After the Elections in Peru

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metal workers • Crowds at the airport to welcome Hugo Blanco The interview which we print below is with Enrique Fernandez, a Peruvian worker and a leader of the Peruvian metal-workers' union, who was elected in June as a member of Peru's Constituent Assembly.

Long experience

Enrique Fernandez, who has had long experience of the trade union and political struggle in Peru, is a member of the i Socialist Workers' Party (PST), a sympathising section of the "Unified" Secretariat of the Fourth International, the majority of whose leaderWhat is the composition FOCEP in the Assembly?

We won 12 seats which are divided more or less as follows: the PST 2 seats, the POMR 3 seats, the Maoist faction 3 seats, and the other four independentsome of them linked to us and others to the Maoists.

The important thing is that all those who were elected were as a result of the huge vote received by Hugo Blanco: the seats are divided according to candidates only after the total for the group has decided how many seats they get altogether.

As to the agreement with the Maoist group, it joined in a second phase of the FOCEP.

The first stage was the collection of signatures. We got 47,000-more than the 40,000 officially required to be on the lists. The regime invalidated 28,000, which left us with 19,000.

So we started collecting again and that's when the Maoist group joined us. In their separate campaign up to then they had only obtained 500 signatures.

So without any real problem they negotiated their entry into FOCEP. They only had to agree to the four points we had all accepted:no compromise with any bourgeois politician or 'patriotic' military; a class candidacy; political independence and support of the list of the demands which had been made by the workers in the national strikes of the previous year. Why didn't the other Maoist groups join FOCEP?

When we put forward the slogan of class independence as a basis for participating in the elections, having as an axis of struggle "workers and peasants candidates" we began to hold a series of unity discussion with all the tendencies of the left. ship supports the «Bolshevik Tendency" of the USFI.

He stood as a candidate of the Workers' Peasants' and Students' Front (FOCEP), an electoral alliance led by the PST and another party which claims to be Trotskyist, the POMR which, is linked to the French OCI. Some Maoists also joined the FOCEP, which won 12 out of the 100 seats in the assembly.

But the majority of Peruvian Maoists stood as part of another electoral front, the Democratic Popular Union (UDP), along with the CP (Majority) and the FIR and FIR(CI), two small The Maoists wanted a much broader front which might include left sections of the bourgeoisie. And they formed a separate front (the UDP) which was also joined by the two small groups sympathetic to the majority of the USFI.

Their point of agreement on the "democratic and popular government" rather than on the putting forward of independent workers and peasants candidates. They said it was necessary to put forward a revolutionary programme and that the only revolutionary programme was the "democratic and popular So the incorporation of the Trotskyist groups supporting the majority in this front was a concession to their positions. This front, the UDP, operated in a special way. It applied democratic centralism which is not a principle of an electoral front (in which there should be general support for a defined number of points and outside that programmatic independence).

But there everyone had to do what the majority voted.

So the Trotskyists in that front had to accept the democratic and popular After the electoral process these groups got only four seats, none of them gained by the Trotskyist currents in the UDP. They entered in a grave crisis and are now trying to enter our front.

Their behaviour has been pretty opportunist. It may be true they have done everything possible for unity; but they certainly haven't done everything possible against the "democratic and popular" government conception of the Maoists. groups which support the majority of the USFI. The UDP won 4 seats in the assembly.

The largest party in the assembly, with 37 seats, is the bourgeois nationalist APRA led by the veteran Haya de la Torre who is now President of the Assembly in which APRA has been forced into an open far-right alliance with the Popular Christian which has 25 seats.

The Socialist Revolutionary Party (PSR) referred to in the interview was set up by supporters of deposed military President Velasco, and has 6 seats. The CP (Unidad) also won € seats.

Who is Ledesma?

He is theoretically No. 1 of the FOCEP list, though in terms of votes, Hugo Blanco was No. 1. And that, of course, must change the relations within FOCEP, must reflect the votes cast. And Ledesma is not opposed to that.

Politically Ledesma is a centrist. He is a legal counsel for the mineworkers. In Cerro de Pasco, which is the most important miners' centre in the coun try, he had a large majority. He got something like 70 or 80% of the total FOCEP vote in Cerro de Pasco. Though in some other mining centres it was Blanco who won the votes.

It's important that the miners gave enormous support to FOCEP given that in theory the secretary general of the mineworkers' union was the No. 1 candidate of the UDP. But he didn't get as many miners' votes as we did. There is something to be discussed, since it was the UDP before the elections who called themselves the miners' representatives.

In mining areas they got far fewer votes than we did even though supposedly the mineworkers' federation supported the UDP. We also, however, had some mineworkers' leaders who were elected. Do you expect the FOCEP to last?

The FOCEP has been considerably weakened by a number of internal developments. The FOCEP was never homogeneous group; it was formed specifically to take part in an electoral process and it remains to be seen whether it will last as a single front. That for us is a secondary question. It will have to be discussed.

But the, concrete thing is that there is a manoeuvre at present by the Maoists to throw out the Trotskyists, which they can't succeed in doing, since our deputies outnumber them 3 to 1.

So though they have tried to take advantage of the POMR declarations* about the deportees, we have said it is a matter of principle not to expel any group from the front but to maintain its unity as far as possible.

We are certainly not going to permit that for reasons of this kind any comrade is expelled.

Hugo Blanco or If there are differences on things of this kind, let's make the necessary public self-criticisms, but we are not for the expulsion of any group.

What is your reaction to reports that sections of the PSR want to join ‚the FOCEP?

The PSR is the Party of the military. This is the wing of Velascoism' which, after the Morales Bermudez coup, formed a separate party. At the beginning it seemed that there was a chance they would get as much as 20% or so of the votes.

But our own campaign, which made absolutely no concessions to support for the military, and our insistence on the independence of the working class and its allies, robbed them of many votes.

And at the same time they had a lot of internal divisions about how to conduct the electoral campaign. They in fact behaved like any other bourgeois party spending huge » his return to Peru from exile amounts of money on their electoral campaign.

They bought television time during the breaks in Peru's world cup matches, just like APRA and the PPC. So with this way of trying to win people they just showed themselves to be just one, more bourgeois What's more, all these people have lost a tremendous amount of: prestige since people had had their experience of Velascoism.

Also they didn't even have all the support of Velascoism. If they had maintained the popular support which Velasco had (shown by the huge turnout at his funeral) they would have got a fair quantity of votes.

There was a plan in this party to go to the elections as part of a "left front" Only the CP and the Christian democrats were interested in this. We were never prepared to join such a front since we characterised the party as a party of the right because of the composition of its leadership.

Now this party has split in two. There is one wing, which is the working class wing, in which there are a number of workers' leaders which has broken with all the generals and which is presently trying to join the FOCEP-or rather there are open discussions about its incorporation in the FOCEP. This wing holds three of the seats which the PSR won in the elections. The others are military people. (footnote) *A representative of the POMR was widely reported as calling in June for the replacement of exiled élected deputies if the regime did not permit them to return.. The POMR later issued a denial of this and reaffirmed support for the unconditional return of all the deportees.

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