meee + Eh | Grenada: the people control their future ST. GEORGE’S, Grenada — The article in the Nov. 20 issue of the Grenada national newspaper Free West Indian said that a draft law on a proposed national insur- ance scheme had been released. “It has been released for discussions among trade unions, Mass Organizations and in zonal and workers’ parish council meetings,”’ I read. Riding in the special bus taking delegates and jour- nalists from the island’s airport to the accredition centre at the‘‘Caribbean Conference of Intellectual Workers”, I read further that a special preparatory committee for the new insurance scheme “‘is continuing to inform — by explaining its operation and benefits to As the bus trundled through the thick tropical dusk, I realized the story was bringing home to me what a diffe- rent type of democracy is developing here from the shams that exist in the other English-speaking islands. : Nearly four years after the March 13, 1979 insurrec- tion which overthrew the hated Eric Gairy regime, it is clear that one of the striking advances made by the government and people of the mountainous eastern ibbean island, is the establishing of healthy; demo- cratic institutions. They have vastly improved upon the Westminister-type system which accommodated Gairy’s abuses of power rather than prevented them. A little research showed that Gairy’s Grenada United Labour Party (GULP) routinely rigged elections, main- tained his own secret police similar to the notorious “‘tonton macoutes” in Haiti, accumulated several hotels and other Properties and in general kept the island’s economy in a state of backwardness. Moreover, follow- ing the country’s political independence from Britain in 1974, Gairy practically made the island the laughing stock of the world community by getting up at the United Nations and saying that the country was willing to take part in a UN funded “psychic research’’ into UFO’s. Under the new People’s Revolutionary Government (PRG), the island's six parishes (similar to provinces) are vi up into a number of zones where councils deal with the affairs of the particular area. There are also councils at the parish level. What is remarkable about this system is that any government official, including members of the PRG, can be called to meetings by the people to explain or to hear the community’s recommendations on a particular pol- icy. Indeed, on any day of the week government Min- isters can be often found at these council meetings or work projects throughout the island. More discussion Faria can be found in the mass organizations like the National Youth Organization (NYO). All of this is in addition to the frequent mass rallies where Prime Minister Maurice Bishop and other PRG leaders spend considerable time in explaining the government’s programs. “Today in Grenada we are building organs of democ- racy and the right to speak, all over the country, in every nook and cranny of Grenada, Carriacou and Petit Mar- tinique (two small island dependencies of Grenada) — not in St. George’s alone, not in one gilded and velveted room, not around one polished table with room for onlya handful of men to sit and decide on our behalf, but everywhere in our country and for everybody in our country,’’ Prime Minister Bishop told us in a speech to open the Nov. 20-22 Caribbean Conference of Intellec- tual Workers’’. Bishop knew very well about lack of real freedom under Gairy. Back in Nov. 1973, he and other members of the PRG narrowly escaped death when he and his comrades were shot at by Gairy’s secret police which is - popularly referred to in the island as the ““Mongoose Gang’’ after a rat-like animal living in the bush. “It was only because they. (the secret police) had no proper training in shooting that we are alive today,”’ Selwyn Strachan, now Grenada’s Minister of National Mobilization, said at a special function for Conference delegates at the same house in the northern town of Grenville where the shooting occurred. ' After the attempted murders, Strachan and others, who were then leading the extra-parliamentary opposi- tion group, the New Jewel Movement, were pistol whip- ped and had their heads shaved with broken glass bot- tles. Today, this type of brutality is a thing of the past in Grenada. Since the Revolution, which was clearly a coming to terms with the limitations of the Westminister model in solving the problems of this nutmeg, cacao and banana producing island of 110,000 people, there is a “Democracy everywhere in our country and for ever body in our country,” — Maurice Bishop. PHOTO — FREE WEST INDIAN general flowering of commitment and involvement in th running of the nation’s affairs — whether it be the fixin of potholes or the formulating of the national budget. “There is more freedom today, more avenues to sa your