Salazar's uncertain legacy

PORTUGAL ELIZABETH CORBETT

The expected has happened. Left without a leader, amid the argument and procrastination now going on over the nomination of a successor to Salazar Portugal is in danger of putting the clock back forty years to the unsettled days before his emergence. Even if. as the latest reports suggest, Dr Marcello Caetano, chief contender for the succession, has agreed to form a government, there can be no certainty - that this is more than a stopgap. The fact that the country has been without an administrator for over a fortnight does not augur well And no machinery exists for an alternative form of government.

As Dr Antonio Salazar is no ordinary man, his successor will have no easy task. His direc- tion was personal and stylised; and above all very dedicated. Living without grandeur, scorn- ing high society, he identified himself with the majority of ordinary Portuguese as a father figure without reproach. 'There is nothing wrong with our leader, it is the rich with their intrigues who oppress us,' was a typical com- ment, particularly from the woman in the street. In his official residence beside the National Assembly Salazar lived as a religious recluse, emerging only now and then to make lengthy speeches often so wrapped up in ambi- guity as to be unintelligible to the average Portuguese.

He avoided issues like poverty and corrup- tion in the country's day-to-day administration. By a policy of extremes he had manipulated his way to power. He supported the rich so long as they remained out of politics and kept the peasants in their place by providing a minimum of free education. In a recent report from the Gulbenkian Foundation, 31 per cent of Portuguese workers are reckoned to be illiterate or only just able to read and write— which is not surprising as most of them left school at ten or eleven, if they went to school at all (in isolated districts the law on com-, pulsory education has not always been im- plemented).

Under Portugal's social structure a nucleus of people at the top control banking and com- merce and also provide the class from which Salazar drew his ministers. No man was ever allowed to remain long enough in office to turn into a rival. About 90 per cent of land in Portugal is still in private hands, much of it in the form of large estates whose owners live in nineteenth century style. By contrast there are countless smallholdings which peasants hold on to tenaciously although they provide nothing more titan a scratch living. Property, as something to be seen, is a,veneration common

to all Portuguese It has not made for progress.

When Dr Salazar came to power in 1932 democracies considered dictatorship a respect- able alternative form of government, so long as it had no extra-territorial aims. During the Second World War he consolidated his posi- tion when he granted the allies a defence base in the Azores. By 1945 he had been virtual dictator for thiteen years, and while the rest of Europe was repairing its frontiers, Dr Salazar was effectively silencing his opposition.

With TIDE (secret police) agents on the pay roll wherever workers are employed he has

kept a tab on their political activities. Elections have become more and more of a farce— refinements like deliberately misleading opposi- tion candidates about the colour and size of ballot papers to invalidate votes, and removing the names of those thought to be antipathetic from the electoral registers—have become accepted practice. Last March Dr Mario Soares, the only active opponent of Dr Salazar, was deported to the Portuguese African island of Sao Tome, and since then, apart from the few dedicated opponents living on in isolation and between three hundred and four hundred shut away in prison (a neutral estimate), the Por- tuguese have just given up.

But given a leader the opposition could have a potential, as happened when the late General Delgado in 1958 blasted his way to the Presi- dential elections with the slogan 'Dismiss Salazar' and secured 25 per cent of the votes against enormous odds. But he was not stable enough to carry on the fight, and the Portuguese slipped back once more into political apathy. So when the first rebellion broke out in Portuguese Africa in 1961 there was no one to say an effective `no' to Salazar's policy of sup- pressing the rebels with force. A few bowler- hatted generals who tried to change course with a bloodless coup were quickly replaced with loyal right-wingers. Since then the trouble is Angola has spread to Mozambique and Guinea, and the cost has risen to £86 million a year (Salazar's own figures) and necessitated the de- ployment of 120,000 troops.

