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The Directory is also challenged by political problems outside continental Portugal. In the lush, verdant Azores, 1,000 miles off Portugal's coast—and site of the U.S.'s important Lajes airbase —there is increasingly serious talk of breaking away from Lisbon. Mild discontent has long simmered in the islands. The 300,000 inhabitants have resented paying higher taxes and higher prices than the mainland Portuguese. In recent months, this bitterness has flared into open hostility as the predominantly conservative Azorians have been jolted by the leftward drift of the mainland's politics.
Violence has also erupted in the remnants of Portugal's five-century-old African empire. Guinea-Bissau and Mozambique have already achieved full independence without major incident. But Angola, scheduled to become independent on Nov. 11, is engulfed in a costly and bloody struggle between rival liberation movements. In the past month, the fighting between the Maoist National Front for the Liberation of Angola and the pro-Soviet Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola has claimed an estimated 500 lives in Luanda alone. Whether it wants to or not, Lisbon will have to keep its 25,000 troops in Angola until independence in order to avoid a civil war that could threaten the safety of the 400,000 Portuguese living there. At week's end there were reports from South Africa that Portugal would begin a massive two-month airlift to rescue the white settlers. This, however, would not end the problems the settlers could pose for the triumvirate. Relocated in Portugal, they would probably make up an embittered and impoverished bloc that would blame the regime for not doing more to protect Portuguese interests in Africa.
These problems, plus the need to fashion a viable political structure for the country, will test the Directory's staying power. Prospects for its stability are not too good, since most collective leaderships have been the victims of their members' quests for unshared power. Octavian outmaneuvered his fellow triumvirs—Mark Antony and Lepidus—to become undisputed ruler of ancient Rome, and Soviet history is littered with collective leaderships that failed. Following Lenin's death, Stalin served on two consecutive triumvirates, each time ruthlessly eliminating his supposedly coequal partners. After Stalin, the various members of the Kremlin's new collective kept vying with each other for supremacy until Nikita Khrushchev emerged at the top.
Almost as important as the rivalry among the triumvirs will be the ongoing struggle between the Socialists and Communists. The members of the M.F.A. are, on the whole, suspicious of civilian politicians. The officers also have an almost mystical belief that the military can be directly responsive to the will of the people by skipping such niceties as political parties, constitutions and free elections. Not surprisingly, this naive attitude has been exploited by the Communists, who are well aware that they stand no chance of winning an honest election. At the same time, Cunhal has tried to moderate his party's image by dropping some radical planks from its program, like the demand that "imperialists" be expelled from Portugal and foreign companies be confiscated.