Question Mark

A question very much to the point in Latin America is whether a freely elected President who succeeds a dictator can reform his country into democratic stability --and how long it will take. Last week the question came up in the Dominican Republic, for more than 30 years the private preserve of the late Rafael Trujillo, where just such a President was inaugurated. The man: Juan Bosch, 53, a scholarly, silver-haired writer, ex-revolutionary and theoretical reformer--and Mr. Question Mark himself.

Whence the Wherewithal? From the way he talks, Bosch sounds like everything the Dominican Republic needs, and right now it needs plenty. Two years after the overthrow of Dictator Trujillo, more than 20% of the country's labor force is still unemployed or underemployed, the per capita growth in gross national product is almost at a standstill, and the illiteracy rate stands at 70%.

To get elected, Bosch sent up reform programs like soap bubbles. Besides new hospitals, schools, old-age homes and better transportation, he promised to dole out 16-acre farm plots among 70,000 rural families. Another Bosch promise: economic diversification. Right now the Dominican Republic succeeds or fails with its sugar crop, which accounts for 70% of the country's export earnings of $140 million. So Bosch has pledged credits to small businessmen. He also hopes to coax more and more tourists to the country's four major hotels, its nightclubs, its cool, fragrant mountains.

Between his December election and last week's inaugural, Bosch made a swing through the U.S. and Europe asking everyone from President Kennedy to Chancellor Konrad Adenauer for the where withal to finance his promised reforms. The results were mixed. The Alliance for Progress disbursed $5.000.000 of $47 million in credits and grants that had already been committed to the Dominican Republic. Private industry in the U.S. and other countries agreed to send in missions to assay investment opportunities. And he does have a stable currency to build on. Last year, under diligent prodding from the provisional government, the country's peso gained 20% in value. Still, for all his travels and talking, Bosch is far from having all the money he needs to carry out his campaign promises.

Betancourt at Best. Even more than Bosch's grandiose plans, what gives his would-be friends pause is Bosch himself. A political exile since 1937, Bosch made a name for himself as a writer, and became a political confidant of Venezuela's Ro-mulo Betancourt and Puerto Rico's Luis Munoz Marin. He returned to the Dominican Republic 16 months ago, built his Dominican Revolutionary Party into a Betancourt-style voice of peasants and workers. At his best, Bosch seems to stand for sensible reform; at his worst, he indulges some of the erratic whims of a Janio Quadros, Brazil's mercurial onetime President, who abdicated in 1961. Before the election, when a priest called Bosch a "Marxist-Leninist." he became so inflamed that he withdrew completely from the campaign--only to return to the race a few days later. Periodically, he has gone on verbal rampages, lashing out at his country's rich, criticizing the Alliance for Progress, and denouncing a big contract recently signed by Standard Oil of New Jersey and the provisional government that he succeeds.

All this threatens to make political life hard for Bosch. Hounding him on the extreme left are Red agitators prodded by radio from neighboring Cuba. Then there are the frayed, right-wing remnants of Trujillo's toppled government, as well as elements of the now-dissolved provisional government. Even the leftist parties that originally supported Bosch are giving him trouble. Just two days before the inauguration, he had to revise his 15-member Cabinet.

The U.S. remains hopeful, regarding Bosch more with benevolent indulgence than outright doubt. At his inauguration, Vice President Lyndon Johnson was on hand to affirm U.S. support of the new government. As one top Administration official said last week in Washington: "He's a good man, but he's been out of touch with his country too long. I think he will mellow in office." Bosch feels that his crit ics will be the ones to mellow. "At the dawn of democracy," he preached in his inaugural address, "the fears of some are very great. But the confidence of the people will grow as the sun rises at the breaking of the new day."

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