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Golda Meir loses votes

Israeli Communists gain seat

Israel's Communist Party in
the Dec. 31 election gained a
new seat in the Knesset, in-
creasing its parliamentary repre-
sentation from three to four
deputies,

: For the first time, a Commun-
Ist won the race for Mayor of
Nazareth, the israeli city where
Arabs are a majority.

"The ruling Labor Party of Pre-
Mier Golda Meir suffered a set-
back in the voting, losing six of
its 57 seats in the 120-member
Knesset; its ally, the National
Religious Party, lost one seat
and now has only 11.

The Likud rightist bloc in-
creased its Knesset seats to 38,
a gain of six.

No party won an _ absolute
Majority in the voting.

Yorman Peri, spokesman for
the Labor Party, said that nego-
tiations to form a coalition will
Probably take several weeks but
that this process will not affect
the talks going on at Geneva.

Still to be counted are the
votes from Israelis in uniform,
some 150,000 or more, but these
are not expected to alter the
Situation to any great extent.

Most observers regarded the
vote as a clear indication of
voter dissatisfaction with the
Policies of Premier Meir and
Defense Minister Moshe Dayan.
It was also noted that though
the “hawks” collected together

Revo

On January 1 Cuba celebrated
the 15th anniversary of her vic-
torious revolution. This event
Was to change the face of the
Western Hemisphere for all
time,

The achievements of the Cu-

NM people in those 15 years
have been many-fold, and have
Spread the voice of optimism,
hope and respect to all people in
all corners of the earth.

€ national liberation army
led by Fidel Castro which
marched in triumph through the
Streets of Havana ‘on January 1,
1959, and the subsequent revol-
utionary government that fol-
lowed, opened the door for the

- Cuban People to march on their

Toad to socialism. Today, under
the leadership of the Commun-
Ist Party of Cuba, and with the
elp and assistance of the so-
Cialist Countries, the Cuban
People have demonstrated to

the world that a better society.

can be built by the work of an
aroused, revolutionary people.
Perhaps the most striking
achievement of the Cuban revo-
lution has been the transforma-

tion of a backward economy

pi One of, if not the, most
ynamic economies of Latin
America,

For the People

And the most positive feat-
ure, of course, is that the Cuban
Economy is today being built
Not for the enrichment of a
‘Oreign employer, nor for the
coffers. of private companies,
but for the people,

Some of Cuba's economic
achievements of the past 15
years are as follows:

In electrification, keystone for
8ricultural and industrial de-
velopment, the fruits of the past

years of efforts are plain to
See. A total of 215 new power
Stations and transmitting plants
Were installed, with generating
Capacity rising from 397,000
kilowatts in 1958 to 1,137-mil-
lion at present,

in the Likud group had made
gains they had not done nearly
as well as expected. There had
been many predictions before
the elections that Likud would
topple the Meir-Dayan govern-
ment and assume power, but the
results did not bear this out.

The slap dealt by. voters to the
Labor Party is regarded as sig-
nificant even though Labor with
51 seats remains the biggest
Party in the Knesset. This is the
first such setback the Labor
Party has received, and it is an
indication of great unrest among
the electorate. Western news
media are trying to convey. the
impression that Labor’s losses
are solely due to its failure to
match Likud’s ultra-militarism.
However, voters have -shown
great resentment of heavy taxes
in recent polls.

Forming a coalition is going
to be no easy task for Premier
Meir. Any coalition will have to
include the National Religious
Party, which also lost voter sup-
port, not only because of its
hard-line stand on.the occupied
Arab territories but also because
of anti-secularism.

Moshe Kol, Israel’s Minister
of ‘Tourism, a leader of the Inde-
pendent Liberal Party (four
Knesset seats), said in Tel Aviv
recently that the ILP will not
enter into any. coalition with
Labor and the NRP unless it is

Havana’s skyline.

Sugar production, to quote
President Osvaldo Dorticos, will
not be cut back in the future but
will be increased. Despite the
necessity to overcome the prob-
lems of a single crop economy,
it was one of the sectors: which
has received the most efforts.

The 152 sugar mills were re-
paired and refurbished as a cost
of more than 800 million pesos
with an eye to a gradual produc-
tion increase in the field that
provides Cuba with more than
three quarters of its foreign ex-
change income.

Mechanization

In the agricultural phase of
the sugar industry, efforts have
been titanic. While in 1958 all
the cutting, loading and cultiv-
ating of the cane was performed
by 600,000 seasonal laborers,
today an increasing portion of
this work is performed by
machinery.

In last year’s harvest 7% of
the cane was cut by combine,

7

guaranteed the right to fight
for civil marriage legislation.
The NRP bitterly opposes civil
marriage, which at present is
banned under Israeli law.

“We will not enter into any
government if we do not have
the free possibility to fight for
this bill” (permitting civil mar-
riage), Kol said. The secularist
trend in Israeli politics is quite
strong, and Premier Meir will
be risking a good deal if she
tries to oppose it by ignoring
the ILP in favor of the NRP.

FREE ARISMENDI

At its meeting in December
the Central Committee of the
Communist Party of Canada
sent the following message to
the government of Uruguay:

“The Canadian people have
learned with consternation of
the prohibition of the Com-
munist Party and other pro-
gressive organizations in Uru-
guay and the arrest of Rod-
ney Arismendi, First Secretary
of the Communist Party of
Uruguay.

