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Mass turnout welcome back Perurian "Trots- vist" exile Hugo Blanco As inflation and unemployment continue their upward flight in France, the French working class continues its struggles against the onslaught of the capitalist crisis.

Last month workers surged forward in 235 strikes that were part of the action taken on nearly 1,000 claims.

Over 400 of these claims were demands for higher wages to compensate for inflation, nearly 200 were in opposition to threatened redundancies.

The role played by the force of the bourgeois state in these conflicts was emphasised at the Moulinex factory in Caen.

There, the movement tor a return to work was completely • revérsed when hundreds of police arrived to remove and attack pickets.

At Flins, where riot police broke up the occupation, Renault management are proposing to sack 40 workers (almost all of them immigrants) in the press shop as part of their attempted victimisation throughout the company.

Although the main force of this wave of strikes and occupations is now spent temporarily, neither the effects of the crisis nor the militancy of workers has been reduced.

The capitalists hope to soften the crisis in the shipbuilding industry by enforcing 9,000 redundancies in the major yards.

6,000 workers at La Ciotat in southern France, (the second largest yard), demonstrated in protest on 12 July.

Such demonstrations give Giscard's government and the labour bureaucracy a clear warning of the opposition they will meet after the summer holiday period in their moves to rationalise capitalism and rescue profits.

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But it cult for candidate Seven of South America's 14 countries either have held or are to hold what they call "general elections" this year.

And four of those are in countries ruled by military dictatorships which are falling apart under the pressure of the masses, and which are forced by their bourgeoisies (with prodding from the Carter administration) to try to divert the mass upsurge by introducing extremely limited forms of "democracy"

In the last six weeks elections have taken place in Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador.

Though the results of these were very different, there was one similarity between themthey all failed to bring the results which were desired by the military rulers.

Careful selection

In Ecuador they had in several ways made a careful selection of candidates before the presidential elections of July 19.

The ex-president, overthrown by the military, had been kept in exile.

The one candidate who was given a chance of winning-a capitalist demagogue called Bucaram-was disqualified through blatant trickery.

Subsequently the military rulers did everything they could to boost their selected candidate.

Everything, that is, short of rigging the poll-which they would certainly have done had it not been for the fact that the election occurred on the day that international reports in the bourgeois press showed that the Bolivian presidential elections had been completely rigged, thus sharply focusing attention on the Ecuador poll.

So the result, which the ruling generals failed to alter was that 77% of the voters in a high poll voted against the official candidate; Sixto Duran.

The winner was Jaime Roldos, the left-talking son-inlaw of the disqualified candidate Bucaram.

Difficult

31% of the vote, and run off in September (to Duran. now looks very diffithe military backed to win against Roldos, A SE who will have support transferred from other "liberal' bourgeois candidates and from the CP's popular front candidate who won 5% of the votes.

With the military junta now very short of political credibility, new possibilities open up between now and the presidential run off-demands from the masses for the military regime to abdicate at once.

The alternative possibility is that of a new coup attempt by the thwarted generals.

In any event Ecuador has now certainly joined the increasing number of South American countries where military dictatorship is giving way to political instability..

The most dramatic of these changes, however, _have been taking place in Bolivia and Peru.

Earlier this year Bolivian military dictator Hugo Banzer was forced by a series of workers' and students' mobilisations and hunger strikes, to allow political exiles to return, legal political activities to be renewed ana, in an effort to stem the rising tide of mass protest, to call presidential and parliamentary elections for July The chosen military candidate in this election was not Banzer himself-who had lost all his political authority-but air force General Juan Pereda Asbun.

Obstacles

Numerous obstacles were placed in the way of the other candidates but all of them in the end were able to run a major campaign.

The three major anti-government candidates were Victor Paz Estenssoro, an ex-president representing the right wing of the bourgeois nationalist Revolutionary National Movement (MNR); Hernan Siles Zuazo, standing for the Popular Democratic Union (UDP), a popular front consisting of the left of the MNR, the petty bourgeois radical group the MIR and the Bolivian Communist Party; and Casiano Amurrio, a peasant leader who headed the ticket for the Revolutionary Left Front (FRI).

The FRI was composed of a Maoist group, the Revolutionary Workers' Party (part of the political remnants of Che Guevara's guerrilla army) and Pereda the "Trotskyist" Workers Revolutionary Party (POR-Vanguardia Communista).

Presumed winners

It seems from eyewitness reports that Pereda almost certainly lost, despite his privileged access to the media and army threats to the voters.

The presumed winners were Siles Zuazo in some areas, Amurrio in others.

But the official "results" nonetheless showed a clear "win" for Pereda right from the start. of the laborious "counting".

The fraud was obvious to all the Bolivian masses and was denounced even by a party of visiting imperialist dignitaries, there to see fair play.

As the count wore on it became clear that the election, far from restoring political stability for the bourgeoisie, was threatening to provoke mass protest.

On July 19 the authorities suddenly decided to annul the election and call another "within six months".

Plotting coup Pereda himself appealed to the electoral tribunal for the annullment.

At the same moment, however, he was plotting a new military coup with his friends, the air force Generals in Santa Cruz.

: On the morning of July 21 Pereda and his gang seized Santa Cruz and other cities and called for Banzer to stand down.

When it was clear to Banzer he had lost all his political allies he agreed to hand over power to a junta of the three military Banzer chiefs of staff who within a few hours ceded to Pereda and installed him as President.

So Bolivia which-before Banzer seized power in 1971had roughly one President for each of its 130 years of existence as an independent nation, on July 21 had 5 Presidents in a single day!

It does not appear at présent survived a number of mass mobilisations against the coup and has arrested several hundred workers' and peasants' leaders.

The situation of the neighbouring generals in Peru is just as shaky.

They too found that the elections which they hoped would lull the mounting waves of opposition did just the opposite.

They now have a "Constituent Assembly" which is supposed to quietly draw up a constitution but which at present noisily wishes to govern.

It has become the scene of violent mass mobilisations to welcome the elected left wing delegates who after their deportation to Argentina have been allowed to return in a political amnesty.

The President of the Assembly at present is 83-old veteran Peruvian nationalist and populist Haya de la Torre whose APRA party has 37 of the 100 seats.

He, (along with the right wing Peoples Christian Party, with 25 seats), could well do a deal with the military government of Morales Bermudezbut at present he looks much more like waiting to hold constitutional office for the first time in his long political career.

APRA is a party led by right wing nationalists, but due to its historical image and current demagogy, received many votes from workers and peasants.

It will be difficult, therefore, for APRA to do a deal with a government which is now preparing to impose a new round of economic hardships on the masses in order to satisfy the imperialist International Monetary Fund and repay Peru's gigantic international state debt.

A huge responsibility now falls on the leaders of the FOCEP-the working class electoral bloc led by "Trotskyists" which won 12 out of the 100 seats.

3-month strike They have used the assembly to publicise workers struggles including the three month old strike by the teachers' union, SUTEP.

This strike, in support of demands for union recognition and a 100% wage increase, has become one of the most threatening questions facing the military regime because of the remarkable support which it has from the whole of the labour movement.

A one day general strike has been called in support of the teachers.

The mineworkers' federation will stage a national strike on August 2 in support of a full labour amnesty.

In all these mobilisations the demand "Down with the dictatorship!" is beginning to be heard and the Morales Bermudez regime must now be the most unstable dictatorship on the continent.

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strikes warn Giscard

that Pereda's government can be strong, despite the fact that it