Nasty Shock to

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8,000 workers from the Brest arsenal march in protest But although the occupation ment clearly fears direct conat the Flins plant of Renault frontation with the militant was ended by the riot police, in strength of the working class other areas the state has held that is being expressed in these Under conditions of massive repression against the workers' movement, the Peruvian "Constituent Assembly" elections finally took place after two weeks' delay on June 18.

Although the right wing parties won an overal majority in the Assembly, which is supposed to draw up a constitution for a return to civilian government, the results were a nasty shock to Peru's military dictators.

Miscalculation

The elections begin to look like a massive miscalculation on the part of the regime.

The two leading parties were the right wing nationalists APRA (led by the veteran bourgeois nationalist Haya de la Torre) and the even further right Christian Popular Party.

They got respectively 36% and 27% of the vote and of the 100 seats in the assembly.

The other bourgeois element in the assembly is the so-called People's Revolutionary Party-the remants of the supporters of the early "radical" years of the military regime under the deposed President Velasco Alvarado.

This group of opportunists (some of whose leaders were nonetheless arrested during the campaign) got what it will no doubt consider a disappointing 7%.

This was a little more than the other former supporter of the Velasco regime, the Communist Party, which received only 5% despite its significant role in the main trade union federation, the CGȚP, and in the general strike in May.

Restricted

But the most striking result was that achieved by the FOCEP (the Workers, Peasants, Students and People's Front).

With its leaders deported and the vote restricted by repression and the electoral law which barred all but the officially literate- FOCEP gained nearly 12% and is therefore the largest grouping apart from the two main bourgeois parties.

Alliance

The third, Popular Action, boycotted the elections.

The FOCEP was an electoral alliance of far left groups including two which claim to be Trotskyist-the USFI affiliated Workers' Socialist Party (PST), one of whose leaders, Hugo Blanco, was last week released from jail in Argentina and allowed to go to Sweden; and the Marxist Revolutionary Workers' Party (POMR), politically allied to the French OCI, whose secretary general, Ricardo Napuri, was one of those arrested and deported to Argentinian jails before the The remarkable success of the FOCEP-especially in the slums around the main cities-must be a severe warning to the regime.

Although the generals can do a political deal with the right wing majority parties in the assembly, it cannot possibly control the process of transfer to civilian rule as it wanted to. First it faces a difficult choice about whether to restore legal rights to the elected left candidates.

Enhance prestige

If it does so, it will enormously enhance the prestige of leaders who have supported major and threat. ening mobilisations against the government.

If it does not, it will reveal once and for all the farcical nature of its "democratic" plans.

Yet the regime's need tc find some way of control back from using its legal powers actions. in this way.

Despite the demands of employers, the French govern'Nationalisation' is a scandalous and 'extreme' term in Germany. Consternation reigned and 48 hours later the offending resolutions were overwhelmingly annulled.

For over a year though, the 'concerted action conference' main forum for trade unionemployer consultation, has not met.

Ultimate right

This followed the law suit brought by an empioyer against further measures of "codetermination' , and asserts the ultimate right of shareholders to dispose of their own property.

Vette, DGB President, refuses to resume the conference until the law suit is dropped.

With the unofficial social contract of the past year under increasing pressure, these negotiations become imperative to the capitalist class.

Ricardo Napuin ling or placating the mass movement has never been more urgent.

Last week the Finance Minister announced that Peru's foreign debts had now risen to $8 billion and he admitted that real income levels were less than two-thirds of their level five years ago and that less than half the population were in "adequate employment"

In these circumstances it is very unlikely that the regime will do anything but attempt to step up its repression.

As part of this it will no doubt regard its unshapely creation, the "Constituent CORRECTION WE REGRET that a typographical error in last week's page 3 article on China caused some confusion. The final paragraph should have read:

"The Sino-Soviet split does pose a major threat to the struggle of the world working class, and makes more urgent the task of the Trotskyist movement to build a revolutionary leadership in China and the other degenerate workers' states for the political overthrow of the reactionary Stalinist bureaucracy and the defence of the progressive nationalised property relations.

BECAUSE we have devored the whole of page 3 in this issue to the exclusive interview with an EPLF spokesman and news on developments in Eritrea, our background series of articles on the history of that struggle will continue next week.

Also in next week's Socialist Press :

France May-June 1968;

French Popular Front (Part 2)

Make sure of •Hugo Blanco Assembly" , as easily expendable.

The Peruvian workers and peasants can expect nothing but further terror and repression from this They must prepare for a renewed struggle for real democratic rights and for the restoration and improvement of their sub-human economic conditions.

The election results show, if nothing eise, that a sizeable section of the masses are beginning to prepare for such a struggle.

And this now places a heavy responsibility on those they are looking to as new leaders.

Unless a decisive break is made from the politics of the "United' Secretariat of the Fourth International and the OCREI, the danger is that the «rrotskyist» representatives now elected will resort to opportunist manoeuvres in place of a consistent struggle for the political independence of the working class.

-In brief Italy Italian and Yugoslav dockers have started an immediate, indefinite boycott of all ships flying the Chilean flag.

This was taken "in solidarity with the hundreds of democratic Chileans who have been on hunger strike to protest against the fascist. regime of Pinochet and to have news of the thousands of prisoners who for some time have been missing in the hands of the political Palestine Sabri Khalil Bann, leader of the Baghdad (Iraq) section of the PLO has attacked the "cap¡tulationist policies" of Yasser Arafat which, he says, have placed the movement in "the iron grip of the Arab regimes".

He said the first priority was the struggle against the Israelis in Palestine and then the "reac tionary regimes" in Syria, Jordan, and the Lebanon.

Soares' Socialist Party and the Communist Party have last week passed by their joint vote, a Bill through Parliament which according to a Reuter report "provides for prison terms of from two to eight years for leaders of organisations promoting fascism or violence against democratic institutions or national unity"

Angola

ON WHAT the Portuguese regard as a 'historic occasion' reconciliation has been pledged between President Neto of Angola and President Eanes of Portugal at a meeting in Guinea Bissau on June 24/25.

The meeting has been engineered by top level US intervention in Luanda.

Vance and Young hope to regain influence in Angola, where 20,000 Cuban troops are still stationed and where Soviet personnel now command the air force and navy.

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- ARSENAL BREST