Somalia flirts with Peking

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It has not yet been revealed whether those officers who failed to overthrow military ruler aiming to shift the direction of Somalia's international alliances.

The first country in Africa to sign a friendship treatey with the Soviet Union, Somalia broke with Moscow last year when the Kremlin gave its full support to Ethiopia in the Ogaden war.

•A frantic search for imperialist allies was fruitless and Barre was forced a month ago into an ignominious withdrawal from Ethiopian territhere has been speculation over whether the authors the coup wanted to renew Soviet alliance or objected Barre's reported wish to do himself.

But all this has been somewhat upstaged by the announcement that only hours after the coup attempt Barre was off on a state visit to Peking.

This is no doubt a new example of the opportunism of the Chinese bureaucracy's anti-Soviet diplomacy which in the last few weeks alone has led it into friendly approaches towards reactionary anti-communist regimes in Burma and Thailand and into a public statement of support for the blatant anticommunist alliance of South East Asian countries known as ASEAN.

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-INICKNAIUNAL• GHANA'S REFEREND FIASCO The plan of the military dictatorship led to give itself a more democratic image can have fooled nobody.

Ghanaians were asked on April 30 to vote 'Yes' or 'No' to the General's proposal (revealed to him, he says, by God in a dream) for 'Union Union Government is supposed to mean a government in which, along with the army and the police, all the people also participate through representatives elected as individuals.

In this government of "national consensus" there are to be no political parties since these are, according to Acheampong "alien to Ghana's political traditions" and are "the cause of political instability"

1972 coup In the months before Acheampong's referendum on this mixture of traditional despotism and the corporate state, it was legal to oppose the plan and campaign for a 'No' vote.

Acheampong seized power in a coup in 1972 when he overthrew Ghana's last elected government of Tofi Buzia, the old rival of Kwame Nkrumah.

Nkrumah, who had headed the fight for national independence which came in 1957 (Ghana was the first black African country to get independence), was himself overthrown in 1966 by an army and police coup.

Three organisations, led by petty bourgeois supporters (at least for the moment) of parliamentary democracy with more than one party, were set up to oppose the Union Government plan.

Former dictator

One of them was led by a former military dictator belatedly converted to "democracy" and a former minister of Nkrumah.

All of them suffered from state repression. They were prevented from issuing publicity and their meetings were broken up by thugs.

The government, meanwhile, freely issued huge quantities of propaganda.

Lost vote It monopolised the front pages of all the newspapers, which it rigidly controls.

Unfortunately for Acheampong's regime, however, it had foolishly assumed that all this would be enough to win.

They did not, therefore, make sufficient plans for a smooth and secret rigging of the ballot.

So in the end when the regime clearly lost the vote, they were forced into the most clumsy and obvious ballot rigging.

Judge Isaac Abban UNION GOVERNMENT had been put in charge of the count had been allowed to insist in advance on an open and public count:

When it became obvious that this was impossible if the regime was to win, troops were sent to intimidate Abban who obligingly disappeared while the army carried out the "count" in secret.

"Majority"

Even then they only managed it.

Union Governm ent got a "majority" in six provinces out of nine and t he overall national figure was only 53% yes' That traumatic encounter with "democracy" was quite UmAcheampong as much as the regime could cope with.

Although it intends to go on with its scheme to produce a new constitution from a wholly appointed "Constituent Assembly" , it has summarily banned all the organisations which opposed Union Government.

Whether Acheampong wil' survive to see his new cons. tution in force seems doubtful.

His clumsy and open viol ations of even the rules he devised himself are widely known and will, therefore, completely fail to provide him with the legitimation he was seeking.

His customary repression of working class organisations and of all political parties is almost certain, therefore, to be redoubled as he desperately tries to hang on to power in the face of obvious mass hostility.

As the international crisis drives the Danish economy into the doldrums, Stalinist and reformist union leaders are playing their customary role of stifling working class militancy.

In the Metalworkers Union efforts are continuing to crack down on militants in the wake of a strike by Ford garage mechanics last year.

About 40 workers struck demanding an increase in excess of government pay policy and rejected an attempted sell-out by officials.

The men's Stalinist led union branch was ordered to hold an extraordinary general meeting to expel the strikers from the union.

120 stewards immediately met condemn this call, and at the uneral meeting a crowd of 1,000 workers threw out the expulsion threat, and called for the union to put its efforts into breaking the pay policy and return to localised bargaining. Full support was given to the strikers.

The employers then declared that they would not re employ a the strikers, and the fight turned into one for reinstatement of the remaining 25.

The fight was eventually defeated. Now the Metalworkers Union leaders are trying to put the boot in on their membership by introducing rule changes to enable them to expel members over the head of the branch, and appoint officials instead Expelled

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Siad Barre in a coup attempt last week were

UNION GOVERNMEN YES