75-09-B3
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Portugal
TranscriptThe people of Portugal have spoken. Will their military dictators listen? I'll be right back. On April 25th, the people of Portugal sent a message to the left-wing military dictatorship that seized power a year ago. In Portugal's first relatively free elections in half a century the well-financed Communist party got a little more than 12 percent of the vote. By contrast the Socialist party, an ally of such pro-Western European parties as the West German Social Democrats and the British Laborites led the voting with 38 percent of the total. The middle of the road Portuguese Popular Democrats, or PPD, won 26 percent. The other party to surpass the 5 percent minimum for representation in the Constituent Assembly was the Christian Democratic Socialists, the only conservative party permitted to participate. It got seven percent. Thus taking only those parties to be represented in the Assembly, 71 percent voted Pro-NATO compared to just 12 percent for the Communists. The message to the nation's military rulers couldn't have been clearer. Whether they'll heed it is another matter. Long before the voting the left-wing officers who've taken control moved to strip the Constituent Assembly of all but symbolic powers. It forced the leading parties to agree in advance to the armed forces movement's version of a new constitution and to at least five more years of military rule. In addition the government moved to preempt many of the nation's policy options. They forced the centralization of the trade union movement under Communist control and nationalized such key sectors of the economy as steel, insurance and banking without consultation with any of the parties. It's clear from the election returns that none of these moves would have won approval in a democratic parliament. That's not all. The government turned over control of state television and all but one of the country's newspapers to the Communists. The Communists also control the militia and most of the local governments, the very bodies that were conducting the election. Several non-communist parties were outlawed and the non-communist parties that remained legal were subjected to constant harassment by leftist street hoodlums. With all these factors at work the Portuguese electorate needed not only intelligence but courage to vote as it did. Out of six million one hundred thousand eligible voters, five million nine hundred thousand went to the polls. Information Minister Jorge Jesuino, one of the most left-wing of the ruling faction, had told the people to show support for the armed forces by voting blank ballots. He told the world press he hoped forty percent would do so-seven percent did. After the election, Jesuino said the people had shown civic duty but political immaturity in their vote for the pro-western parties. For some people maturity seems to equal slavery. The people of Portugal have spoken they voted to reject communism by inference and to stay in the western alliance. It's up to the government to heed their word. This is Ronald Reagan. Thanks for listening. |
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