Against "the Situation"

Every four years, Premier Antonio de Oliveira Salazar preserves Portugal's image as a democracy by blowing the dust off a few selected "opposition" leaders and relaxing police controls just enough for a few weeks to permit them to run for Portugal's 130-seat National Assembly.

There are a few cracks in the facade. The assembly functions only as a rubber stamp. The opposition candidates are usually feeble old men left over from a regime that was discredited and overthrown four decades ago, and Salazar decides what they can and cannot talk about (prohibido this year: any mention of troubles in the African colonies of Angola and Mozambique). Besides, they are forbidden to hold political rallies or print campaign posters, their words are censored, and they usually find it impossible to get their names actually on the ballots. And, just in case, a Situafao ("the Situation"), as Lis-boans call the Salazar regime, counts the votes.

Petulant Feud. As Portugal went to the polls this week, something new had been added. It did not come from the 34 opposition candidates, most of whom shrugged and withdrew long before the government could count them out. Last week a group of 101 prominent Catholic laymen took advantage of the relative pre-election freedom to speak out against the Situation. In a bitter "testimonial," published in all major Portuguese dailies, they accused the regime, which they said, "claims to be Catholic," of "totalitarian" rule that is "systematically offending and violating the Christian conscience."

It was a charge that rang painfully true to many Portuguese Catholics, for quite apart from the harshness of his police-state rule at home, Salazar has been carrying on a petulant feud with the Vatican itself. Several "subversive" passages of Pope John, XXIII's Mater et Magistra have been suppressed by a regime that considers every Pope since Pius X a dangerous liberal. Pope Paul's visit last year to India (which had seized the Portuguese colony of Goa) was officially attacked as a "gratuitous offense" against Portugal. The Pope's trip to New York last month was censored because Salazar feared it would lend dignity to the United Nations--hated because of its insistence that Portugal free Angola and Mozambique.

Hope for the Future. Last week's testimonial will have no effect on the current elections, of course, and it was neither supported nor approved by Portugal's bishops, who traditionally support Salazar. But the document's principal authors believe that it "will create a union of Catholics against the regime," and, hopefully, the eventual basis for an anti-Salazar Christian Democratic Party. Which, if nothing else, is looking determinedly to the future: the oldest member of the group is 47; most are in their 30s.

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