Right Turn

Since 1974, when a military coup ended more than 40 years of fascist dictatorship, Portugal has experimented with Communism and socialism-and seen the sweet promises of revolution turn sour along with an ever more depressed economy. Last week "reformism," a freshly coined label on Lisbon's political scene, got its turn. The newly named government of Premier Carlos Alberto Mota Pinto defeated a Communist bid to deny it a vote of confidence, and thereby established itself as the fourth constitutional regime Portugal has had in three years.

The vote ended months of uncertainty over who would hold power in Lisbon. The Socialists, who are the largest party in the fractious Assembly, rejected the previous government, which was formed last summer by Alfredo Nobre da Costa, an apolitical technocrat, at the behest of President Antonio Ramalho Eanes. Eanes had just dropped Socialist Party Chief Mario Scares from the premiership after his governing coalition with the conservative Center Democrats fell apart. Scares was incensed by his ouster and was particularly upset because Eanes had not consulted the political parties before choosing Nobre da Costa. The former Premier insisted Eanes' action was "unconstitutional" and an example of haughty "presidentialism."

This time the Socialists in effect accepted the Mota Pinto government by the device of abstaining in last week's voting, even though Scares is personally opposed to Mota Pinto, a political and economic conservative. Scares said his party would give the new government "time to see what it is going to do."

What Portugal now has is a government more to the right of center than any other since the revolution. Mota Pinto, 42, a brilliant former law professor at Coimbra University, intends to bring to Portugal what he calls reformism, which he defines as the gradual, realistic search for social and economic improvement. It is, he says, "a prospect, a criterion, a framework."

Accordingly, the program that the Premier presented for treating Portugal's many ills was vague, perhaps deliberately so. Some disgruntled deputies derided it as a "letter of intent," and a "mere memorandum." Without mentioning specifics, the Mota Pinto program called for revising agricultural credit, promoting competition, creating jobs, and keeping up a permanent "dialogue with the workers." In his speech before the Assembly, Mota Pinto spoke forcefully in defense of his program. Said he: "We must put discipline in work, better the conditions for private investment and make the public sector efficient."

Mota Pinto, who describes himself as "independent and nonpolitical," intends to keep his government of technocrats and holdovers from the Nobre da Costa caretaker regime in office at least until 1980, when general elections are scheduled. In his favor is a definite shift to the right in Portugal's political spectrum. The Socialists have lost badly in by-elections in the conservative north. Portuguese banks, nationalized in 1975, have more or less gone back to operating as private institutions. A Right-Wing Party of Portugal has been formed.

Scares concedes that his Socialists are "somewhat spent," but he believes they will bounce back in 1980. Whether that is true will depend on how successful the reformists now in power in Lisbon are at mitigating the ills that their predecessors left behind: a 23% rate of inflation, hundreds of bankruptcies, an annual balance of payments deficit of about $1.5 billion, an agricultural policy so poor that Portugal must import 50% of its food, and unemployment so high that no one is able to calculate it precisely.

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