Panama: no to US interference
with Cuba and had a left face turned towards the US. In 1977 he signed a new treaty with Washington which planned for the relinquishing of US control over the canal zone in 1999.
Noriega was Torrijos' second in command and followed in the Torrijos tradition of combining internal repression with nationalist demagogy. Originally patronised by the US, long aware of his drugs connections, Noriega has recently shown a tendency to put nationalistic demagogy into practice.
He refused to cooperate with John Poindexter and Oliver North when they were sent to enlist his help in the war against Nicaragua.
In the run up to the treaty date of 1999, and in the context of the continuing "problems' for the Us in Nicaragua and in El Salvador, Washington needed a reliable ally in Panama. Noriega had to
The Panamanian defence force (PDF) of 15,000 soldiers was set up with Washington's support after student unrest in the 1960s. It has been a base for the army to rule the country: first with Torrijos as
Arturo Delvalle was installed by Noriega as president in 1985. With Noriega's agreement he introduced labour laws to weaken the power of the unions and
At the time of writing, the strike had caused losses of more than four million roubles and technically made four firms bankrupt.
This is a clear indication of the lengths the people of Nagorno-Karabakh are prepared to go to achieve their democratic demands and a warning to Gorbachev that the many remaining national questions in the Soviet Union can only be tackled by a completely open and democratic discussion • SEAN ROBERTS further impoverish the Panamanian working class.
Originally opposed to the extradition of Noriega, Delvalle was deposed by him when he became persuaded by the US that Noriega had to go. Delvalle has now been recognised by the US as the president of Panama and has called for US military action against Noriega.
Unable to persuade Noriega to step down, the US launched all-out economic warfare against Panama in March.
Washington froze $800 million in Panamanian assets and withheld $6.5 million due to Panama for payments for use of the canal.
Panama uses US dollars as its national currency (making it ideal for the laundering of drug money) and the freezing of its US assets has resulted in a complete freezing of the Panamanian economy. The 'national civic crusade', a coalition of bourgeois forces, launched a general strike — more like a lock-out - to force out Noriega.
Washington is now caught in something of a cleft stick. It wants a Panamanian defence force sanitised of populism but dares not weaken the PDF too much in case it becomes unable to deal with any internal dissent.
The struggle over the last months has been almost entirely between Noriega and the US government. The working class of Panama -worst hit by the US economic
Voters have leapfrogged the political spectrum: from Andre Lajoinie's PCF (right) to the fascist National strangiehold — has played a marginal role.
Some small demonstrations took place over the non-payment of pensions but, despite widespread hostility to us interference in internal Panamanian politics, Noriega's
Le Pen's surge
THE MAIN event in the first round of the French presidential elections was the enormous vote for the neofascist Le Pen - 14.5 per cent, and more than 4 million votes.
Le Pen's vote is certainly racist, but not consciously fascist. Nor is his movement a clearly fascist one. Le Pen is the main beneficiary of the protest vote against the discredited politics of both the traditional left and right wing parties.
The map of Le Pen's vote is interesting. Apart from his bastions in the south (especially in the Cote D'Azur), Le Pen got big votes in the Paris 'red belt' and along the Belgian border north of Lille. The red belt vote shows that traditional Communist Party (PCF) voters have been leapfrogging the political spectrum straight over to the far right — a phenomenon not seen since the 1930s. The latter is the product of the unemployed from the closed-down mines and steel works in the north voting for Le Pen.
The National Front getting the protest vote is a big setback for the left even if it looks as if record of repressing the working class has meant there has been no mass movement in his support either.
The left has been unable to galvanise support for an independent, anti-imperialist, anti-Noriega campaign which Mitterrand will win on the
The main feature of the political recomposition on the left is the collapse of the vote of the PCF. Its candidate Lajoinie, with 6.8 per cent of the vote, got only half the vote achieved by Georges Marchais in the presidential elections of 1981. identification as a pro-Moscow the left government from Pen's surge is indeed that of the official parties, both their austerity policies in government and their refusal to fight the racist right head-on. On the extreme left, the communist "renovateur' (renewer) Pierre Juquin scored a disappointing 2.01 per cent, and Arlette Laguiller of the semi-Trotskyist Lutte Ouvriere achieved a better-thanexpected 2.00 per cent. Pierre Boussel, better known as Pierre Lambert, got only 0.39 for his MPTT (Movement for a Workers Party).
Arlette Laguiller ran a much less 'political' campaign than Juquin, placing her emphasis
UPFRONT
would show that the best defender of Panama against imperialism is the working class.
Noriega continues to allow the starving of the Panamanian economy while he bargains for a better deal in exchange for Front of Jean-Marie Le Pen (left) on workers' economic demands. She was standing for the fourth time and as the only woman candidate has a certain "personal' vote. Her two per cent does not represent the strength of Lutte Ouvriere, far from it. She achieved better scores than Juquin in a broad swathe of the north, especially the Nord and Pas-de-callais regions.
