third of the vote seats) and a populist left wing.
parliamentary reforms.
Assembly to meet.
en route to exile in Sweden.
What do you think of the significance of the first partial Constituent Above all, I want to talk about the restrictions placed on these ECHOES First, illiterates did not bave the right to vote which excluded some of the most conscious sectors of Peruvian society, likethe Indian peasants who do not speak the colonial language of Spanish Thus, those who have carried out agrarian reform, increased production and bettered their standard of laving are treated a sub-human.
Then soldiers did not have the right to vote, in a country where the military junta rules the country 'in the name of the armed forces.
Finally, to have the right 1o slates in the clections vor had to colest 400 signatures - a very high tigures.
You should know that the authorities did everything to impede their collection by the organisations which identified with the workers movement.
They continually stopped comrades who were collecting signatures in the street and stole the lists they had already got.
To top it all, ten days before the closure of nominations they refused FOCEP halt signatures, that 1s 20,000, The comrades, with preat persistTHE Soweto uprising of the first elections since 1963 the parties of the workers" movement have won a - a dramatie improvement on any previous showing.
The revolutionaries of FOCEP have taken between 10 and 13 per cent making them the third largest party. To add to the capitalists' troubles the majority party. APRA, is split between the right (which will have a majority of The left's advances are part of the upsurge around the general strike at the end of May. FOCEP has made it clear that it will rely on that mass struggle and not It has plans for a mass workers' and peasants" convention. One of the first tasks of that convention may be to force the military to allow the Constituent It looks as though exiled deputies will not be allowed to return, and the regime may decide to ignore the election results altogether.
In this interview FOCEP leader HUGO BLANCO gives his preliminary assessment of the results. He was talking to the French Trotskyist daily "Rouge • "WAST HEIR THE CRAEER TEAHITES FOCEP campaign?
Within FOCEP my organisation, the PST, stressed the fact HALL CHAS ELECTOIN ency, got another 20,000 in a crisis of the rotten capicalist system, political, social and coonomic structure is needed in s country:
This is why we elaborated a general draft of a constitution which included nationalisation without compensation of all through at the moment is a cancellation of the HUGO BLANCO arrives in Paris from Argentina.
ment at the same time.
popular Wants and neighbourhoods.
recallable at any time.
dratt constitution FOCEP:
ISt Revolutionary enterprises. the Party foreign and the ternationul.
TUEYES 1960% their purpose Tunction?
propramme works, decided by the popula workers. peasants and neighbourhood residents — to resolve the questions of unemployment and developOf course, we explained that all these meissres could only be carried out hy a workers and could only be based upon commiEces of workers, peas added that the members of this gosernment Cold only CarD the same 35a worker and that they should be The armed forces should be consistuted on the basis of the defence committees of workers, peasants, and so on. This was battle horse in this campaign.
Moreover, we never stopped Forker: Peasants: Students (10-12 cent) People's Froat. Made up of struggle. four Trotskyist groups: MarsWorkers (POMR), Socialist Workers Party (PST), Revolutionary Left Front (FIR-POC)
Socialist Struggle water. group. The first is tied in the port.
Communist Organisution in Frunce. The others support the Fourth in • FOCEP also inclass strupele groups within the trade unions. (there LDP: (2-3 per cent) Popular Democratie Union. Made up mainly of Maoist groups, hut also involving some supporters of the Fourth International.
PSR: (6 per cent) Revolutionury Socialist Party. Despite its fraud mume the PSR claims to represent the politics of the leftist' millars recame or for dar explaining that these elections were an clecioral farce and that there should be no illusions in the In this couniry tanks are the main electors, even if they are illiterate and can't even speak How did the FOCEP campaign The recent history, and even the | bloc of four cinsses. 'The land balonos to those who work it. - 098880 demonstration in Peru.
not so recent, of the country shows that the gains of the workers can only be maintained through their organisation in So each FOCEP committee had to be organised within this perspective. For example, in one neighbourhood it organised the struggle for drinking electricity, and transA FOCEP support committee in a factory would mobilise the warkers for the general strike, for specific demands a the plant level, and for thi rehiring of the sacked workers were 5000 after the general strike of 19 July 1977)
That's why we consider our vote as a voic for social For PSR the organisation and mobilis ation of the masses for struggle, as a vote against the electoral two electoral fronts and not For aur part we were ready to gointo the UDP coalition from start, OLEL Maoist comrades who had hegemony UDP made precondition of acceptance of their goverantental formula: 'a revolutionary popular government" which, as we saw it, was nothing but the concretisation of the Macist concept of the able to collect the necessary 40,000 signatures we called for a critical vote for the UDP.
FOCEP had three i centri planks in platform: independence of the class, struggle agninst che governe and On top that, cach organisation participating in FOCEP could develop its own programme, which seems to us a correct conception of running an electoral campaign.
In our opinion the comrades of the UDP leadership looked a little too closely towards what burgeoie and her see called the progressive alternative, When I said that, I EDYEInmEnLa was treated like a splitter..
When General /Leonida:
came back tom exile for the electoral campaign he was on television one time just before me He insisted that the PSR would defend small and medium property and absol ately did not want to divide the armed forces 1 could only explain, when my turn care to speak, tha these soldiers of the first peniod of the military junta afler 1965, as progressive, didn't hesitate to open fire on people as soon as things got tough...