Portugal: a Challenge to Parliament

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When military officers publicly attack parliaments for passing laws which trespass on military authority, then democratic rights are in danger.

That is the situation in Portugal where the officers of the Revolutionary Council have protested against the vote passed by a Socialist and Communist majority granting amnesty to anyone accused of a coup attempt since the revolution of April 1974.

Military President Eanes himself has also made thinly veiled threats recently to reestablish military rule if the parliamentary parties could not form a majority government.

Eventually, in the continued absence of any parliamentary solution to crisis-Eanes has the appointed new caretaker government under Maria de Lurdes Pintassilgo which is designed to hold on until eariy elections take place, probably in October.

This is the situation which the Socialist and Communist Parties have tried to avoid.

Consequences They fear the consequences of having to give an account of themselves to their worker and peasant supporters.

Stalinist leader Cunhal even looked last week as if he might try to persuade Eanes not to dissolve parliament after all and keep the new bourgeois government in office.

Premier Pintassilgo is herself close to the Catholic hierarchy, though on account of her work on aid to the "third world" and in building a (bourgeois) Catholic women's movement she has been invested with 'left' credentials by the Stalinist and reformist bureaucrats.

Cunhal last week said of this pillar of the bourgeois Catholic order, now acting as a smiling cover for moves towards more thoroughgoing military rule:

"The choice of Mme. Pintassilgo has been accepted by the vast mass of the Portuguese population, especially by women.

This Prime Minister, so acceptable to the Stalinist leaders, is herself an old frined of Salazar's successor, former dictator Caetano who was overthrown in April 1974.

Of the former ruthless Eanes dictator she said last week:

"I have the greatest respect for him as a man and as a professor. As a political leader, I have criticised him for his lack of firm ness."!