Confinuismo Discouraged

To the long list of longtime American Presidents seeking still longer terms last month was added the name of Haiti's President Stenio Vincent. For eleven years Stenio Vincent had managed Haiti much as the late Huey Long managed Louisiana, sometimes sending to his Chamber of hand-picked Deputies bills in sealed envelopes, which they passed without breaking the seals. So it was a simple matter to have the Chamber vote him indispensable to Haiti for another five years (TIME, March 24). But then President Vincent ran into trouble. Haiti's Constitution required the third-term resolution to be submitted to the people at a plebiscite, and Haiti's people were growing tired of Stenio. Last fortnight he changed his mind, announced he would retire May 15, ordered the Chamber to choose as his successor chubby Elie Lescot, Minister to the U.S.

This, last week, the Deputies dutifully did. But not before a mob of Haitians had stormed into the Chamber through broken doors and smashed the Deputies' desks. The mob objected to Elie Lescot not only as Stenio Vincent's stooge but as too good a friend of the neighboring Dominican Republic's Boss Rafael Leonidas Trujillo Molina, whom most Haitians blame for the border massacre of 1937 (TIME, Nov. 1, 1937). The mob was ill-advised on both counts. Elie Lescot wangled an indemnity out of President Trujillo. And Stenio Vincent loves leisure more than power, would like to take President-elect Lescot's place in Washington, leaving the new President to cope with Haiti's growing unrest alone.

In Venezuela continuismo got a more high-minded setback as Congress met to pick a successor to liberal-minded President Eleazar Lopez Contreras. Not only did Dr. Lopez refuse to be a candidate, but he resisted a great deal of pressure to run for a second term and even refused to give his blessing to a candidate to succeed him. Between Ambassador to the U.S. Diogenes Escalante and General Isaias Medina, who resigned as War Minister to push his candidacy, Congress was expected this week to choose the more colorful General. To a people grown wary of generals dur ing the 27-year (1908-35) rule of Dictator Juan Vicente Gomez, General Medina's friends were careful to point out that he bore no resemblance to the late great Tyrant of the Andes.

In Paraguay President Higinio Morinigo has been consolidating his power by exiling opposition leaders or sending them to a steaming island in the Paraguay River. Dictator Morinigo cares nothing for constitutional methods of continuismo ; he suspended the Constitution when he seized power last September. But his opposition is also lawless. One exiled Paraguayan is onetime Dictator Rafael Franco, who has been supporting himself manufacturing soap in a small apartment in Montevideo, Uruguay. Last week, through the censor ship that envelops remote Asuncion, came reports of a Franquista revolt. Colonel Franco's brother Laconich hopped a plane from Montevideo for the Paraguayan capital, but at the request of General Morinigo's Government Montevideo police kept Rafael Franco where he was. A communique from Asuncion announced that the up rising had been put down "with the help of the armed forces and public opinion," but private reports said the revolution was spreading.

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