A MAN cautiously National Guard in Nicaragua, He tries to prove that heis unarmed. Inev torce him to lie down. Then a guard fires from about four feet and the body gives a littie jerk off the ground.
That was the scene on our TV screens last week. A US news reporter had been killed by US-trained soldiers. And American national has a higher media rating people around the world saw something of President Somoza's power in action.
There is still no decisive breakthrough on either side in the war, although it is beginning to turn the Sandinistas' way. The Organisation of American States (OAS) has called on Somoza to step down, which will make it more difficult for him to get fresh arms and support, there are signs of some demoralisation inside the National Guard.
On the other hand, Somoza still retains a technical superiority, and the National Guard will keep on fighting because of their fear of reprisals if Somoza goes. Cuba-style The US has wanted Somoza out for some time now. It fears a Cuba-style development which could engulf the whole peninsula, therefore aims to end the war quickly, weaken the weight of the and maintain ТРАТІВ ЗСТРАР СРІРОСР ЗІ10 ATTITO1I3IME bodies of mass self-organisation.
The political initiative of the anti-Somoza forces has been the five-person provisional government compleapproaches a line of the self-defined because UlIC Sandinista This and bulk the emphasis and The Sandinistas in any new all costs proclamation of mented by a larger legislative council of state.
The five names announced are: Robelo, a moderate opposition businessman who spent months offering concessions to Somoza after September's insurrection; Ramirez, pro-Sandinista businessman;
La rich landowner opposed to Somoza; Moises Hassan, socialist; and Ortega, and a leader of the lercersta Tendency, which is most open to an agreement with the bourgeoisie.
Peasants project shows the tendency Sandinista leaders to put agreements with the representatives of capitalist exploitation before the interests of the masses who are bearing the brunt of the fighting. . It reflects illusions in the possibility of capitalists, workers and peasants joining together for 'national' development.
What will be crucial, therefore, will be the extent to which the masses develop their own armed bodies of self-organisation and refuse to accept the limits of a nationalist revolution.
Some groupings within the Sandinistas, like Tendency, put on this, the question government is bound to provoke debate within the movement.
Trotskyists of the Liga Revolucionaria are calling for the Sandinistas to take power without any bourgeois forces. This 'government of the poor' should organise Constituent Assembly elections, expropriate Somoza and imperialist interests, and dissolve the National Guard.
At the same time. the working for the formation of an independent Violetta an academic and the only important of the Marxista soviet-type bodies.
immediately policy Trotskyists are leaders put their trust in capitalists? working class party and for the building of This clear alternative is being argued within the Sandinista-led mass movement, relevance will increase as the US switches its SUll SUDDOrt for provisional government (an unofficial meeting between the two has already taken placel.
But it June SANDINISTAS hold a gun emplacement against Samoza's National Guard — but have the guerilla still vely important. and its speakers can be obtained American Human 6BE. into effect.' Solidarity with the Nicaraguan masses and vigilance against US intervention is therefore Films, posters and via the Central Rights Committee, Church Street, Old Isleworth, Middlesex TW7 As for the Communist Party, 'they don't take a position in favour of me because they say that people on