Jungastian Transition to Democracy

Prior to the takeover by the Frente de Salvação Nacional (FSN) in 1921, and the resulting Ditadura da Renovação, Jungastia had a significant, if brief experience with democracy, the opening of suffrage to all citizens over the age of 21 under the short lived Jungastian Republic of 1907-1921. The Republic’s institutions were poorly managed and poorly functioning, and frequently led to collapses of governments, indeed in the fourteen years of the Republic no less than eighteen governments fell, prior to José Ferreira Coutinho and the FSN gaining the premiership in 1920.

Background: the Frente de Salvação Nacional era
The chaotic years of the Republic were replaced with the Declaration of 23 Abril in 1921, following a year of consolidation by the FSN who had in the elections of 1920 become the largest party in the fractured Congress. Whilst not having a majority, the front found allies in the Partido Popular and the Catholic Party. The FSN promised order, a return to tradition from the modernity of the Republic, and strict discipline.

The election of José Ferreira Coutinho as Prime Minister by the Congress on 12 December 1920 started a chain of events that would lead to the suspension of the republican constitution and the abolition of the congress some 5 months later. Coutinho swiftly and via a President - Marcelo Pisani da Silva - who was largely sympathetic to the ideals of the FSN, consolidated power in his hands, and that of the cabinet.

The Declaration was the culmination of the concentration of power by Coutinho and his party, and their easy time in finding support from the heads of the armed forces. It replaced the democratic republic with a nominally and highly  dictatorship, with Coutinho as titular Prime Minister, and a reinstatement of the monarchy, albeit in a rump form, with the Constitution of 1922 placing the monarch as a figure head with no power leaving Coutinho a dictator in all but name.

The formidable were used to maintain order, and whilst the constitution contained a prohibition on capital punishment, summary execution, torture and exile were used on a widespread basis. The government banned all political parties and trade unions, save for the FSN, which was transformed in to an all pervasive organisation involved in everything from high politics, to community days out and events.

The regime in the early years saw a revitilsation of the Jungastian economy, and a large change in living standards for those in rural areas, tied in with the mass mechanisation of society. The FSN enforced a high degree of social traditionalism in almost all aspects of society, playing on the historical figures and events, but borrowed highly from theory with its frequent and impassioned fetishisation of technological advancements and mechanical progress. In latter years, economic stagnation began to creep in, with the rigid suppression of any non-Jungastian culture, and the secondary treatment of non-catholics significantly harming economic performance.

Coutinho's Death and the late 1970s
In 1978 at the age of 80, José Ferreira Coutinho died of a massive stroke. Having been unwell for some time following his first stroke in 1974, the regime had been engaged in a bitter internal power struggle since at least 1975. The Partido Popular, having maintained its existence by joining in the FSN, fought to open up the regime, not to full democracy, but to a less controlling. The hardline FSN faction sought to increase the party's control over the every day running of the country.

It is hard to gather contemporary public opinion, as the regime tightly controlled the media, and published statistics while assumed to be reasonably reliable, could not be guaranteed to be so, but the vast majority of those both in Metropolitan Jungastia and in the Overseas Provinces were worried of a return to what the regime referred to as the chaos of the Republic. Indeed the threats of chaos, were a significant factor in the regime maintaining its power.

Throughout the mid-1970s the power struggles saw a major purging of the leadership of the FSN and the government. Coutinho was quoted in Edu Soares's 2001 Biography as having been exceptionally negative of the regime's outlook should he die. Even with this purported negativity Coutinho made significant efforts to fill the new government with ardent loyalists, and to prepare a successor. His preparation helped to quell the power struggles somewhat, if not least by driving them underground. Purged former longstanding members of the government were known to have publicly switched sides to the now empowered opposition. This, along with leaked reports of Coutinho's ever decreasing health substantially weakened the government, and on Coutinho's death in 1978, the one figure working to unite the factions vanished overnight.

Outwardly of course, the regime applied significant energy to putting on a front of stable, continual power alongside a reverence to the former dictator. The state funeral was claimed to have been attended by over a million mourners along the route, and at it Coutinho's appointed successor, Cézar Leitão Tavares, spoke as Prime Minister for the first time. Tavares, a relatively unknown member of the FSN, but an ardent loyalist to Coutinho was ill-equipped to handle the infighting within the Front, but was an excellent orator. Arguably his speech at his predecessor's funeral, stabilised the regime to the public at least in the short term.

In the following moths the hole left by Coutinho's death grew, with the infighting stabilising at a level not seen since the days of the Republic. The government during this period was so focussed on maintaining its grip on power that outside of the big cities, with an absence of effective leadership at a provincial and national level, the population began to experience an openness unknown to many. Even in big cities, the regime's control began to be executed more through fear than through loyalty. It was in these pockets of relative openness that the opposition began to group in ways they had been unable to do before.