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Cunhal's most valuable ally was Gonçalves. The Premier backed the move to merge all trade unions into a single organization: the Communist-dominated Intersindical. He looked away when the Communists and extreme leftists physically prevented a center-right party from holding its organizing conference and disrupted Socialist election rallies. Red intimidation, in effect, prevented rightists and most centrists from participating in public life.
Mounting authoritarianism accompanied the swing leftward. Military men soon occupied half the Cabinet's seats, and COPCON (Continental Operations Command) was established as an elite police force, empowered to do whatever was needed to maintain public order.
The M.F.A.'s intrusion into the political process became nearly complete after Spinola ineptly allowed himself to be associated with a poorly planned, abortive rightist coup last March. In its aftermath, Spinola fled to Brazil, while the M.F.A. moved swiftly to institutionalize its power. A Revolutionary Council, composed entirely of military men, was endowed with sweeping legislative and administrative powers.
The Socialists and other moderates looked upon these developments with apprehension. Their only hope for curbing the excesses of leftist zeal was the promised elections for the Constituent Assembly. Indeed, when the elections were held on April 25, the Socialists won 38% of the vote and the Popular Democrats 26%. The Communists polled a mere 12.5%. This was a personal triumph for Scares, 50, the Socialists' warm, gregarious chief, who had mingled easily with crowds as he campaigned across the country.
Soares' public exposure as Foreign Minister and his role as principal negotiator of the treaties granting the African territories their independence had made him his country's most popular figure. In his youth, he was attracted to Communism, but eventually rejected the party. Reason: he was unable to swallow the concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat. The danger of such a dictatorship, in fact, was the message he preached during the election campaign. "The Socialist Party will never sacrifice freedom in the name of socialism," he vowed time and again. Apparently a majority of the electorate agreed.
Final Blow. Yet the moderates' victory at the polls was hollow; two weeks before the elections, as a condition for getting on the ballot, six parties, including the Communists and Socialists, signed a document agreeing to let the M.F.A.'s Revolutionary Council serve as the country's ultimate rulers for three to five years.