Portugal: bosses take reins

Scan page 2

"The most conservative government team which Portugal has known since the revolution of April 1974"

That was the judgement on the regime of former Salazar technocrat Mota Pinto expressed last week by Socialist Party leader Mario Soares.

Yet it was Soares and the Socialists in parliament who treacherously brought Mota Pinto's reactionary government into office.

The Socialist MPs stood aside as the two bourgeois parties voted down a Communist Party motion rejecting the new government.

The CP motion was rejected by 109 votes to 45 with 97 (Socialist) abstentions.

The parliamentary vote has produced the first confirmed government which Portugal has had since July 27 when military President Eanes dismissed Mario Soares as Socialist premier.

But the vote has in no way solved the crisis of authority of the Portuguese bourgeoisie.

It now once more has a constitutional government by courtesy of a party which, while it remains the largest in parliament, is deeply discredited among Eanes the workers who once supported it.

This was only too apparent in the recent local elections in Alentejo where the Socialists'. . vote all but disappeared while the CP vote grew significantly.

The masses Portugal have • been showing increasing hostility in recent months to the anti-working class austerity measures of all Portuguese governments since November 1975 and to more recent attempts to undo the land reform and other gains of the 1974 Not reliable As a result, neither the Socialist Party nor the Stalinists of the CP: are reliable props for the bourgeoisie.

The Socialist leaders appear to have lost all credibility with the class.

And the Stalinists gain from this only by maintaining an "opposition" to the present bourgeois government which they know is not in immediate danger of being put to the test.

For all the Stalinists' noise against the new government they refuse to take any measures to mobilise the masses, preaching instead a reactionary and increasingly dangerous reliance on "democracy"

But it is clearer every day that the Portuguese bourgeoisie is rapidly abandoning democracy.

It has installed a non-elected government of tested reactionaries; sections of it have encouraged the recent growing mobilisations of fascists; and last week the so-called Council of the Revolution declared the electoral law unconstitutional.

This means that, until this issue is resolved in parliament, elections cannot constitutionally be held.

Desires

That at the present time coincides with the desires of both the bourgeoisie and the reformist and Stalinist leaders.

Aside from their own political rivalries, these leaders wish above all to prevent the working masses from once again taking the centre of the political stage. Portuguese demonstration, 1975