Another Doctor?

Crammed with white-suited politicos, the six-car caravan headed west from Havana along the broad Central Highway. At town after sugar-mill town, Liberal party leaders had turned out crowds to wave at Presidential Candidate Ricardo Nunez Portuondo. By the time he made his speech of the day, at Pinar del Rio, it was 1 a.m. "People are sick and tired of four years of Grauism," he thundered. The guayabera-clothed farmers had stayed to cheer. "Fuera--out with them," they yelled.

With such campaigning last week, the gaunt, 6-ft. candidate of the conservative opposition was working mightily to close the lead of sleek, smiling Autentico Candidate Carlos Prio Socarras, President Grau's own choice to be his successor. Ricardo Nunez' first bid for public office was a strong one. The son of the general who ran up the flag of Cuban independence over Havana's Morro Castle in 1902, he was one of the island's most solid citizens. Pennsylvania-born, he trained at Philadelphia's Lankenau Hospital and later became Dictator Machado's personal surgeon. Before long he got as deep into politics as Physician Grau himself. By last winter he was seeing as many politicos as patients, and University of Havana colleagues began greeting him with: "And what does our doctor-president say today?"

As a campaigner, 54-year-old Dr. Nunez lacks Prio's easy geniality and glad hand with voters. Critics think him humorless, high-handed, reactionary. But he has promised not to undo any of the revolution's social legislation. For victory on June 1, he counts on three factors: 1) popular dissatisfaction over black markets, price profiteering, 100 unpunished political murders; 2) dissension inside the Prio camp; 3) Independent Candidate Eddy Chibas' ability to take votes away from Prio and thus to help the Nunez campaign.

Toughest obstacle to Nunez' success: Cuba's sugar prosperity. Observers in Havana thought he had a fair chance if he could keep up his killing pace.

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