B.C./World in downtown Vancouver Wednesday —and then hang hun that working Canadians are being asked to make while corporat B.C. Federation of Labour as part of the CLC’s action program. More than 600 people clap and chant their opposition to the Goods and Services Tax outside the offices of Revenue Canada dreds of shirts of clotheslines outside to symbolize the sacrifice ions get reduced taxes. The protest was organized by the Opposition Continued from page 1 party is divided into four sectors, directed by an all-powerful national executive, with an even more powerful president at its head. These sectors representing the unions, peasants, army and popular sectors, a catch- all for federal employees, the middle-class and others, are allocated places on the party ticket during elections. ipherésalbsaw ahy politician or groapnot aligned with the ruling party squeezed out of the political process. Allegiances are assured through patronage run rampant and the party is provided with a standing army at election time. The process has devolved so that today the party merely provides the facade of democracy. Mexico is actually run by a tuling elite of technocrats. The president, during his six-year term, has wide ranging powers enshrined in the constitution. What- ever legislation he desires is passed through a compliant two-section chamber of deputies and senate, dominated, almost ex- clusively until the 1988 elections, by the PRI. He has the right to choose his own successor, pick his cabinet, none of whom need necessarily be elected officials, and top administrators without consultation. The ad- ministrators in turn distribute positions to their followers down the line. Cracks in the elite appeared in 1987 when the Democratic Current in the party broke over the selection of Salinas as the presiden- tial candidate. The Harvard-educated mini- ster of planning and budget was an ardent supporter of the International Monetary Fund’s solution for Mexico. Nationally-owned oil, transport and communications companies were either sold off completely or piecemeal. The peso was devalued and inflation runs at 160 per cent annually. Laws demanding 51 per cent control of corporations by Mexicans were abolished. Agricultural land which once produced Mexico’s staples of wheat, com and beans was turned over to export crops. For the first time Mexico is importing staple foods and subsidies have been removed. Social legislation including mandatory unionization and a minimum wage are now “guidelines” rather than law. Over 1,200 Maquiladoras, a derogatory term for free trade zones, were established where wages and working conditions are among the worst of any country in the world. In short, through the IMF, Salinas ravaged the popular economic reforms La- on the march in Mexico zaro Cardenas had put in place 50 years earlier. Respect for the younger Cardenas runs high. Not only does he carry a name closely associated with the aspirations of the revolu- tion, but his defection from the PRI was also an act of personal bravery. In Mexico, op- position means a loss of livelihood, harass- ment, even death. Over 70 PRD spokesper- sons have been assassinated or kidnapped since the electioris. One of Cardenas’ sons was kidnapped and returned with fascist slogans carved on his body. But the party won’t be able to rely on Cardenas’ personality to see it through its next hurdles, the 1991 congressional and senatorial elections and the presidential race in 1994. That is understood by Amalia Dolores Garcia Medina, a federal deputy newly elec- ted to the 96-member PRD national execu- tive. “We are in a battle where the culture of leadership versus the struggle for demo- cracy,” Garcia Medina explained during a break in the congress proceedings. During the past two years countless meetings throughout the country have forged the opposition coalition which was behind Cardenas presidential contest into a party with hopes of forming the next govern- ment. Mexico’s electoral laws leave no room for independent candidates. To contest elec- tions contenders must be backed by a party, a provision which forced the disparate groups in the 1988 campaign to launch the PRD, astep that Garcia Medina advises may not be the final option. Affiliated to the Socialist International, the PRD houses a spectrum ranging from former small guerrilla groups to left-centre nationalists. They are united around Mexi- can sovereignty and a distaste for PRI cor- ruption and economic policy. Defections have already occurred. Three of the parties who supported Cardenas are now selling their votes in congress to the PRI. : Such fluctuations are not new to Garcia Medina. Attractive, articulate and in her thir- ties, she’s been through the Mexican Com- munist Party which spearheaded the forma- tion of the PSUM, the Unified Socialist Party of Mexico, in 1981. But where the PSUM was a merger of five left parties, the PRD isn’t. Each party dissolved prior to the congress and individuals joined separately. Most of PSUM’s 600,000 members did opt for the PRD, says Garcia Medina and remain “the backbone” of the new party. Support for former PSUM personalities was demonstrated at the founding congress. A recommended list for the national execu- tive would have given PSUM candidates 14 seats. In the final tally they took 35. Initially, 37 were elected but the last two placed