Columbian workers show contempt for bosses' parties

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strike at the end of May, will go ahead.

Even if they do, they will be nothing but a squalid fraud.

Because in the aftermath of the general strike, the military government of Morales Bermudez has unleashed a vicious anti-left witch-hunt.

On May 25 eleven leading opponents of the regime were deported to Argentina and hundreds of others were arrested or forced into hiding.

The eleven, who are now in mortal danger, in the care of General Videla's • bloody dictatorship, nearly all belonged to one of the three political forces fighting the regime from the left.

Bermudez But it was the Stalinist leaders of the General Confederation of Workers (CGTP) who sabotaged attempts to turn the regional and limited general strikes of late May into an indefinite nation wide general strike.

Arrests

Many strikes are continuing including a teachers' strike in which 30,000 of Peru's 100,000 teachers, led by the left-wing union SUTEP are on indefinite strike for higher wages, in spite of the arrest and summary trial of 77 of them on charges of inciting pupils to riot.

The Peruvian regime is acting against the left and the workers' movement out of desperation.

It saved itself last week from financial bankruptcy only by a last minute loan from American banks for a few more months.

The IMF continues to deny a longer term loan saying that the staggering 50% or more price increases of a month ago are still not enough austerity.

Imperialism seems to have decided that a decisive confrontation with the militant working class and peasantry in Peru is necessary.

The statistic bian tion tion) the el vote.

This gesture for the most striking of the Colompresidenti al elec(held las it week military protecwas that 68% of lectorate did not was massive of contempt both cynical, corrupt and repressive poncies of the bourgeois parties (liberal and Conservative) who have for decades undemocratically shared power, and also for the working class leaderships who have placed their own narrow bureaucratic interests before the objective need for the unity of the oppressed classes.

The win farce and the was a liberal Ayala.

He defeated his Conservative rival by a tiny margin (2.2 million votes to 2.1 million).

The workers and peasants abstained in their millions, though a tiny proportion of them did vote for one of the three candidates claiming to represent their interests.

Two of these represented Stalinist-dominated popular fronts-one headed by the pro-Moscow CP whose candidate was Julio Cesar Pernia and the other ner" of this new President called Turbay proportion by the MOIR, the largest Maoist organisation (whose candidate was Jaime Piedrahita).

These candidates received about 55,000 and 15,000 votes respectively.

The third candidate was Socorro Ramirez, a leader of the left-wing teachers' union, member of a group called Proletarian Democracy (a split from the Socialist Workers Party-the largest of two Colombian sympathising sections of the USFI).

Ramirez stood for an alliance of far left groups on a programme of anti-government and anti-capitalist demands.

This was the only candidacy which did not represent Socorro Ramirez explicit class collaborationism.

Ramirez, however, received only about 6,000 votes.

Much more successful was the campaign launched before the elections by the Socialist Workers Party to ask the three left candidates to stand down and support single candidate from the workers organ isations, based on a "socialist programme"

Derisory

300,000 signatories were collected in support of this campaign which is some indication that the derisory number of votes for the left candidates reflects not so much the political apathy of the working class as its contempt for an electoral system which seems to produce an eternal round of Turbay, says he is a representative of a "new class"

What he means is that he represents not so much the landowners as the financial oligarchy which has gor rich quick on the coffee-price boom and so it is widely reported, on trading in narcotics.

This wealthy: corrupt opportunist is a suitable successor to his predecessors all of whom represent a class which is historically bankrupt and which hangs onto power only as a result of its client relationship with imperialism.

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bourgeois semi-dictators. The new incumbent,