Death disrupts plans of Portugal's right

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Make of not plan it.

In its aftermath, his chosen Presidential candidate has been defeated, and his successor as Prime Minister has declared the intention of the newly elected right wing government to resign.

Sa Carneiro had been the inspirer and almost certainly the lynch-pin holding together the reactionary alliance of supporters of the old Salazar dictatorship and other right wingers which composes the governing Democratic Alliance.

Freitas do Amaral, the deputy premier, lacks the authority of Sa Carneiro, partly because he does not possess his predecessor's tough, uncompromising political manner.

As' a comparative wet' it appeared doubtful if do Amaral would insist so much, as Sa Carneiro did, on the impossibility of working with the "pro-Communist" president Ramalho Eanes.

In the event he has taken the easy way out-by simply resigning from office!

Partly, of course, Sa Carneiro's uncompromising position had been part of his efforts to get Eanes defeated in the Presidential elections which took place last week.

Eanes' election campaign, in which he was supported by the Communist Party (whose candidate withdrew in his favour) and most of the Socialist Party with the exception of its main leader Mario Soares, had made numerous concessions to the rightwing politics of Sa Carneiro, Revised Eanes had already agreed for instance, that the post-1974 constitution should be revised to remove the clauses which commit Portugal to "socialism".

Eanes' victory, against the Democratic Alliance, perhaps owed something to these compromises and perhaps also something to Sa Carneiro's death.

It also owed a lot to the refusal of the workers' parties to stand an independent candidate. • But it certainly was no victory for socialist policies of any kind.

Eanes only received workers' votes in opposition to the extreme right wing candidatehis fellow General, Soares Carneiro.

The Presidential election result continues to leave deep social conflicts unresolved in That these are only just beneath the surface was shown by the reactions to Sa Carneiro's death:

When this was announced to a large open-air Eanes election meeting in Lisbon the crowd General Carneiro spontaneously broke into applause and cheering-before they were silenced into "respect" by the Stalinist and reformist leaders!

And when President Eanes turned up at the funeral as head of state, he was hissed and booed by the right-wing mourners.