Cracks in the Showcase

"Colombia is still the showcase of the Alianza," says a longtime U.S. resident in Bogota. "But it is a flyspecked showcase." Under the uncertain leadership of President Guillermo Leon Valencia, Colombia's chronic trade deficit has doubled, reaching a perilous $750 million; the cost of living has soared a staggering 45% ; and more than 10% of the labor force is unemployed. To top those troubles, Colombia's ruling National Front is falling apart.

Colombia's economic woes are not entirely of its own making. Its main problem is that world prices for coffee, the country's only real source of foreign exchange, have been in a slump ever since 1957. It was partly in hope of getting the economy moving that the Conservative and Liberal parties buried a bitter, historic feud* and formed the National Front in 1958. The coalition has turned out to be a halfway house that neither party can really call home.

Attacks from Within. Liberal Alberto Lleras Camargo, who became Colombia's first coalition President in 1958, was an able administrator who held the frente together by sheer statesmanship. Conservative Valencia, 55, a courtly, scholarly lawyer, lacks his predecessor's elan and political acumen. When his budget came before Congress last October, his own party attacked it as inflationary. But Valencia, the son of Colombia's most revered poet and a lover of poetry himself, has little patience for anything so prosaic as economics. Famed for his gallantry to the ladies and a romantic passion for hunting, he professes to feel "pity for the man who goes to bed every night at the same time."

Last week Valencia ordered a 90-day embargo on nearly all imports, hoping to protect the country's depleted dollar reserves. But the ban is more likely to retard industrial expansion and hobble the country's social and economic development. "I am doing all I can," shrugs Valencia. "I am a poor bullfighter with a bad troupe and a very demanding audience."

"El Premature." Some bullfight. The frente has split into several factions. One Conservative band consistently criticizes Valencia's policies, and a left-wing offshoot of the Liberal Party has even thrown its support to ex-Dictator Gustavo Rojas Pinilla, whose National Popular Alliance Party went from six to 28 seats after the March congressional elections. "We shall take the government by fair means or foul," vows Rojas, whose followers have taken to wearing a Nazi-like party uniform.

About all that the Conservatives still have in common is their revulsion for Liberal Party Leader Carlos Lleras Restrepo, 56, the Liberal choice for coalition candidate in the 1966 elections. A cousin of Lleras Camargo and one of Valencia's most sulphurous critics, Attorney Lleras is nicknamed "el Prematuro" by his foes because of his visible eagerness for the presidency.

The Watchful Military. The only real power base in Colombia today is the military, and it still seems solidly behind the President. Valencia's war minister, able, astute Major General Alberto Ruiz Novoa, 47, who commanded the Colombian contingent during the Korean War, insists that the armed forces will adhere to their traditional role as "defenders of civilian rule."

Nonetheless, as Colombia's politicians keep up their feuding, Ruiz is quietly but unmistakably building his own stock. He distributes pamphlets of his speeches, joins in congressional debates, receives hundreds of admiring letters each week. His followers, who call Ruiz "Minister of Hope and Social Justice," believe that he represents the nation's best hope of preserving constitutional rule. For the time being, the military is simply watching developments. But, as Ruiz himself has said, "in times of crisis the armed forces cannot be indifferent to national events."

* The Conservatives have traditionally championed strong centralized government to perpetuate the privileges of an entrenched aristocratic and clerical elite. The Liberals preach social democracy, universal suffrage, and greater local autonomy.

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