Brazil's doughty President Humberto Castello Branco has scheduled gubernatorial elections for October of this year and a presidential election for October 1966. Last week he sent Congress his long-awaited bill establishing the ground rules for who can and who cannot run in the elections. It was, as expected, a tough bill.
Under the rules, no candidate may run whose platform is "contrary to democratic principles" or whose party is linked to foreign governments. Thus all Communists and Castroites are excluded. There is no room on the ballot for anyone whose political rights were suspended in the early days of the revolution,...