Minority President

On the stage of Quito's gilt-trimmed Sucre Theater last week, a new President put on the blue-red-yellow sash of office. For Camilo Ponce Enriquez, 44, the problems that go with the sash are likely to prove especially burdensome. He is a Conservative in a country that has been politically dominated by Liberals since the revolution of 1895. Only a freakish three-way split among Liberal factions in last June's election made it possible for Ponce to win at all, and even so, he got only 29% of the votes, edging out the runner-up by some 3,000 votes--one-half of i% of the total.

Angry Liberals, bent on keeping Winner Ponce out of office, staged an uprising in Manabi province, and Liberal Deputies tried to organize a no-quorum strike to prevent Congress from declaring him President-elect. Both attempts failed. Out going President Jose Maria Velasco Ibarra, most of the armed-forces brass and an apparent majority of run-of-the-plaza Ecuadorians wanted to see Ponce take office for the sake of constitutional order.

Progressive Conservative. Ecuador's new President is a well-groomed, keen-minded lawyer who at 33 headed his nation's delegation to the United Nations founding conference at San Francisco. Later he served as Public Works Minister, Senator, Interior Minister.

As a minority President, Ponce seems to be well aware that in order to serve out his term he must carefully avoid provoking the suspicious, disgruntled Liberal majority. In his inaugural address last week, he sounded more liberal than the Liberals, promising to end "feudalism, absentee-landlordism and bossism," and declaring that the time had come "to give land to many ... to take away from our dialectical revolutionaries any pretext for their adventures."

Political Inflammability. Along with political difficulties, Ponce will have to cope with an ailing economy and a near-empty treasury. The nation's income from exports (bananas, cacao, coffee) fell off this year. President Velasco ran up deficits by spending lavishly for public works and--to keep the army contented--for military equipment. The government owes public employees back pay, is half a year behind on loan repayments to the World Bank and the Export-Import Bank.

Economic troubles aside, Ecuadorians can take pride in their nation's recent history. The country was long notorious for political inflammability, but last week Ponce became the third President in a row to be constitutionally inaugurated. And for a Conservative to be able to take office in Ecuador with only a 29% mandate was itself a milestone of political progress and maturity.

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