The Hard Line Of Castello Branco

The Brazilian military men who rose up 19 months ago against corruption and Communism last week rose up once again. In Brasilia's Planalto Palace, President Humberto Castello Branco marched to a microphone and made the announcement. "The revolution is alive," he said. "It will not retreat. It has promoted reforms and will continue to undertake them. However, agitators are menacing the revolutionary order precisely when the revolution is trying to give the people practice in the discipline of exercising democracy."

With that, Castello Branco laid down a new Institutional Act far tougher than the one imposed to govern the country immediately after the revolution. It gives him power to suspend the political rights of any Brazilian, sack any municipal or federal legislator, intervene in any state "to prevent or repress the subversion of order." He can declare a state of siege for up to 180 days, shut down the national Congress, and decree any laws "complementary to the present act." Moreover, the armed forces, through the National Security Council, can dismiss any public employees who are deemed "incompatible with the objectives of the revolution," and the army now has jurisdiction, through military courts, over any and all crimes committed "against the national security."

There will be a presidential election next year--by indirect majority vote of Congress rather than direct popular vote. Castello Branco will not be a candidate. All existing political parties must disband and re-form under strict new rules, to eliminate all but the biggest. The government itself will form a "Party of the Revolution" and present a candidate to run for President.

In Disgust. The new act is undoubtedly harsh, probably harsher than Castello Branco, a man dedicated to constitutional democracy, would have liked to see. Yet it is what the military linha dura, or hardline, officers demanded. These are the soldiers who led the March 1964 coup against Leftist Joao Goulart in disgust at the corruption, demagoguery, and opportunistic politics that have prevailed in Brazil for years. Under Castello Branco, the Communists have been wiped out but not all the grafters have--and this has been a constant irritation to the military.

Scores of times in the past year, local commanders have ousted politicians they considered corrupt. Many military men were bitterly opposed to the recent gubernatorial elections, fearing that the same old political faces would reappear. And in fact they did. A coalition of Goulart's P.T.B. labor party and the P.S.D. of ex-President Juscelino Kubitschek, stripped of his political rights for corruption, won the governorships of two key states--Minas Gerais and Guanabara (Rio). Even then, Castello Branco might have persuaded the officers to simmer down had it not been for the return to Brazil of Kubitschek from his self-imposed exile in France (TIME, Oct. 1 5).

On the Grill. No sooner was Kubitschek home than he began huddling with old P.S.D. cronies, meeting with newsmen--and drawing huge crowds wherever he went. So military investigators started grilling him about corruption during the years between 1956 and 1961. The questions went on for two weeks, until the 63-year-old Kubitschek was sick abed with high blood pressure. At the same time, the linha dura officers were pressuring Castello Branco for new laws that would give the federal government greater control over state Governors and other elected officials. Castello Branco managed to soften their demands, and then sent the package to Congress, where the parties of Goulart and Kubitschek combined in violent opposition. When it became obvious that the government would not get a majority, Castello Branco either had to decree the Institutional Act or face a military revolt.

In the war office in Rio last week colonels and generals toasted the Institutional Act with champagne. "Instead of stating that corruption and subversion are out," said a colonel, "this act declares that corruption is out, out, out and out, and subversion is out, out, out and out!" Many other Brazilians were dismayed at the government's iron-fisted turn to rule by decree. Yet by and large the country took it calmly, with surprisingly few demonstrations or open protests of any kind.

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