Hangover Sets In

After nearly 50 years of dictatorship at home and five centuries of increasingly futile imperialism overseas, the promises of freedom offered by the leaders of Portugal's April 25 coup were heady indeed. But last week, with the inevitability of a hangover the morning after a once-in-a-lifetime celebration, confusion and economic unrest replaced some of the jubilation. Portugal's troubles in Africa seemed as intractable as ever, and the sudden lifting of repression in Lisbon was spawning such ferment that it could lead to political chaos.

The ruling junta--which represents the Armed Forces Movement and is led by General Antonio de Spinola, 64, a monocled, swashbuckling counterinsurgency hero turned reformer--has pledged to form a provisional government this week. As that deadline approached, no fewer than 54 different political parties, ranging from Maoist splinter groups on the left to monarchists favoring the restoration of the House of Braganc,a on the right, stepped up their jockeying for influence. All wanted to be part of the interim coalition that will govern Portugal until general elections are held next spring.

Communist Discipline. Spinola is expected to be named Provisional President, but other posts are being sought by politicians who until April 25 were either outlawed or at least barred from sitting in the rubber-stamp National Assembly. Socialist Leader Mario Soares, 49, who returned in triumph from Paris four days after the coup, proclaimed: "We are ready to assume the highest responsibilities of office." Another former exile and Soares' principal rival on the left, Communist Leader Alvaro Cunhal, 60, had no sooner unpacked his bags than he began negotiating with the junta for the job of Labor Minister. Because of the rigid discipline the Communists had been forced to exercise during their years as an outlawed underground movement, they have emerged as the most organized political party in the country. But the military retains control, and its leaders hope that in the year before general elections are held, other parties will become organized enough to compete with the Communists.

At the other end of the spectrum, Portugal's wealthy industrialists and the oligarchic "100 families" who virtually own the economy have been desperately maneuvering and power-brokering to keep the junta from making concessions to restive workers. The junta's headquarters in the Presidential Palace has been besieged daily by laborers petitioning for better conditions and pay. Lisbon postal clerks, who now earn about 4,000 escudos ($160) a month, erected a banner demanding higher wages. The banner originally called for 6,000 escudos, but by week's end the figure had been raised to 9,000.

Emboldened union leaders were threatening strikes against a number of big companies, including the privately owned National Steel Works. Civil servants were holding union meetings during working hours so frequently that the junta departed from its rhetoric of permissiveness long enough to warn that if such disruptions continued, they would be regarded as "insubordination against the Armed Forces Movement."

Despite occasional lapses into precoup type threats, the junta has already made good on its commitment to liberalize Portugal's stifling fascist culture. A judge in Lisbon last week summarily dismissed charges against three women on trial for writing an outspoken feminist tract. The authors, known as "the three Marias," had been arrested by the old regime and accused of "outraging public morals" and "abusing the freedom of the press" (TIME, July 23). In clearing them, Judge Artur Lopes Cardoso urged Maria Velho da Costa, Maria Isabel Barreno and Maria Teresa Horta to continue writing "works of art." And last week, for the first time, Portuguese movie theaters were showing The Great Dictator, Charlie Chaplin's 1940 spoof on Nazism, and the 1925 Soviet silent-film classic Potemkin.

Grim Outlook. While the situation inside Portugal was for the moment merely unsettled, the outlook in the country's African territories was getting grim. The junta wants to elevate Portuguese Guinea, Mozambique and Angola to membership in a multiracial federation in which the territories would be granted a measure of autonomy but not independence. This scheme satisfies neither the colonialists nor the colonials. General Francisco Costa Gomes, the armed forces commander in chief, made a sudden flying visit to Angola to reassure the 750,000 white settlers there that "Mother Portugal" would not abandon them. He was obviously concerned about heading off a Rhodesian-style breakaway by the oil-rich colony. Gomes also offered the liberation fighters a cease-fire until self-determination can be negotiated. The guerrillas' response was immediate: "We refuse to be considered as black Portuguese," said Georges Paulo Texeira, spokesman for the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola. In Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, the journal of Frelimo (the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique), editorialized: "The only language [Lisbon] understands is the language of force." The guerrillas obviously agreed. They killed nine persons last week in Mozambique, including an elderly white man whom they dragged from his farmhouse, and mined a train. Said Frelimo Leader Samora Machel: "There will be no peace and no end to the war before independence is achieved."

The junta has no intention of granting independence now. Even as small numbers of the thousands of young Portuguese who fled their country to escape the draft began trickling back last week, troops were boarding transports at Portela airport to be flown to combat areas in the territories.

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