Crisis sharpens

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The near insurrectional situation created by the month-long copper miners' strike has been brought to an end-but almost certainly for no more than a few weeks at the most.

And this break only came after the regime had been forced to declare martial law and virtually threaten to shoot all the strikers dead.

The workers at the Toquepala mine were the first to return to work.

By September 4 the Peruvian army had, through an armed siege, literally starved these workers into submission.

The other strikers held out for four more days of similar treatment before returning to work on the clear understanding that the strike would begin again on September 30 if their demands were not met.

There seems to be no possibility at all that the government or the mining companies will meet the main demand-which is for the reinstatement of 320 mineworkers' leaders sacked during other strikes since last July.

In fact the government has only fuelled the mineworkers' determination by making the insulting offer to buy off the dismissed workers, and by the sacking of at least 50 more leaders of the latest strike.

The regime is also facing mounting challenges from other sectors of workers.

On September 6 all public service workers went on one-day strike in protest against the government's promise to the IMF to throw 30,000 of them out of work.

The regime replied by gassing and machine-gunning them off the streets.

The latest group of workers to take action is the bank workers who started a strike on September 8 demanding a wage increase of $88 a month (compared with the government's offer of $32) and the reinstatement of 68 sacked militants.

The regime has changed its policy in these confrontations compared with its concessions to the striking teachers six weeks ago.

The new, more aggressive, posture is the result not of gg strength but of desperation.

In the face of increasing mobilisations and near economic disaster the regime has no political support.

It rests on two things-armed repression, and the political treachery of the leaders of APRA, the petty bourgeois nationalist movement which gained most votes in the Constituent Assembly elections in June due to their opportunistic anti-government rhetoric.

Last week the APRA leaders, by blocking debate on the miners' strike in the Assembly, showed that if it becomes a choice between mi.ttary dictatorship, capitalism and the IMF on the one side and workers' revolution on the other, the APRA leaders will duly do their duty against the working class.

With APRA's help the regime has just survived the latest crisis.

But the fact that the APRA leaders have needed to show their true colours so early in the process of "controlled democratisation" means that the regime storm into Lima on August 14 is in even greater danger at the next confrontation, which cannot be long delayed.

in "Reluctance" was the keynote of the week's debate in the Portuguese parliament about the fate of the non-parliamentary government of Nobre da Costa.

He and his chosen capitalist ministers were "reluctant' to take on the reins of power but felt it was their duty.

The Socialists and the Christian Democrats were "reluctant" to bring down the government and open a new period of political uncertaintybut in the end they did.

And the Communist Party were "reluctant" to say anything at all.

What all this reluctance reflects is the profound crisis of bourgeois rule in Portugal.

The bourgeoisie and its political parties are indeed reluctant to face the consequences of the anti-working class policies they need to impose.

And the leaders of the main workers' parties are just as reluctant to put themselves in a position where they could come under pressure to represent the interests of their rank and file.

So it was clinging together in fear of what lay ahead that the Socialists and Christian Democrats jointly and somewhat unexpectedly brought the twoweek old Nobre da Costa government down last week.

Now the bourgeoisie must renew its search for a stable government before the mass of the working class take action against the only too real anti-working class " policies of Portugal's phantom government. Soares