Why did Peruvian left wing vote collapse?

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Blanco addressing mass meeting in Cuzco The Peruvian general election on May 18 brought an almost complete collapse of the left wing vote, this represents a victory for the bourgeoisie and a setback for the working class. • The electoral setback is in part the outcome of the treachery of the Stalinist forces who continue their desperate search for a popular front-style alliance with sections of the Peruvian capitalist class.

And it is in part to be attributed to sectarian manoeuvres by various Trotskyist forces that led to the disintegration of the united workers' electoral front.

Toppled

The new President, Fernando Belaunde Terry of the bourgeois Accion Popular (AP) was toppled from this office in 1968 by a 'progressive' section of the military headed by General Velasco Alvarado.

Twelve years later Belaunde polled 42% of the vote, routing the right wing APRA (27%) and the Christian Democrats (11%).

The remaining twelve candi dates (including Hugo Blanco) polled 20% together.

According to unofficial but reliable sources AP has gained an outright majority in Congress and the workers parties have won less than 30 of the 240 seats-a substantial fall from the 34% they won in the 1978 elecINTERNATIONAL SUMMER tions for the Assembly.

Peru is unique COMMITTEE Constituent periphery and influence out of all proportion to their size, and they have been able to make a major impact on national politics largely through the personal popularity and record of Hugo Blanco (whose party, the PRT is affiliated to the USFI).

Blanco's appeal was capable of raising 96,000 signatures to support the official registration of the PRT.

65% of the population suffers from malnutrition while fish sufficient to feed everybody is shipped to the imperialist countries to be processed into pet food.

In the run up to the 1980 elections, the left was beset by haggling totally marginal to the real struggles.

Genaro Ledesma, one of the leading independents inside FOCEP, signed an agreement to include within the alliance the populist military group PSR and the CP.

Lost battle

This obliged the Trotskyists to withdraw, and they subsequently lost the legal battle to retain the name of FOCEP.

A new front, ARI (Revolutionary Left Alliance), was formed on 18 January 1980 out of the four Trotskyist parties, important mass organisations such as the miners union, the peasant federation, the teachers union, the UDP (centrists, independent leftists and the Maoist PCR and UNIR (pro-Peking Maoists).

In its early days ARI held the most massive rallies ever seen in Peru, and was clearly perceived as a powerful pole of attraction for the left, and a major threat to the bourgeoisie which began to hint at the cancellation of the elections.

However, problems arose almost immediately. The Maoist PCR and UNIR sought to change ARI's character by calling it a 'strategic alliance' and attempting to introduce their slogan for a 'popular revolutionary government' to enable alliances with the bourgeoisie.

Democratic They also struggled to foist democratic centralism on ARI in order to impose their 'antiimperialist, non-aligned' programme, which explicitly defends allying with the rightist APRA and the Christian Democrats.

At the same time they fought for the inclusion of the ten-member bourgeois grouplet ARS which had been explicitly proscribed in the original ARI agreement.

The PRT succeeded in halting these moves and won a return to the original terms in a conference where these were ratified by the UDP and UNIR as well as the PRT.

However, having lost the battle for popular frontism the PCR and UNIR (probably under instructions from their masters in Peking) played the card of quarrelling over their quotas in the election lists.

The alliance finally broke apart on 26 February-the date for official inscription -because agreement could not be reached on the allocation of candidates The Trotskyist groups affiliated to the Moreno/Lambert Parity Commission must take full responsibility for their part in this debacle.

They had already left ARI before it broke up, on grounds totally different but just as spurious as those of the Maoists.

The PST and POMR claimed that ARI was a "class collaborationist front" both in its composition and in its programme.

Not allowed in Where was the bourgeoisie? The only party that could conceivably fill the bill-the tiny ARS-had not been permitted to enter ARI. (Although, curiously, it had been a part of the original FOCEP without any objection from the PST and POMR). The bourgeoisie, it turned out, was in the mind of ARI, which according to the Parity Commission hadn't "broken with it subjectively'. The Lambertists and Morenists also objected to the fact that the ARI programme did not include the slogan for a workers government. This objection raises the important question of how Trotskyists should intervene in elections.

The minimum programme of ARI starts by saying:

"The organisations signing below spell out a united programme on the basis of our respective programmes while maintaining complete freedom of agitation on those aspects where differences exist... The most glaring omission in the programme is precisely this question of governmental demands which while posing a united workers front against the bourgeoisie, the PRI correctly fought to be left for each organisation to formulate in its campaign. (It was precisely on this point that the Maoists refused to join FOCEP in 1978 -and it was they who subsequently gave way on it to enable the formulation of ARI).

However, it is impossible for Trotskysts to come to complete programmatic agreement on governmental demands with Maoists and centrists precisely because of the counter-revolutionary popular front politics they stand for, and the question at stake was simply one of a united electoral front of workers parties.

Five lists Following the break up of ARI the left slate divided into five lists, which finally fought the election separately: 1) the PRT, POMR and PST (all under the name PRT), winning three seats, 2) USP, one seat, 3) UNIR, twelve seats, 4) FOCEP, one seat, 5) FUI (the Moscow CP, PSR and other nationalist groupings), seven seats..

It appears that the potential constituency of the left when faced with this complete disintegration voted for the 'lesser evil' of Belaunde to impede an APRA victory.

Naturally enough recriminations abounded. Blanco fervently refuted charges that the "Fourth International" had forced him to take sectarian positions against the 'national interest' by declaring that 'the national leadership of the PRT has always been autonomous in its decisions.

In the same issue of Combate Socialista (no. 9) Blanco writes in a desperation for which we may admit some personal, but no political sympathy:

"Many lessons should be learnt although it is too soon to draw them all out; this is still a time of desperate recriminations and insults between little leaders as we all try to justify our incompetence by blaming each other ..:

"New comrades on the left ... take the helm yourselves and do what we were incapable of doing! Send us to hell if we deserve it, but not the people, who are victims of it all.

Take those organisations which can still be useful to you and mend them, throw out those which are useless and make others.

Continue the fight on ashes of our mistakes!"

There are indeed many lessons to be learnt from this debacle; not only to understand the ! scandalous heritage of Stalinist popular frontism but also the heritage of Pabloism in Peru, the bankruptcy of a Trotskyism built far too much on a personality cult around Blanco, while failing to confront the vital struggle to construct a mass revolutionary party.

Mass support

The PRT-despite the mass support Blanco can still command-can only throw up its hands and invite the "people' to resurrect what they can from the ruins!

The task of a revolutionary leadership is not to abandon the 'people' to their own devices and the wretched cruelty and greed of the imperialists and their local bourgeois devoteesbut to fight to construct a Bolshevik-style party to lead the struggle for the seizure of power and the smashing of the bourgeois state on the basis of the political independence of the working class allied with the poor peasantry.