Khomeini struggles to impose dictatorship

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Socialist Press Monthly Fund FUND 1HF Khomeini's Islamic Republic' is now gasping desperately for its survival. Opposition to the rule of the 'Revolutionary Council' a is spreading daily on a mass scale.

The campaign against US imperialism has not succeeded in uniting the nation behind Khomeini's leadership, while it has opened up new discussions of strategy and orientation among the class confusion of the mass movement which overthrew the Shah.

State apparatus

Unable to build up a stable state apparatus through which to exercise his dictatorship, Khomeini is now losing hold of the means of control which were formerly at his disposal.

Last week's referendum on the constitution of the 'Islamic Republic' showed the extent of the crisis facing Khomeini.s regime from within Iran.

ATTITE 1 TID Abstentions were massive, probably in the region of 50% of the total electorate.

In the regions occupied by the oppressed nations within Iran, the rate of abstentions was much higher, as active boycott campaigns were fought through.

Wrecked

The governor of the southeastern province of Baluchistan confessed that he would regard a 5% turnout as a 'success' Polling stations were wrecked and local government offices occupied.

In Kurdistan, abstentions were almost total as the nationalists rejected the last minute concession of clauses supposedly guaranteeing the rights of national minorities.

And in Azerbaijan, mobilisations against the referendum escalated rapidly into a direct conflict with Khomeini's central regime.

Demonstrations led to an occupation of the radio station Be.i5 Bazargan in Tabriz, and the broadcasting of demands for an end to the constitutional proposals, the release of some 100 demonstrators arrested over the preceding days and the execution of foreign minister Qotzbadeh. for his 'systematic censorship' and distortions of reality as director-general of radio and television services.

It is to the Ayatollah Shariat-Madari that the movement in Azerbaijan has turned for political leadership.

Shariat-Madari has always maintained a solid base of mass support in this north-western region, where his. religious leadership has been unchallenged by Khomeini's power in other areas.

Attacks

Now living in Qom and subjected to attacks from fanatical Khomeini supporters, ShariatMadari has never made any secret of his 'moderate" political positions: full support for a state structured on the model of bourgeois parliamentary democracies where the religious leaders would play no direct part in secular affairs.

These positions have of course brought the two Cont'd page 2