“We demand the immedi-
ate release of Rodney Aris-
mendi from prison and the
restoration of legal rights to
the Communist Party of Uru-
guay, Socialist Party, the trade
unions and other progressive
organizations in Uruguay.”

utionary Cuba's

South African struggle

Among greetings to the Com-
munist Party of Canada’s Cent-
ral Committee meeting over the
Dec. 15-16 weekend from sever-
al foreign countries, were those
given by a representative of
South Africa’s national libera-
tion forces.

His remarks traced the long,
bitter struggle of the peoples of
Southern Africa for liberation.
“The long stalemate of a decade
is undeniably over. Everywhere
in Southern Africa our struggles
are gathering new momentum
and our peoples are striking out
in several directions against the
apartheid and colonialist re-
gimes ... There is no peace
anywhere for the enemy. They
live in a state of apprehension,
doubt and fear. They no longer

’ strut about their power.”

He paid tribute to the tremen-
dous victories of the peoples of
Indochina in their struggle
against heavy odds. “These vic-
tories have buried for all time
the myth, so assidiously cultiv-
ated by imperialism, that supe-
rior military power is decisive
in the making of history when
confronted by a determined peo-
ple fighting for a just cause.
Vietnam and the Middle East
have demonstrated that the im-
perialist policy of force can no

15

Liberation forces arrived in the city on Jan. 1, 1959.

with the percentage slated to
rise gradually as larger numbers
of combines are made available.
‘Of them, the Cuban-Soviet
“KTP-1’”, is the most promising.

Right now an assembly plant is _

going up in the city of Holguin,
Oriente province, which will put
out. 600 of them a year with
Soviet technical and economic
aid. e

For the present harvest the
percentage of the cane to be cut
by the combines will be 10 to
12%, while more than 95% of
the manually-cut cane is now
loaded mechanically in the

fields, a great effort and time _

saver.
Fish Exports

Because of. its location Cuba
possesses excellent conditions
for intensive fishing develop-
ment. But despite these natural
advantages, the country lived
with its back to the sea before
the Revolution.

For instance back in 1958 the

catch came to just 21,900 tons.
Fishing was done close to shore,
and the boats were mostly
under 30 feet, while 96% of
them had been in use for more
than 15 years.

At present the Cuban fishing
fleet has placed this product in
fourth place in the country’s ex-
ports, with annual catches
around 150,000 tons.

Now equipped with new fac-
tory boats up to 107 feet long,
the industry also provides a
good portion of the Cubans’
protein intake.

One index: in 1962, 192 mil-
lion litres of milk were market-
ed. That amount more than
doubled 10 years later with a
total of 461 million. |

Building Priorities

In building, 1973 construction
will amount to $1,000-million
worth. Only a quarter of that
total was reached in the best of
the pre-revolutionary years.

Priority was assigned to

_ construction

longer ensure enslavement of
people.”

He quoted the great leader of
the African National Congress
and political prisoner Nelson
Mandela who said, “The march
to the summits of political and
economic power in South Africa
is no easy walk” and gave a pic-
ture of the decades of repres-
sion and tyranny and the fight-
back of the people. Recent
strikes by workers, supported
by farmers, students, the middle
strata and the church were cited
as a part of the process against
apartheid and oppression. For
the first time police brutality
was. used against white students
supporting Black demands in
South Africa.

“The challenge that faces the
liberation movement in South
Africa is to galvanize the people

into.a more united force and-

lead them into more effective
forms of struggle for freedom.
We have no doubt that we shall
meet this challenge.”

Hungary reportedly has har-
ested a record crop this year.
Total wheat; output is placed at
4.5 million metric tons, about
10% higher than a year ago.
The 1973 seeded wheat acreage
in Hungary was close to 2% less
than in 1972..

years

schools, with the number in-

creasing from 7,567 at the end .

of the fifties to 33,380 for last
term.

In housing, efforts have been
made to cover at least in part a
deficit of a million units inherit-
ed from the previous economic
system. During the first revolu-
tionary decade, 114,000 had
been completed or were under
construction.

The chief development in the

‘housing sphere has been the

microbrigades movement. The
brigades are teams of about 30
people from a single place of
work who temporarily become
workers under
skilled supervisors while their
regular jobs are observed by
those who stay behind. This
method, which largely uses pre-
fab components, is designed to

|. enable the Cubans to build

themselves about 100,000 dwel-
ling units a year.

Hospital construction has also
gone ahead at a rapid pace, with
the pre-revolutionary total of 57
now boosted to more than 200.
Right now six more are going
up, including a big medical
centre in the heart of Havana
designed to serve 300,000 peo-
ple.

Trade Unions

The whole process is greatly
abetted by the revamped ‘trade
unions and direct worker res-
ponsibility for management and
ecoriomic and political decision-
making, as was just confirmed
by the mid-November 13th Con-
gress of the Central de Traba-
jadores de Cuba (CTC, the
Trade Union Federation) .

“In the next few years”, de-
clared Prime Minister Fidel
Castro, “we will need to im-
prove as much as possible our
efficient use of economic and
human resources. We'll have to
keep close track of costs and
expenditures. And we must be.
able to rectify in courageous
fashion our errors of idealism in
running the economy.”

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—FRIDAY, JANUARY 11, 1974=PAGE7