Word: gon
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...past two months, a bitter division within the Armed Forces Movement had brought government in Portugal to a virtual standstill and the country perilously close to civil war. Focus of the dispute was General Vasco dos Santos Gonçalves, 54, a close ally of Communist Party Boss Alvaro Cunhal and a woolly-minded Marxist ideologue who favored the creation in Portugal of a socialist state along Eastern European lines. Last week in an apparent victory for moderate forces within the M.F.A., Gonçalves fell from power. In the face of virtually open rebellion by non-Communist officers...
...fall of Gonçalves represents the most devastating setback that military radicals and their Communist supporters have suffered since the start of the April 1974 revolution. The new Revolutionary Council appears to lean solidly toward the moderate-center; it contains seven moderates, eight swing officers and only four known cohorts of Gonçalves. Last week's actions also apparently restored the Council to its role as supreme arbiter of the revolution; its power had been eclipsed since the creation in late July of a ruling triumvirate composed of Gonçalves, President Francisco da Costa Gomes...
...Gonçalves' fall was triggered−inadvertently−by Costa Gomes. After first bowing to moderates' pressure two weeks ago and dismissing Gonçalves as Premier, he then sought to appease the radicals by naming Gonçalves as chief of the general staff−the country's top military post. This move set off an increasingly hostile reaction within the M.F. A. The first ranking officer to speak up against Gonçalves' appointment as chief of the general staff was the air force commander, General Jose Morais da Silva, who spoke...
Annoyed by this insubordination, Costa Gomes summoned Morais da Silva to Lisbon's Belem Palace to deliver a reprimand. But then the army chief of staff, General Carlos Fabiao, also spoke out against Gonçalves. The bearded Fabiao called an all-day meeting of army officers at Tancos, 80 miles north of Lisbon, to discuss the situation. "Speaking in the name of the army," Fabiao told newsmen before the convention, "I doubt that the figure of Vasco Gonçalves contributes anything to the unity of the army−to the contrary...
...several marathon talks throughout the week with Costa Gomes, the chiefs of staff and members of the all-military Revolutionary Council, Gonçalves had exerted every effort to survive. "They may have to march Gonçalves out at the end of a barrel of a gun," said one Western diplomat. "But the alternative would be an uprising in the countryside." In fact, violence continued to erupt in northern and central Portugal, where mobs have wrecked some 50 Communist Party headquarters this summer. When a power failure cut off electricity throughout the country for a day, there were widespread...