I'm Spinola--Defy Me

General Antonio de Spinola, who assumed the presidency of Portugal after the military coup last April, would like to be regarded as the liberator of his country. Unfortunately, Portugal has been drifting rapidly toward chaos ever since the revolt. The question now is whether fear of anarchy may force Spinola--like so many generals before him--to impose dictatorship on his country in the name of law and order.

Last week his government took two key steps toward imposing restraints on Portugal's new-found sense of freedom. Since the coup, Portugal has been virtually paralyzed by a succession of strikes and work stoppages. From Belem Palace, Spinola asked for tough new guidelines on pay raises for the unions. He also succeeded in ending a three-day strike of postal workers by warning them that if they did not return to their jobs he would send in the army to sort the mail. Military arm-twisting was also used to end a month-long walkout at the Timex plant outside Lisbon.

After long and heated discussions, the President also won reluctant approval from his Cabinet for some new press curbs, which some leftists criticized, a bit unfairly, as a throwback to the bad old days of the Caetano regime. The press law bans "ideological aggression against the program of the Armed Forces Movement," like inciting soldiers to desert or workers to walk off their jobs. Violating editors are subject to fines of up to 500,000 escudos ($20,000) and a six-month ban on publication of their papers.

The crackdown on wildcat strikers represents a very modest start toward solving Portugal's horrendous economic problems. Inflation is running at 30% a year and the main sources of foreign earnings are drying up. Remittances sent home by Portuguese workers living abroad, which amounted to almost $1 billion last year, were down at least 70% in the first month after the coup because of uncertainty about the situation back home. Tourism, the second most important source of foreign-currency income, is down at least 30%. The halls of big Lisbon hotels are as empty as morgues, and beaches along the Algarve coast are uncrowded for the first time in years. Meanwhile, Lisbon businessmen have yet to be convinced that the government can handle its problems. Says one leading industrialist: "By October or November there will be a terrible economic crisis. That's for certain. We're going the way of Chile."

Power Grab. "I can understand why people up to now lack confidence," Economics Minister Vasco Vieira de Almeida told TIME Correspondent George Taber. "It is up to the government to create it." Creativity, however, is not exactly helped by the patchwork makeup of the 15-member Cabinet, which includes Socialists and Communists as well as nonpolitical technocrats, centrists and a lieutenant colonel. Last week, typically, the Cabinet set aside three days to discuss a series of sweeping economic decisions; the meeting broke up in disarray after the first day, and further discussion was postponed for a week.

With the government more or less immobilized, Spinola--who once declared that "politics has never attracted me"--has gradually been gathering more and more power into his own hands. In a style reminiscent of Charles de Gaulle, he has been touring the country, combining stops at military barracks with eloquent speeches in town squares. The general's whistle-stopping seems to have three main goals: to build up a personal following directly with the masses, to remind the army that its loyalty should be to him and not to the revolutionary captains who led the coup, and to warn the anarchic left that he will use force if necessary to keep order. Some military officers are unhappy about Spinola's blatant power grab, but there is little that they can do about it, at least for the moment. Three weeks ago, when leaders of the Armed Forces Movement protested, the President threatened to resign unless they promised to support him. The captains backed down and gave him an overwhelming vote of confidence.

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