Portugal: Salazar’s Election

Portugal in election week was like a nation under siege—and, in a sense, it was. The air force was alerted. Naval patrol boats growled offshore, and ground troops earmarked for the revolt-torn African colony of Angola were diverted to home duty instead. From the Mediterranean to the Atlantic-whipped northwestern frontier, police mounted a vast network of roadblocks known as “Operation Stop,” ostensibly to crack down on auto thieves. Actual reason for the emergency: Strongman António de Oliveira Salazar’s obsessive fear that maverick Henrique Galvâo, who stole the Santa Maria and world headlines in an eleven-day protest against the regime last January, plans a coup in Portugal itself.

Even so, Galvâo’s Anti-Totalitarian Front took the regime by surprise. Six of his agents hijacked a Portuguese airliner as it approached Lisbon from Casablanca, dumped thousands of anti-Salazar leaflets over the capital, then flew to Tangier. Had Galvao actually landed last week, he might have met little effective opposition. So suspicious of everyone is Salazar that his soldiers were issued machine guns without bolts and rifles without bullets; fighter planes were grounded with empty gas tanks. But the real threat to the regime came from what, in the world’s most durable dictatorship, are euphemistically known as elections. In 29 years as Premier, Salazar has never wavered in his belief that Portugal is unready for democracy; he tolerates the appearance of elections, as a government official admitted, only in hopes of satisfying world opinion that he need not fear taking his policies to the people.

To the Bitter End. At stake were the National Assembly’s 130 seats, traditionally reserved every four years for members of Salazar’s rubber-stamping National Union. They were contested this year by an articulate cross section that was known informally as the “Democratic Opposition” and ranged from monarchists to socialists and old-guard liberals, disenchanted doctors and lawyers to army and navy officers. The opposition platform, which the government labeled “unconstitutional,” called for democratic rights, economic progress and an enlightened colonial policy. But the opposition’s main target was 72-year-old António de Oliveira Salazar, for as one candidate exclaimed: “The government’s only hope is that Salazar is immortal. Like Hitler and Mussolini, this regime is holding out to the bitter moment when all crashes about it.”

While Salazar’s regime is benevolent compared to the Nazis or Fascists at their worst, the government nevertheless arrested many prominent opponents before the start of Salazar’s 30-day campaign period. A dozen more were jailed for signing the opposition’s manifesto. Though candidates could be nominated only by petitions signed by 20 local electors, many opponents of the regime found that their backers had mysteriously been disqualified. None were allowed access to electoral rolls; election officials told monarchist candidates that their nomination papers had been filed “one minute too late.” Only 59 opposition candidates managed to win government approval. So sure were Salazar’s men of re-election that one National Assemblyman toured the U.S. throughout the campaign. After all, his opponent was in jail.

Window to the World. Harassed at every turn, the opposition was unable to rent headquarters in downtown Lisbon, had to settle for three fly-blown rooms in a condemned slum tenement (rent: $400 for 30 days). Posing as sympathizers, secret police tried to worm their way into the organization; one was spotted and nearly lynched. Censors either suppressed candidates’ statements, delayed them until the government had its reply ready, or simply doctored them to suit Salazar. The Roman Catholic hierarchy, which has had its differences with Salazar, published a message cautioning Catholics not to vote for “Communists or their allies”—the label Salazar pins on all his opponents —but took pains nonetheless to dissociate the church from “the methods of totalitarian government.”

Despite increased support from many Portuguese who approve Salazar’s ruthless suppression of the Angola revolt, the regime’s unpopularity showed itself in the crowds that queued for admission to opposition meetings and showered even the most pedestrian speakers with wild applause. Under the dour eyes of police at Lisbon’s dingy old Republican Center last week, they chorused “Down with fascism” as candidates denounced government “terrorism” in Africa, Portugal’s “medieval” police state and meager living standards (per capita income: less than $200 a year). Said one opposition leader: “We are being forced to live on a little island while others march forward. We are being operated like a private farm.”

Rather than give Salazar the satisfaction of gloating over a rigged “victory.” the opposition dramatically withdrew from the contest five days before this week’s scheduled elections, calling on Portugal’s 2,250,000 voters to boycott the polls. The government immediately banned all further news of the opposition on the theory that “it no longer exists.” Though many opposition leaders faced jail sentences for their part in the campaign, few felt it had been in vain. Said one: “We opened a very small window to show the world the lies and treachery that surround us.”