Editorial

So near to the U:S....

Even as she was being inaugurated last week, Nicaragua’s new president, Violeta
Barrios de Chamorro, was getting a taste of what life with the United States will be
like.

In the delicate negotiations since her February 25 victory, Chamorro has been
trying to walk the political tightrope of keeping her volatile and fractious 14-party
coalition intact, get the contras to disarm, develop an atmosphere of national
reconciliation with the Sandinista Front, which commands 40 per cent of the
electorate — and placate an increasingly pushy U.S. presence in Nicaraguan
politics.

A large step toward a peaceful transition of power was achieved on March 27
when an accord was signed by the Sandinistas and Chamorro in which the FSLN
recognized the constitutional authority of the president-elect and her government.
In return the new government promised to respect the “integrity” of the Sandinista
armed forces. The contras have so far been reigned in, assigned to zones under
United Nations’ supervision, even while continuing to make ominous sounds. To
date, about two-thirds of the U.S.-backed contras have entered the zones.

But Chamorro, it seems, didn’t check with Uncle Sam when she announced last
week that Umberto Ortega, Defence Minister under the Sandinistas and the
brother of Daniel Ortega, would head Nicaragua’s armed forces. Chamorro herself
now becomes Defence Minister.

Reverting to the form it seems to adopt when dealing with Central American
governments, Washington let Chamorro know where the power lies and where the
bread is buttered. Down to Managua flew President Bush’s new Assistant Secretary
of State Bernard Aronson to do a bit of old fashioned Yankee arm twisting. He
delivered what the media calls “a very tough message” to Chamorro that Umberto
Ortega’s new appointment would jeopardize the $300-million aid package the U.S.
has earmarked for Nicaragua, money the new regime urgently needs.

It’s but a first lesson in U.S. power politics for the new government. With the
Sandinistas in power, Nicaraguans spent nine years fighting a war unleashed on
them by the U.S. They endured the economic suffocation of boycott and embargo.
Threats of more war, more shortages and more pressure during the election
campaign were constant. Certainly, in voting for the Chamorro coalition, many
Nicaraguans were opting for peace and some respite from U.S. pressure which had
all but destroyed their economy and cost 30,000 lives.

Dangling an aid package and holding 15,000 contras in reserve, Washington has
wasted no time in reminding President Chamorro who calls the shots in the region.
Nicaraguans might want to adopt the wistful saying of their Mexican compatriots:
“So near to the United States. So far from God....”

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=| Letters

The political commentators and politi-
cians appear to have concluded that with
the fall of most of the Communist
governments in Eastern Europe, and with
others expected to follow, socialism is
dead as an ideology and as an existing
system. In their majority they have
assumed that the countries concerned are
now returning to capitalism. And it must
be said that the new governments of East-
ern Europe entertain many of the same
ideas.

All of those pundits are forgetting or are
perhaps ignorant of the Marxist principle
that the base is more conservative than the
superstructure, which is a fancy way of
saying that it is a lot easier to change the
government than it is the social system.
Let’s take a look at Poland.

Lech Walesa is currently touring the
capitalist world, glorying in his reputation
as a labour leader while at the same time
meeting with capitalists, looking out for

handouts for the new regime and promis-
ing to re-establish capitalism. One has to
wonder how long he is going to keep that
promise.

The point that everyone seems to miss is
that Solidarity came into being as a
movement of protest against change. In
1970, the then president of Poland

Gomulka proposed a series of reforms,
including a re-structuring of prices and
incomes to bring them into better corres-
pondence with actual costs. The reaction,
triggered by riots in Walesa’s home base in
Gdansk shipyard, was sufficiently violent
to bring about Gomulka’s resignation and
the cancellation of the program. Ten years
later, Edward Giereck made a set of sim-
ilar proposals and in the popular reaction
to those proposals, Solidarity was born.

Walesa and Solidarity have to be the
supreme opportunists of the age. On the
one hand, Walesa organized Urban Solid-
arity which represented itself as a trade
union movement, carrying on militant
struggle against proposed food price
increases. On the other hand, he also
organized Rural Solidarity whose main
platform was a demand for higher prices
for food products.

With Solidarity’s ascent to governmen-
tal power, the chickens have come home
to roost. The price increases initiated by
the Solidarity government have been sev-
eral times as high as the ones whose mere
prospect led to its birth. And this move-
ment, proclaiming its fidelity to trade
unionism, has accompanied these price
increases with a freeze on wages. Already
its clay feet are showing.

Don’t write any obituaries on socialism yet

For all these years we have been told
that Solidarity has the allegiance of 10
million Polish workers. It now emerges
that only 20 per cent of the country’s
organized workers belong to Solidarity,
the remainder to the unions sponsored by
the previous government. And it is those
unions that are now taking up the fight
against high prices, frozen wages and pri-
vatization.

The peasants as well are learning some
lessons. Poland, with its Catholic major-
ity, is the one Eastern European country
that successfully resisted collectivization of
agriculture. Even today, its arable land is
divided among three million peasants with
farms too small to afford mechanization
or other modern methods, whatever. the
price of the product. Now, relying on
market prices with subsidies removed,

_ they are discovering the impossibility of

making a living in such circumstances.

More. Now in the cold grey dawn of
government responsibility, it has suddenly
dawned on Mazowiecki that a united
Germany is bound, sooner or later, to
demand the return of the territories it was
forced to surrender to Poland in 1945, and
so he has been obliged to appeal to the
Soviet Union to keep its forces in Poland
as a protection against the Germans.

Mazowiecki has also discovered, on
poring through government documents,
that Poland’s economy, particularly its
manufacturing industries, is critically
dependent on the energy and raw mate-—
rials supplied to it at subsidized prices by
the Soviet Union. Now, as a reward for
kicking over the traces, he is imploring the © 4
USSR to continue the subsidies. :

There appear to be some similar awak-
enings in the GDR. Drawn to the West b
the magnetism of high wages and abund-
ant consumer goods, the East Germans —
are beginning to discover (what the
would always have known if their erst-
while leaders had been astute enough to le
them see for themselves) that the prices o
many basic necessities of life are up to II
times as high on the other side of the wal
and the rents 20 times as high. And the
are probably also beginning to learn —
somewhat the same thing that occurs to |
Canadians when they are unfortunate q
enough to be taken ill on the territory of j
God’s Country.

It is easy for the new leaders to say that
they are going to lead their countries bac’
to capitalism. I rather fancy that in order
to do so, they are going to have to take on
the working class.

Emil Bjarnason, Vancouver

4» Pacific Tribune, May 7, 1990