Portuguese replacing Marxist Constitution
| Lisbon
Portugal's parliament began final debate Thursday on a new constitution to replace a Marxist-inspired document drawn up amid revolutionary fervor six years ago.
The Portuguese Communists, who describe the old Constitution as the Western world's most progressive, have fought the new one fiercely. Their effort was quashed by an agreement between the ruling democratic alliance and the Socialist Party which supplied the two-thirds majority needed for constitutional change.
