Next President

Alberto Lleras Camargo, 51, the journalist-statesman leader of Colombia's Liberal Party, stepped before a radio microphone last week and agreed to serve as the nonpartisan President of his deeply troubled country. Colombia's backlands have been bloodied by a no-quarter guerrilla war between Conservatives and Liberals that has taken more than 100,000 lives in the past ten years; now its economy is strained by heavy overseas indebtedness. And the military junta that has been in charge since the fall of Dictator Gustavo Rojas Pinilla last May has been waiting with thinning patience for the civilian politicos to quit squabbling and agree on a man and a plan.

Palms of Joy. An overwhelming majority of Colombians, both Liberal and Conservative, greeted Lleras Camargo's decision with a heartfelt sigh of relief. When he finished his acceptance speech, they tumbled into the streets with the same joy they showed when Rojas toppled. Waving handkerchiefs, flags and pictures of Lleras, they wove in and out among horn-honking cars and buses.They stripped palm trees bare, carried the heavy fronds aloft in the ancient symbol of rejoicing. Students turned their coats inside out, joined hands and snake-danced to the chants of "Lleras! Lleras! Lleras!"

Candidate Lleras thus becomes the unexpected holder of delicately balanced power under his own post-Rojas plan for joint Liberal-Conservative control of Colombia. In the original deal, backed by the junta, political posts throughout the nation were to be split fifty-fifty between Liberals and Conservatives for a cooling-off period of twelve years; the first President would be a Conservative, the next a Liberal, and so on. Hopes were that the truce would cancel out the traditional inter-party hatreds that underlie the rural civil war; at the end of twelve years normal two-party politics could take over.

Boy Wonder. The big snag in the plan was the top Conservative, tough old (69) ex-President Laureano Gomez. Angry at the moderate wing of his party for supporting his ouster by Rojas in 1953, Gomez ruled its members out of the running as joint presidential candidate, thereby ruled out every top-quality candidate the Conservatives had. Weeks of bickering finally convinced Gomez that Liberal Lleras was the best choice.

Lleras' qualifications for the job are already on record. An able, respected journalist, he became Colombia's "boy wonder" Minister of the Interior (Premier) at 29, stepped up to the presidency ten years later. He served as head of the creaky old Pan American Union after World War II, created the efficient, effective Organization of American States, then was named president of Bogota's University of the Andes. Two years ago he resigned the university job to lead the opposition to Dictator Rojas. Before his own acceptance last week, Lleras had ruefully spelled out the qualifications for a Colombian president. He must be, said Lleras, "a magician, prophet, redeemer, savior and pacifier who can transform a ruined republic into a prosperous one, can make the prices of the things we export rise and the value of the things we consume drop." As the May 4 election date drew near, Colombians seemed convinced that Lleras was the man who came closest.

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