But in most areas the Juquin vote was higher — especially in Paris and many areas of central and southern France. Juquin tended to do well where the communist vote has been traditionally strong. His best vote was in the Haute Vienne region around Limoges, where he got around 4 per cent.
Ecologist candidate Antoine Waechter did well along the polluted Rhine; his Alsatian origins and German name probably did him no harm in that region either. In some towns in Alsace and Lorraine he got 9 per cent of the vote, which explains why his national total went up to a national score of 3.8 per cent.
Overall the clections are a disappointment for the left, and especially for the coalition his resignation.
Socialists in Britain should oppose any interference by the Us in the affairs of Panama while understanding that Noriega is no friend of the Panamanian working class • GILL LEE around Juquin, which included dissident communists and the trotskyist Ligue Communiste.
Juquin suffered from a media boycott after the tv and press discovered that this former PCF spokesperson was not going to the right, but, after all, some kind of extreme leftist!
Nonetheless, secondary factors aside, it is a bad vote for someone who made the rights of immigrant workers, women and youth — as well as anti-nuclear and anti-imperialist themes — a central part of his campaign.
For the first time since world war two a fascist leader is gaining support in a major European country. It could not have happened without the dashing of the hopes which the workers had in the SP-CP government elected in 1981. The workers wanted progressive change, and got capitalist normalisation from a government with four communists in it. Le Pen's victory is the price of betrayal • PHIL HEARSE
9
Daniel Giry/REA-Reflex SOCIALIST OUTLOOK no7 May/june 1988 Benoit Decout/REA-Retlex
DaNy COHN-BENDIT on channel four; four books so far; all the colour supplements - 1968 is becoming an industry. But what did it really mean? Was it just the youthful excess of a generation who grew up in a pampered unreal time, before the harsh economic realities of the late twentieth century caught up with them?
If you examine the momentous events of that year in detail, they went far beyond 'student rebellion' and youthful ultra-leftism. World-historic events shook several parts of the world, involving very 'grown-up' forces and vital battles in the international class struggle. 1968 and the period which led up to, and followed it, has decisively shaped the world in which we live.
The key events of the year are well known. The May-June general strike in France, the Tet offensive in Vietnam, and the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in August.
Less well known, but symbolic of an important process under way was the 25 February Vietnam demonstration in West Berlin, showcase of western capitalism. Young revolutionaries gathered from all over Europe to support the Vietnamese revolution, at the invitation 10 of the German Socialist Students Fede-
MAI 68
'the aftermath of 1968 gave rise to widespread illusions about the possibility of fairly rapid development of revolutionary conditions' ration (SDS). 20,000 people marched behind portraits of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht. The event marked the first time that the red flag had been carried in that part of Berlin since Hitler came to power in 1933.
Inspired by the Vietnamese revolution, militant socialist ideas were finding a new audience in the west.
The Berlin demonstration followed hard on the heels of the Tet offensive in Vietnam. Bourgeois papers, like the British Guardian claimed that the Tet offensive was a crushing defeat for the Vietnamese National Liberation Front
(NLF). But the US administration was not fooled. Never again did the US ruling class think of victory in Vietnam, only how to try to avoid crushing defeat.
1968 witnessed a new rise of the world revolution. A whole series of struggles in the colonial and semi-colonial world (the 'third world') accompanied the Vietnamese struggle. In particular, 1968 was the year of the spectacular emergence of the Palestinian fighters' organisations, the fedayeen.
In eastern Europe, the working people of Czechoslovakia attempted to exploit the opening provided by the emergence of a reforming wing of the bureaucracy around Dubcek, but were overthrown in August by the Soviet invasion.
But without doubt the most significant of the events of '68 was the May-June general strike in France. Sparked by the student rebellion, the French working class moved into action against the De Gaulle government, to the consternation of the trade union leaders, and the leaders of the biggest working class party - the French Communist Party (PCF).
The thunderbolt of May rocked bourgeois 'common sense' to its foundations. Here were millions of workers, occupying their factories and defying capitalist
SOCIALIST OUTLOOK no 7 May/June 1988
'normality'. All those who said the workers were 'integrated' into capitalist society and only interested in more consumer goods were flabbergasted. Despite the fact that the May-June movement was sold out and led to defeat by the PCF, political life was totally shaken up. A new period had opened.
In Britain 1968 was important in two related ways. The Vietnam and student movement provided a new audience for the far left and led to its rapid growth. At the same time it was a 'break year' as far as the level of strike struggles was concerned, which doubled over 1967. It was the beginning of a working class upsurge which was to continue through the Heath government to 1974.
In a general sense, how can we sum up the