men on the list were dropped to comply with an affirmative action resolution guaranteeing 20 per cent representation to women. Garcia Medina had led the drive for af- firmative action. One of the elected men who relinquished his position was her hus- band. “A new system has to be found,” was her only comment. She also pushed, and won the right for “tendencies” to be enshrined in the organ- izational structures of PRD. “This is impor- tant,” she explains. “It will guarantee that differences in the party are not aired around personalities but around policy.” Policy rifts are evident. Many questions remain unresolved. Garcia Medina’s ten- dency advocates a full democratization of the state and division of powers between the executive branch, the elected deputies and labour and social organizations. These dif- ferences are played out not only in the party, but in congress, where in debates on new electoral legislation disagreements among PRD representatives are aired. Cardenas supports a multi-party system but is not in favour of relinquishing the powers reserved for the president. “This isn’t unusual,” says Garcia Medina. “Mexicans have a culture where they expect strong leadership. They don’t expect to govern themselves.” On the economy, the party voted to fight the impending free trade agreement with the United States. Garcia Medina is skeptical of the trade deal. “Cardenas’ economic plan comes out of the ’60s. We have to respond to the world economy. Weare already highly integrated into the U.S. Salinas is giving away everything. We want trade, but what kind of trade, under what conditions, what is negotiable and what isn’t.” Lastly, if the PRD is to hold on to and expand the support it won in 1988 Garcia Medina believes it must move from being an opposition force, concentrated on attacking the PRI, and develop its alternative program for Mexico. “We have to think of ourselves as a gov- ering party and not promise what we can’t deliver when we take office,” she said. Steelworkers battle trade deal closure TRAIL — More than 250 people at a rally here Nov. 21 demanded that electronics manufacturer Johnson Matthey be preven- ted from pulling up stakes and shifting pro- duction to Spokane, Wash. before all its 95 workers are compensated for the long-term jobs that were promised them two years ago. And at the B.C. Federation of Labour convention Nov. 27, 950 delegates unani- mously backed their demand, calling on the Social Credit government to “act immedi- ately to assist these workers in their efforts to achieve a decent severance package, in- cluding support funding for legal initiatives for these workers.” The emergency resolution endorsed by the convention also demanded that the government “recognize its responsibility to protect workers, their families and our com- munities by enacting comprehensive plant closure legislation and substantive sever- ance benefits entitlements for all workers.” JM worker George Lupieri, a Steel- workers Local 9705 steward at the plant told the rally that the workers had made the move from Trail’s main employer, Cominco, be- cause of promises made by the company to establish a long-term presence in the Kootenay town. “Just two years later, we have been thrown out like yesterday’s garbage,” he said. B.C. Federation of Labour president Ken Georgetti, NDP leader Mike Harcourt, Kootenay West NDP MLA Lyle Kristiansen, Trail mayor-elect Sandy Santori as well as the Liberal and Socred candidates for the constituency joined Lupieri at the plant-gate rally, intended as a kick-off to the campaign to force the company to provide severance and re-training. Johnson Matthey, based in Valley Forge, Penn., bought Cominco’s electronics divi- sion in 1988 and wooed Steelworkers from Cominco with promises of skilled jobs and long-term employment. Many of those who went with the new company had lengthy seniority with Cominco but gave it up fol- lowing assurances from JM that it had made extensive investments in the Trail operations and had secured a 125-year lease on its property. But that ended Oct. 19 with JM’s an- nouncement that it was closing the plant Dec. 31 and shifting most of the production to its non-union plant in Spokane, with some work moving to another non-union opera- tion in Victoria. Steelworkers District 3 director Ken Neumann told delegates to the B.C. Federa- tion of Labour Nov. 27 that Johnson Mat- they, which made $100 million in profits for the current fiscal year, “has connections in 28 countries, including South Africa.” Two years after they made promises of long term employment to former Cominco workers, “they’re moving south to Spokane, taking advantage of the Free Trade Agree- ment and non-union labour in Washington,” he said. “This isn’t a closure, it’s a re-location,” said Lupieri. NDP leader Mike Harcourt also slammed Johnson Matthey in his speech to the con- vention, citing the closure as an example of “hit-and-run multinationals who ride rough- shod over workers and communities. “Give us an election and !’ll tell you what the new ground rules will be for business — pay your fair share of taxes, don’t mess with the environment and treat your workers fair- ly,” he said. He also pledged to enact plant closure legislation and to establish “a community diversification fund to help stabilize local economies.” Pacific Tribune, December 3, 1990 « 3 ' ‘ |