The New Command

When General Antonio de Spinola abruptly resigned as provisional President earlier this month, he warned that Portugal was being taken over by leftists and faced "anarchy, crisis and chaos." His successors have gone out of their way to declare that though Portugal is steering a leftist course, it will not go Communist and will continue to honor its commitments to the Western alliance. To allay fears, Portugal's new President, Francisco da Costa Gomes, flew to the U.S. last week to meet President Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. He also addressed the U.N. General Assembly.

"The previous [pre-April 25] government was an extreme right-wing dictatorship," he told TIME Correspondent Gavin Scott before he left Lisbon. "Thus the present government will have to maintain its rudder on a leftward course. That is imperative. If we have only one year to rid ourselves of a half-century of extreme reaction, what climate do you think we should create to guarantee victory for any democratic party?" He added: "Portugal has already confirmed several times its respect for international treaties to which it is committed. There is not the slightest intention of considering leaving NATO."

Popular Vigilance. Power in Portugal now seems to be divided between General Costa Gomes, 60, the country's military Chief of Staff, and Premier Vasco Gongalves, 53, also a career officer who is regarded as the principal architect of the April revolution. Gongalves and the more conservative Spinola fought on almost all important issues, with Costa Gomes, then the No. 2 man in the ruling junta, acting as referee. Now Goncalves and Costa Gomes profess agreement on almost everything. "Where General Spinola saw anarchy, General Costa Gomes sees a healthy popular vigilance," says Gongalves. "These differences [between us] prevented a more harmonious functioning of the various processes of power. At this moment the situation is much clearer, and there is no doubt that favorable conditions have been created for faithfully fulfilling the program of the Armed Forces Movement, which is fundamentally a program of decolonization, democratization and development of the Portuguese nation."

Costa Gomes and Goncalves are in fact old friends. They served together in Angola, and both men participated from the very beginning in the April 25 movement that brought down the Caetano regime. Spinola was brought in after the coup to add his enormous prestige to the movement as titular head of state, but Costa Gomes was the preferred choice of the younger officers.

Besides attempting to quiet Washington's fears about Portugal's change in command, Costa Gomes last week also asked Washington's help in bolstering the Portuguese economy, which is bedeviled by an inflation rate of 30% a year and the return from Africa of thousands of jobless ex-colonists. Washington is likely to be sympathetic. Not only does it want Portugal to keep its newfound democracy, but it also wants to maintain the vital U.S. air base in the Azores. During the October war in the Middle East, Portugal was the only European country that openly cooperated with the U.S on aid to Israel by allowing American planes refueling rights in the Azores.

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