, and more arrests were expected to follow last week's report. To make room for the leftists, the government of moderate Premier Jose Pinheiro de Azevedo has quietly released nearly all of the political prisoners who were rounded up after the abortive rightist coup of March 1975. Even some 200 former agents of Caetano's hated secret police, PIDE, have been released, as has former Interior Minister Cesar Moreira Baptista, under whom they operated.

Through transfers and discharges of known leftists, Portugal's army, which last summer was an almost unmanageable stronghold of revolutionary ardor, has been transformed into a relatively disciplined force loyal to Pinheiro de Azevedo's government. Efforts to nationalize many of Portugal's industries and to carry out a sweeping land-reform program have virtually stopped. There have been almost nightly bombings of local Communist and leftist headquarters in northern Portugal. Conservative farmers in the north who have joined in the new Confederation of Farmers plan to make their angry voices heard in elections for the legislature scheduled for next April.

With the farmers' support, the Center Social Democrats, a rightist, free-enterprise party that won only 7% of the vote in last April's elections, confidently expects to become at least the nation's third largest party. The center-left Popular Democrats, although hurt by internal party divisions, are also expected to gain strength in the spring voting, perhaps even outpolling Mario Scares' moderately leftist Socialists, the largest vote getters in last spring's elections. A secret army poll recently leaked to the press predicted a meager 6% vote for Portugal's Communist Party--less than half the 12.5% they polled last spring.

Under Control. The Socialist leader is confident that his party will win the elections. In an interview with TIME's Martha de la Cal last week, Scares declared exultantly: "The people know that this country would be in the hands of the Communists or in a civil war if it were not for the Socialists. Who got rid of [the former proCommunist] Premier Vasco dos Santos Gonc,alves and who got rid of Saraiva de Carvalho? We did!" Scares declared that "the extremist left is finished" and dismissed Communist charges that Portugal might be subject to a new right-wing takeover by conservative leaders in the military. Said he: "We have the situation under control."

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