[The deadline which Socialist Premiér Soares set for…]

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The deadline which Socialist Premiér Soares set for getting the support of the opposition parties for his programme has passed:

And Portugal is once more on the brink of a political crisis. Both the main bourgeois parliamentary parties have implied that they will vote against Soares in the vote of confidence which he has now tabled in parliament.

May resign

If the Communist Party does not vote with him he will lose and be forced to resign. Even if the CP does vote for Soares, of which there is now a strong chance, he may still resign.

And such .an election would take place in a situation of mounting working class anger at Soares' policies.

Only recently 350,000 workers. marched through Lisbon to protest against the effects of his austerity proposals-in particular the massive 12% unemployment level-and the Agricultural Reform Law which provides for returning collectivised land to former fascist owners.

Opposition workers march also voiced workers' opposition to the negotiations now taking place with the IMF for a new loan -and the strings that are certain to be attached to it.

This would almost certainly force another indecisive general election, unless Soares manages to form a new government on another basis, as he optimistically says he might.

Political differences

The political differences between Soares and the capitalist parties revolve around economic policy.

Soares wants to implement a series of austerity measures which would create widespread unemployment, and no doubt many bankruptcies of small Portuguese capitalists as well.

It is their interests which the capitalist parties are protecting when they call the Soares programme "unacceptable" and as being "on its knees" before the International Monetary Fund.

These parties want to rescue capitalism in Portugal from its profound economic crisis through a policy even of more frontal assault on the working class and its organisations.

Indirect Soares like other social democratic governments in Western. Europe pursues a policy which is no less directed towards the interests of capital.

But he is putting the interests of international capital first and is attacking the working class by more indirect means than the behind Soares' anti-working class plans.

Despite the bitter enmity between Soares and CP leader Cunhal, the CP leaders are no more prepared than those PHOTO: Derek Speirs, IFL.

of the SP to lead a struggle for the independent demands of the working class.

Their difference with Soares in recent weeks has been that Soares wants all the parties including the CP to support his programme from outside the government and to end even formal oppos ition; while the CP leaders want to form a governmental coalition of all the parties "with no distinction of an ideological kind"

But just like the Spanish and Italian CP's, the Portuguese Stalinists have now started to present an agreement on programme as a step towards this grand popular front alliance.

Parliamentary life

In a press conference last week Soares recognised this change in CP policy:

"In the present conditions in Portugal I cannot exclude the Communist Party from parliamentary life and force it into an extreme position.

On the contrary I must win it for democracy. Being the leader of a party of the left, I cannot make an alliance with parties of the right and exclude the Communist Party from that alliance"

The CP, he said, was "With great influence in the world of labour. And for the good of democracy I don't want it to polarise all the discontents which exist in the country.

And as I too am a leader of a party which has great influence in the world of labour, I must always maintain dialogue with that Soares described the CP's TRUE IMAGES TERROR ARGENTINA 60OO DEAD PRISONERS 15000 DISAPPEAR TERROR ARGENTINA TRUE 6.000 MAGES DEAD ERROR IS 000 ANTIDISAPPEARSEMITISM 10000 -HUNGRY POLITICAL PRISONERS CUT IN WAGES MEANS