A Gambler's Luck Runs Out

Death comes for the Prime Minister

Brisk and impatient as always, Prime Minister Francisco Sa Carneiro arrived at Lisbon airport last week anxious to fly off to Oporto. There, with national elections scheduled for Sunday, he planned to deliver a final hortatory salvo to promote his presidential candidate--but no relation--General Antonio Soares Carneiro. With the Prime Minister, in the twin-engine Cessna C-421, were his longtime companion, Danish-born Snu Abecassis; Defense Minister Adeline Amaro da Costa and his wife; Cabinet Chief Antonio Patricio Gouveia and two pilots. Almost immediately after takeoff, the plane lost altitude. It sheered a wing and dropped in flames to the street. All aboard were killed. Sa Carneiro's own Social Democratic Party was quick to dismiss any suspicion of sabotage. Airport employees reported that the Cessna was in such poor condition that mechanics had to help start the engines.

The crash thrust Portugal to the brink of political crisis. Sa Carneiro, who left a wife and five children, took office last January as leader of a center-right majority coalition (134 of 250 seats) composed of his own Social Democrats along with rightist Christian Democrats and monarchists. Determined to strengthen his power to amend Portugal's Marxist constitution by electing a more like-minded President, Sa Carneiro opposed respected centrist President Antonio Ramalho Eanes in this week's elections. His candidate, General Soares Carneiro, was an obscure rightist whose main credential for office seemed to be the conservative ideas that he shared with Sa Carneiro's Democratic Alliance.

Polls showed Soares Carneiro trailing Eanes 2 to 1 before the crash. After it, all parties agreed that Sunday's elections should proceed as scheduled, probably because none could really assess what effect the accident might have on the outcome.

With six candidates in the field, there was a clear possibility of a runoff, and no Portuguese was ready to count on political stability. A majority for Eanes might express a public desire in that direction, but a sympathy vote for Soares Carneiro might just as easily demonstrate that the country wanted to preserve the cohesion that the dead leader had established. As for the post of Prime Minister, there seemed to be no one ready to fill Sa Carneiro's shoes. His Deputy Prime Minister and acting successor, Diogo Freitas do Amaral, is a frosty Christian Democrat unfamiliar with compromise. Socialist Mario Soares, an indispensable helmsman of the nation as Prime Minister after the 1974 revolution, is currently out of favor with both the electorate and his party.

The only thing most Portuguese seemed to agree on was the singular loss in the death of Sa Carneiro, a diminutive (5 ft. 4 in.) man who as a political fighter always seemed taller than he really was. Friends and opponents alike recalled that the young Sa Carneiro braved catcalls in the National Assembly to speak out for freedom in the dying days of Portuguese dictatorship. Intolerant of criticism in office, however, he drifted rightward. His campaign for Soares Carneiro was based on a threat to resign as Prime Minister. Justifying such a potentially destabilizing tactic, Sa Carneiro said: "Up to now, I have always gambled and always won." Last week, his luck ran out.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.