1

ocreds repudiated in vote

An estimated 5,000 people marched
through Vancouver streets Sept. 16ina
United demand to save the environ-
ment.

The first annual Walk for the Envir-
Onment, organized by the Western
Canada Wilderness Committee, drew

erie SS

everyone from opponents to clear-cut
logging to a death’s-head figure garbed
in black who objected to smoking. But
the corporate waste of the land, seas
and forests and their effect on Natives
and the rest of the world was the theme
sounded from the stage at the Queen

Marchers pass City Hall on way up Cambie Street in Walk for the Environment in Vancouver Saturday.

Elizabeth Park rally.

Speakers chief Terry Morgan of the
Bonaparte Band, lawyer Tom Berger
and environmentalist Elizabeth May all
stressed the need to unite to preserve
the environment from corporate rape.

see ENVIRONMENT page 2

A new political season has opened here
With no hint of respite from the fast-and-
‘tlous momentum ofa tense and turbulent
Summer. The Soviet Union is riding a
‘tormy transitional period in which, as pol-
"cal scientist Alexander Galkin put it: “The
Old system of authority, together with its
‘stitutions and the stability they conferred,
'S losing its force while the new system, with
= Infant institutions, is not yet function-

ee

Mikhail Gorbachev went on television
aSt Week to deliver a hard inventory of these
Tansitional travails: economic dislocation,
Widespread strikes, rising crime and corrup-
Hon, a polarization of politics that encour-

September 25, 1989
SO

Vol. 52, No.34

Premier Bill Vander Zalm and his Social Credit
government were repudiated for the fifth straight
byelection Wednesday night as New Democrat
David Zirnhelt swept to a substantial victory over
Socred Joe Wark in the Cariboo vote.

Zirnhelt chalked up 13,743 votes — more than
popular former Social Credit cabinet minister Alex
Fraser received in the 1986 general election — while
his Socred rival managed only 9,056. The byelection
in the two-seat riding was made necessary by Fras-
er’s death in May.

The vote result was particularly significant since
Cariboo has long been considered one of the safest
seats, returning a Socred candidate even in 1972
when the new Democratic Party government was
elected.

But most people emphasized that the election
result Wednesday was more a stinging rebuke of
Vander Zalm and his style of government than it was
an affirmation of political policies.

New Democrat leader Mike Harcourt stated that
the voters of Cariboo delivered “a message to
Vander Zalm and the Social Credit Party — the
message is that you are not listening to us.”

In a statement Thursday, B.C. Communist Party
leader Fred Wilson agreed that the vote was a “vote
of no confidence in Vander Zalm and the Socred
government.”

He referred to the premier’s televised statement on
election night in which Vander Zalm stated that if his
leadership were called into question he would imme-
diately put himself to the test of a general election.

In fact, “the Cariboo voters have clearly called the
premier on his statement. He should resign and let
the people restore credibility to the government,”
Wilson declared.

He also cautioned that there was no certainty toa
Socred defeat in a general election, and Zirnhelt’s
victory, welcome though it is, “was not a vote for an
alternative political and economic policy.” Rather,
he said, the New Democrats were the beneficiaries of
a protest vote against Vander Zalm’s “right wing
fundamentalism and the divisiveness he brought to
the province.”

He also noted that many of the government’s
most contentious policies — restraint, privatization,
the resource sellout and anti-labour legislation —
have been secondary in the political debate to
Vander Zalm’s personality.

“Nevertheless the prospects for a new government
are clearly enhanced by the Cariboo vote,” Wilson
said.

“It is now necessary for the environmental move-
ment, the women’s movement, students, seniors and
labour to press their own campaigns decisively to
clarify the basic issues that face British Columbians,
regardless of the personalities involved,” he said.

FROM
MOSCOW

ages opportunistic, ambitious and irrespon-
sible forces, and, most critically, an
acceleration of national conflicts within the
USSR which may be leading to a full-blown
constitutional crisis.

All of these problems reflect different
sides of the same, complex historical chal-
lenge facing the USSR. Yet it is clear that the
make-or-break battle this autumn will be
the effort to get a new, constructive nation-
alities policy on track.

This means, above all, inspiring people
with an effective alternative to a status quo
which is no longer seen to work. The rising
tide of separatism, most particularly in the
three Baltic republics of Latvia, Lithuania
and Estonia, can only be answered by a new
federalist vision which both answers to their
very legitimate grievances, and transcends
them.

The politics surrounding this issue have

grown frenzied in recent weeks, as if all the
parties are racing toward an as-yet invisible
finish line. The Baltic popular fronts which,
at this stage anyway, arguably command
the support of a majority of ethnic Balts,
have suddenly and dramatically raised all
the political stakes by bringing the demand
for full independent statehood out of the
closet, and attempting to set it to timetables.

Particularly since Aug. 23, the 50th anni-
versary of the Hitler-Stalin pact — which
Baltic popular front activists claim led to the
enforced integration of the three Baltic
States into the USSR — the issue of
national separation has begun to be placed

see NATIONALISM page 9