piece. A lot more benefits, too,”” said Lynetl James, a worker at a hotel in St. George’s and mother 0 three. Significantly, the Grenadian government has not en couraged and built the new political structures on th basis of a narrow nationalism. They haven’t pushet some phoney theory of the ‘‘two super powers’’, but set as friends the socialist countries, the progressive people: and governments in other Third World countries and th working people in the industrialized capitalist Westert nations. With a vigour similar to its support for the liberatior movements in Southern Africa, the PRG, for example, makes a clear distinction between the working people of the U.S. and President Reagan. “When we look around, we see sisters and brothers who have come from Europe ... from Denmark ... from Sweden ... from France ... from Britain. When we speak of them and when we equally speak to the comrades from North America, from the United States, where several friendship societies have been formed and from Canada where there is also a friendship socizty, what we are reminded of is that the people of Europe and the people of North America are not our enemies and that the majority of those people are our friends,”’ said Bishop in a closing speech to the Nov. 1981 First Inter- national Conference in Solidarity with Grenada. Intemational Focus Tom Morris | PACIFIC TRIBUNE—JANUARY 28, es ‘good neighbor’ policy The U.S. Senate last month killed two amendments that would have prevented funding covert CIA activities in Central America. ‘‘The vote is a green light to the CIA,’” said Senator Christopher Dodd, whose amendment was one of two de- feated. “‘It’sa message that it’s okay to overthrow the San- dinistas.”’ Persistent stories of a major a U.S. ‘adviser’ training Honduran treeps. 1983—Page 10 _ CIA-backed anti-Nicaragua operation have been in the news for over a year. They tell of a Reagan-approved covert plan to use neighboring Hon- duras as a base and former Somoza National Guardsmen as the backbone of a force to topple Nicaragua’s Sandinista government. The latest, and one of the most detailed exposés ap- peared in the Miami Herald recently giving chapter and verse of how the plan is to be Me Neve © ONE carried out. It includes: e The CIA has pumped $1.5-million into the war chest of Nicaraguan exiles and used Argentine bagmen to deliver the cash; e The base of operations in Central America is the large U.S. embassy in Teguciagalpa, Honduras. Fifty employees under various covers direct the operation which has 125 to 150 persons on payroll; e CIA operatives instruct Honduran exiles in Florida on how to smuggle weapons through U.S. Customs in Miami and use a fake ‘lumber — company”’ to rent ‘‘safe houses’’ in Honduras; e The CIA, working with Honduran armed forces, trains anti-Sandinista forces (con- tras) in intelligence and anti- terrorism techniques; e Members of the U.S. Army elite Delta Force (which bungled the Iran hostage re- scue) direct Honduran forces in monitoring guerilla activities inside Honduras; e The contras have up to 17 base camps in Honduras from which military actions are di- rected against Nicaragua. The force numbers between 3,000 and 3,500 trained men; e The CIA further aides the contras by giving them satellite photos of Nicaraguan military installations. All this, plus U.S. military and economic might, is di- rected against a small. nation whose only ‘‘crime’’ is its determination to order its own affairs and shape its own future. It certainly gives pause for thought to Canadians who may some day take an independent path and face the possibility of the same type of ‘‘good neighborliness.”’ More fakery in Namibia Four years ago the South Af- rican regime set up the so- . called Turnhalle Alliance in Namibia thinking it would evade United Nations’ and world opinion that Namibia become independent. The Turnhalle puppet re- gime was universally con- demned. It won a fake election which was boycotted by most Namibians who support the Southwest Africa People’s Organization (SWAPO). For four years the facist re- gime in Pretoria has steadfastly maintained the Turnhalle re- gime represented the majority and was independent. What else could it do? But the whole mess came unravelled Jan. 19 when the ‘independent’ regime was unilaterally dissolved by South Africa’s Administrator-Gen- eral and returned to direct rule from Pretoria. A good example of cooperation This is also the fourth an- niversary of a Cuba-GDR ag- reement under which Cubans are obtaining technical skills in the GDR. . More than 5,000 are there now, mainly in mechanics, electronics, chemistry, construction, textiles and metallurgy, They are being trained in a total of 64 cate- gories. Two thousand more will go this year in this fine example of cooperation be- tween socialist states.