To Salazar the overseas territories, whose total area is four times that of France, are integral parts of Portugal. Anyone who suggests that they are colonies evokes a touchy defensive-

ness from Portuguese officials, and they remain completely tied to Lisbon. But by no means all The Europeans in Angola and Mozambique, the two prospering territories, are happy about their complete subservience to the National Assembly back home. They point out that they pay

enormous taxes for defence, which could be reduced if policy was changed. Many of them want decentralisation, not regarded as an alter- native. What few political rights the Portuguese at home enjoy are shared in the overseas territories by Africans and Europeans alike, and the Portuguese are about as colour-blind as a nation could be. The conditions for poli- tical enfranchisement—literacy and the owner- ship of property—are the same for Africans ' and Europeans. The barriers to African poli- tical advancement are economic.

A continuing source of friction is the relative share of the state and private enterprise in the exploitation of colonial wealth. Angola, for instance, is a promised land which makes a sizeable contribution to the escudo zone balance of payments, without which Dr Salazar's economy would have been in trouble. But at the moment Petrangol, the Angola Oil Company, is contesting the amount of royalties payable to the state. It has offered £11 million a year but the state wants more.

The chief spokesman for Petrangol is the company president, General Santos Costa, who has also been present at the meetings of the Council of State to choose a successor to Salazar. His participation has, in fact, been something of a mystery, as he has no °Moist'. position apart from being head of the Military Academy. He is generally regarded as right of the right wing, and as such is viewed with suspicion by moderates inside and outside Salazar's government.

Among the other participants in the Council of State, Dr Caetano's reputation as a moderate is based on his resignation as head of the Uni- versity of Lisbon in protest at police repression of student riots there in 1962. But there is evidence to suggest that his resignation was pro- voked by the failure of the authorities to con- sult him prior to their intervention rather than sympathy with student ideals. He is one of the chief architects of the one-party state and if, as seems possible, he is now in conflict with the military it is more likely to be over the conditions and duration of his eventual tenure of office as Prime Minister than over his political views. Admiral Tomas, the head of state, is an agreeable and accessible character, but be is old and anxious to retire. Another name which had been mentioned as a possible successor is the Foreign Minister, Dr Franco

Nogueira. He used to be thought of as some- thing of a liberal. But the fact that he has been

allowed to hold regular press conferences, at which he has often spoken with surprising can- dour, suggests that he has enjoyed Salazar's entire confidence.

Finally there is the position of the Pretender. Salazar's recent tendency to fill the army high command with right-wing monarchists has given rise to rumours that he intended the restoration of a monarchy after his death. After

the Second World War Salazar invited the return of the heirs of the exiled Royal House of Braganza, who were living in Switzerland after their home in Germany had been overrun. He subsequently nominated Dom Duarte Nuno of Braganza as Pretender to the throne, and the royal palace of Sao Marco near Coimbra was renovated as his official

residence. His position was enhanced when Dr

Salazar arranged for the body of his ancestor, the famous nineteenth century pretender, Dom

Miguel, to be flown from Kleinheuch in Ger- many and that of his wife Adelaide from the Isle of Wight, for ceremonial reburial in the Lisbon church of Sao Vincente alongside other - Portuguese royalty. Only Salazar, President Tomas and the Pretender attended the cere- mony, and I well remember the enthusiastic reception Dom Miguel received from the crowd waiting outside the church.

Traditionally the monarchy has always had close links with the army High Command. But just as there are 'dissident' monarchists in Portugal who support the Pretender but not Salazar, there are 'dissident' factors in the army who are against the right wing generals who support Salazar and the monarchy. Two at- tempts to overthrow the Salazar regime were the work of majors and lower ranks in the army and were thwarted by the intervention of the armed police. The most serious of these was the Beja uprising in January 1962, when an attack, led by a Captain Varela Gomes, was made on the barracks with the collusion of officers inside, and a minister sent to deal with the uprising was shot. But Salazar has been skil- ful at playing off his dissidents against the loyalists, singling out particular garrisons for his personal security, with men he could trust.

Yet a direct takeover by the military at this stage is discounted. After the psychological shock of Salazar's going has been overcome, and if the new man, when he emerges, is unable to wield a rod of iron, there could be trouble in the main industrial sectors of the economy. Working conditions in the textile factories are primitive and harsh, the fishermen suffer from low pay, and strikes in the past have reputedly been fomented by the com- munists. A series of large-scale strikes with communist backing, designed to disrupt the economy, could make the continued defence of Portuguese Africa financially impossible.