Out of Hand?

Some strange things happened last week in Juan D. Peron's Argentina. In a country ruled by a man who is regarded by most of the world as the Strong Man, not everything was running on schedule. The first intimations of trouble came at the constitutional convention, which was expected to whip out a Peronista constitution in jig time.

At the start, everything seemed shipshape. Evita Peron planned to stage-manage the convention as if it were a Peronista rally. Inspecting the high-domed Congreso a few days before the convention opened, imperious Evita acted as if she owned the place. She announced when she would speak, decided where she would sit. She had already proclaimed that she would furnish some of the convention props. Among them: a portrait of Argentina's Liberator Jose de San Martin, a crucifix, a vellum-bound copy of the Gospels, and most important, a chair of native pipiribi wood with President Peron's portrait, the Argentine shield, and the Peronista party emblem painted on its back.

On the Rostrum. No one knew how the signals got switched, but Evita abruptly called off her speech to the opening session. When the pipiribi chair was placed on the rostrum, the Peronista party emblem had been hastily covered with a piece of ordinary leather. Obviously somebody had decided that a party emblem was not a proper ornament for a convention representing the entire Argentine people.

Even that change did not satisfy Opposition Delegate Moises Lebensohn. In a bristling speech which Convention President Domingo A. Mercante did not try to stop, he denounced the plan to bring Peron's portrait into the chamber. "Neither in France, Great Britain nor the U.S. has it ever occurred to anybody to place a portrait of the chief of state in the halls of parliament," he shouted.

"Not even in their years of dictatorship did Mussolini and Hitler dare display their pictures in their stage-managed parliaments. I was about to say that I did not know of a single case where this is so, but I am mistaken. There is a small country in the Antilles, a small, unfortunate country in which the President re-elects himself time after time--the republic of Santo Domingo. Its national parliament is presided over by the photograph of Dictator General Doctor Rafael Leonidas Trujillo." Cries of "May bien, muy bien" and loud applause rang through the chamber.

In the Paper. That afternoon, while government speakers droned on, Convention President Mercante, who is provincial governor of Buenos Aires and one of Peron's closest friends, met with Peronista leaders. Shortly afterwards, the majority floor leader, Angel Miel Asquia, came out to tell the press that they had decided to drop the proposal to let a President succeed himself.

Veteran reporters demanded proof. Miel Asquia waved a paper at them. A reporter from Noticias Graficas grabbed it, examined it minutely. Sure enough, it carried the names of such party stalwarts as Mercante, Hector Campora, chief of the capital's Peronistas, and Miel Asquia himself. Every newspaper in Buenos Aires, including Senora Peron's Democracia, reported that Article 77, which forbids two successive terms for Presidents, would go unchanged.

Early next day, Peron angrily called the signers to the Government Palace. Why, he demanded, had they been party to such doings? They stammered that they had merely been trying to interpret the President's wishes. Had he not repeatedly gone on record as opposed to changing Article 77? And what did it all matter anyway, since the Senor Presidente had definitely said: "I am not going to accept a second term?"

In the Future. In Buenos Aires, people began to wonder what was up. Since the ouster of Economic Czar Miguel Miranda (TIME, Jan. 31) they had begun to learn that their country's economy was shaky. Many recalled old army gripes against "petticoat rule." Others noted that men like Foreign Minister Juan Atilio Bramuglia and War Minister Jose Humberto Sosa Molina are keenly conscious that dictatorships are not popular in the U.S., the only country that can help Argentina out of her economic troubles.

Others guessed that these little signs of independence within the Peronista party reflected some leaders' realization that things were not well in the country, and that their President might not be quite the Strong Man he had always been cracked up to be. Thinking about alternatives, some politicos had been cautiously hedging against the future. Undoubtedly, Article 77 would be reformed, but at least Domingo Mercante and Hector Campora had put themselves slyly on record against change.

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