The Quiet One

For one month things were different in Portugal. Censorship was relaxed. The ban on political meetings and speeches was lifted, criticism of the government was allowed, and an opposition political committee (though it could not call itself a party) was permitted to campaign. It contested 28 of the 120 seats in the National Assembly, all held by Dictator Antonio de Oliveira Salazar's boys. Then, precisely at midnight one day last week, the "political campaign" was declared at an end, and Portugal turned back into one man's pumpkin. "Silence! Silence!" said the final campaign headline in the opposition newspaper, Republica. "Portugal returns to her sad fate."

Nonetheless, for the first time in 27 years, the Portuguese had a chance to vote against the government itself. Some 60% of Portugal's 1,200,000 voters went to the polls--and voted down every one of the opposition candidates. In the three cities where they put up candidates, the opposition won 16.7% of the vote, but felt encouraged as a start "for the battles of tomorrow."

Without Eagles. Just why Premier Salazar had decided to dabble in democracy after 25 years' devotion to a corporative state modeled on Italian Fascism, he did not say. In fact, the Premier rarely says anything. Disdaining the dazzle and bombast the eagles and trumpets of the dictating profession. Portugal's Premier, at 64, has outlasted them all. Today he is the dean of totalitarian rulers.

Salazar rules calmly from the background, hating every minute of the occasional public appearances he cannot avoid. Living piously, almost austerely (up at 6:30 every morning for Mass), he pays himself a $500-a-month salary (plus a Lisbon mansion and a summer place made from an old seacoast fortress). He governs a land of 8,500,000 people and 35,000 square miles, plus overseas possessions (e.g., Mozambique, Macao) which make Portugal No. 3 of the world's colonial powers. His face--dominated by dark, thoughtful eyes and a long nose, and topped by neat, grey hair--rarely appears in the newspapers, and usually when he strolls through Lisbon's lush gardens or along its mosaic sidewalks, he walks alone without attendants or bodyguards in sight. Probably no more than half a dozen Portuguese have been asked to sit at Salazar's table. He has two adopted daughters, 20 and 16. But he is a confirmed bachelor; there is no woman in his life. His drinking is confined to occasional sips of port, usually diluted; he allows no smoking in his presence.

Pockets Inside Out. When an army junta called Dr. Salazar from the obscurity of the economics chair at the ancient (1290) University of Coimbra one day in 1928 to bail out Portugal's swamped fiscal position, the national budget had been balanced only twice in the previous 74 years. Salazar took over with a strong hand, made even the generals his servants. Today Portugal enjoys relative stability: she has no inflation, her payments with the outside world are in balance, her national wealth is 150% above 1946, her escudo (29 to $1) is respectable. Her wartime neutrality brought good profits, a fine credit position and--thanks to his foresighted and unneutral leasing of Azores bases to the U.S. before war's end--enough standing to win charter membership in NATO.

Salazar's corporative system binds the nation's economy, from farming to foreign trade, into tight, firmly controlled corporations or syndicates. Though Economist Salazar has won from friend & foe a reputation for selflessness and honesty (he promises to turn his pockets inside out when, and if, he resigns), the system's complexities and red tape have produced much graft. In his Cabinet are 15 ministers, but Dr. Salazar ultimately makes all the hard decisions himself, occasionally lectures government officials, and Portugal's industrial and business leaders with dry, essay-like speeches which he laboriously composes himself.

Paint Every Two Years. For all its fiscal stability, Portugal is still a poor country where initiative withers in the gloom of resignation. The people who grow Portugal's olives, make its port, strip its cork, net and pack its sardines, mine its rich wolfram ore deposits, live in limpidly beautiful villages with white-painted cottages (a 1949 Salazar decree requires a new paint job every two years) amidst some of the world's grandest scenery. But Dictator Salazar has never balanced his people's household budgets. Poverty and disease are widespread. Illiteracy is 40%.

Political opposition is still a risky business, subject to the eagle eyesight of Dr. Salazar's efficient security police. But there has been increasing lenience with dissenters, and several opposition groups--the Monarchists, Socialists, Communists--are known to be operating underground. Political trials are now public. The dictator's new leniency in elections may be, as skeptics see, a mere transient gesture. But it could also be that the ex-professor now recalls, in his quiet old age, what he once said years ago: "Dictatorship is essentially a formula of transition ... It should not seek permanence."

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