TASTITEN NATTONALDUMION TISNOM PHOTO: Derek Speirs, IFL 63 MURDERED 1 A Gandhi fights back

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The temporary truce within India's Congress Party is now being threatened by increasing violation.

Moves are afoot in the southern states of Karmataka and Andhra Pradesh to split from the main party and form. a new Socialist The architects of this plan identify "socialism" with the policies of the dictatorship.

It is not yet clear whether Gandhi has decided to commit herself to . this faction.

She may instead utter calls for party unity with the expectation of being able in the near future to ride roughshod over. Brahmananda Reddy (Congress President) and the forces which ousted her from leadership.

There has certainly been a significant resurgence of popular support for the fallen dictator.

The Janata coalition government has, predictably, proved miserably unable to meet either the requirements of capitalism in India or the demands of the workers and the peasants.

The utter failure of the parties of the working class to proved alternative leadership has greatly strengthened Gandhi's supporters.

The pro-Moscow CP, which alone supported the dictatorship, has not recovered from its electoral rout, while the Maoists of the CP (Marxist-Leninist) have remained in disarray since the Emergency; the Socialists form part of the current bourgeois coalition government, and the CP (Marxist) has iust announced its readiness to join with the Janata in a popular front against the Congress at the dext assembly In the same statement the CP (Marxist) reiterated its 'abhorrence' of the Janata policies-a reaction expressed in more concrete form by the workers who have taken strike action in increasing numbers.

The covert or blatant betrayals of the Stalinists and reformists allow Gandhi and her faction every opportunity to exploit this hostility to their own ends.

Those forces in the Indian labour movement which claim to represent the interests of the working class must draw the clear lesson from situation, and fight for a socialist programme which can unite the Indian worker and peasant masses in the struggle to overthrow capitalism. rities by seventy two workers.

Mismanagement

They have apparently been victimised for protesting against the mismanagement and corruption endemic amongst the bureaucracy.

In an open letter addressed to the Soviet press they state:

*We undertook to offer publicly critical remarks against the plundering of socialist property, bad conditions of work, low pay, high injury rates, the raising of production norms leading to waste and 'low quality Financial Times 8.12.77.

The group have also given case histories of workers sacked for complaining about bad • planning of production (which has led to a worsening of conditions in the coalmines), poor wages and pensions, and the many fiddles that management work to supplement their ample salaries.

BOLIVIA

It is impossible to accept at face value dictator Hugo Banzer's declaration that he will not stand in the Presidential election he has announced for June 1978. Since still no machinery for elections has been decreed and no opposition leader allowed out of jail or exile to stand it doesn't look very likely that they will happen. The exiled leadership of the illegal mineworkers union have called a one-day strike on December 21 to protest against the mockery of the election plans and to demand trade union freedom and the retum and release of exiled and imprisoned leaders.

ROMANIA

According to the new economic plan for 1981-85 issued at the Party Conference, Romania will have caught up with the developed countries. A massive investment programme was announced though President Ceacescu also gave vague rottenness that lies behin the facade of 'socialist col struction.

It demonstrates striking that the inefficiency an parasitism of the Sovi regime exposed by Trotsk over 40 years ago, had ne disappeared with the death Stalin, but remains feedir off the socialised econom and stunting its develo ment.

As more and more militar workers do protest they wi realise that individual actic is not enough, that what necessary is the sort of ma movement that arose i Poland in 1975.

This will present gre: opportunities for a revol tionary party to interfer armed with the Trotskyi programme of a politic revolution in Eastern Europ to oust the Stalinist bureau racy and restore worker democracy and econom planning in the interests ‹ the masses. ing week and more consum] tion. Inconsistent over-optin ism and economic adventu ism, it seems, are stil th main features of Romania planning. And repression an the cult of personality are th main features of its politic Number 2 in the Party hie archy is now clearl Ceacescu's wife. And i replaced the usual images i Marx, Engels and Lenin wit a massive medallion of hin self.

ZAMBIA

President Kaunda ha refused to have anythir more to do with Owen settlement because of Owen callous comments on tr Rhodesian massacre of Zin babweans in Mozambiqu Kaunda publicly wept (as l often does) when he mac the announcement. Qui some hypocrisy from a ma who in the past, has sel Zimbabwean freedom fighte back across the border to far Smith's "justice"

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BRIEF promises of a shorter worl