Junta with no visible support

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it could no longer be held far-right Christian Popular approved the new constituOf all the countries If all the countries of Latin America today Latin America today Peru is the one where capitalism has has fewest visible means of More positively it is Peru where the workers and peasants are closest to taking power into their own hands.

This critical situation has arisen first of all from the virtual political collapse of the military dictatorship headed by President Morales Bermudez.

Morales' predecoessor General Velasco had managed to rule for eight years based on a mixture of "anti-imperialist." rhetoric, one or two muchexagerated social reforms, the building of "mass organisations" which he had run by opportunist "revolutionary" intellectuals, the cringing political support of Fidel Castro and the Peruvian Communist Party and a good deal of repression.

Morales-a more candid right winger from the startlacked all these assets except the repression.

As the economic crisis of the regime over: the last three years has grown more Bermudes and more catastrophic, the remedies more and more directed against the jobs and wages of the workers and the counter-reactions more and more militant, so Morales has had to depend increasingly on repression alone.

Tolerance

This has lost his regime every vestige of popular tolerance on which its predecessor partially survived.

But in spite of the repression throughout this year the working class through a series of daring strikes and demonstrations showed that it could no longer be held down.

Morales was forced to call (blatantly undemocratic) elections to "Constituent Assembly" in an attempt to stave off his moment of reckoning and perhaps even reverse the crisis.

The result was not what he bargained for. Every participating party at least verbally opposed the military regime.

And a remarkably high share of the very loaded poll went to parties of the working class, in particular the FOCEP Front of parties calling themselves Trotskyist, who gave every impression of meaning what they said and showed that up to a point they were capable of mobilising the masses.

But the party with most votes in the June elections (35%) and so the immediate arbiters of the fate of the regime was the old bourgeois nationalist movement APRA, now once again in one of its verbally radical phases.

But as in the past there is no substance in APRA's words-as it proves every day by using its dominant position in the [onctit... Assembly to block with the far-right Christian Popular Party against the demands Party goainst the demands tion. of the left (especially of FOCEP) and in defence of the military dictatorship.

APRA is led by the more than 80 year old Haya de la Torre who if there were an Olympiad for opportunists would certainly be among the finalists.

Haya de la Torre, as president of the Assemblyl is rapidly losing credibility as an opponent of the regime.

Attacked

This was demonstrated when three weeks ago, after the last IMF-placating round of price rises, a demonstration attacked not only government buildings but also APRA offices as well.

APRA turned down the FOCEP resolution demanding the complete reversal of the price increases; but at the same time its leaders felt obliged to present their own resolution asking the government to reconsider the increases.

They still hope that such puny gestures will let them win the presidential and congressional elections *hich are due next year

Discontent

Out in the streets and mines and factories where it really matters there is very little that APRA can do now to protect the regime from the discontent of the masses.

Even the Moscow-backed Communist Party (Unidad) is not in a position to help very much since it can now only hang on to control of the decreasingly important Peruvian General Confederation of Labour (CGTP) through blatant ballot-rigging against the breakaway (equally Stalinist) CP (Majority).

Workers in any case have been turning increasingly to union organisations other than the CGTP.

Terror

For months Morales has shown that though terror is his only weapon in relation to strikes and other militant mass actions, he does not dare to use it to its fullest extent. He: has thus been forced into a series of The latest is an under- The latest is i taking to grant taking to grant some local autonomy and (in violation of the IMF's spending cuts) a massive increase in public works in the jungle town of Tucallpa which was paralysed by what seems to have been little short of an insurrectional general strike.

But the regime's ability to temporarily buy off such struggles extremely limited.

Las week's agreements with Peru's main international creditors to reschedule repayments of debt for two years are based on the creditors' insistence that the Peruvian government implements all the IMF's measures.

And that implies taking even harsher action against the increasingly combative working class.

• UNITED STATES There will be a centre page feature on the political situation in the United States in the

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CIALIST PRESS, Wednesday 15 Norember, 1978 Somoza's troops move in on guerrilla Jignters The vicious dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza and his nepotistic clique in Nicaragua appears to be lurching towards a final crisis.

US imperialism now finds itself no longer able to give full-blooded support to the contin. uation of the Somoza dynasty.

Last week, "human rights" crusader Jimmy Carter ensured that the IMF once again blocked Somoza's troops move in on guerrilla HONDURAS PANAMA VENEZUELA GUATEMAL COSTA RICA ¡antly tear up Somoza's portrait