New elections in Portugal
- Bourgeois stabilization breaking down
New parliamentary elections will be held in Portugal on April weak, and politics and the relationship of class forces continue
The defeat of the ruling bourgeois coalition, to be shaped by the prerevolutionary crisis the country experi-
December 12 municipal elections enced in 1974-75, these elections will not be a routine event. In made the dissolution of the parliament almost inevitable. particular, they come in the context a crisis of the bourgeois reconsolidation and a new rise of the left, which has clearly re-
Obviously, in Portugal where bourgeois institutions remain gained majority support in the country.
25.
Democratica (AD) in the the Alliance breaking down. At the origin of this elections in the first round. This increased
Francisco LOUCA
LISBON - "After two years in gov- charismatic leader of the PSD, Sa Care. accident on the eve of the elections ernment, we have lost 600,000 votes, because in those two years the government accumulated a bad record, especially as regards the economy. If we had had parliamentary elections, the Democratic Alliance (AD) would have lost its absolute majority and the Socialist Party would have become the biggest party in the country. There would be a left majority again, and we would probably have a government based on a coalition between the SP and the Social Democratic Party (PSD)."
This is the balance sheet of the December 12, 1982, municipal elections made by no less than the deputy prime minister, Freitas do Amaral, the chairman of the Social Democratic Center (CDS), the second largest bourgeois party. The results totally justify his assessment.
In 1980, after being in government a year, the AD ( a coalition of bourgeois parties including the PSD and the CDS) won a significant victory. At a million votes, the CP's electoral score stagnated. The SP remained well below its 1975 and 1976 results, paying the price for the policy of austerity and repression that it conducted when it was in the governprocess was the glaring failure of the political scheme worked out by the late
This plan included the following
* The AD was supposed to win a big parliamentary majority, in order to create a polarization between the government and the CP, to weaken the SP and it to participate in a thoroughgoing revision of the constitution.
In fact, the 1976 constitution, which was used by the governments presided over by Mario Soares as a basic instrument for defending private property (the beginning of the attacks on the agrarian reform, reorganization of the armed forces), also grants certain rights to the workers (such as workers control). These bili have been and remain an obstacle to stepping up exploitation, a policy of austerity and increasing unemployment. The AD did not succeed in abolishing all these rights in the new constitution.
*The AD was supposed to win the presidential elections by supporting the candidacy of General Soares Carneiro, a former head of a concentration camp in Angola during the colonial war. But President Ramalho Eanes, backed by the reformist parties and large sections the disorientation in the lowed Sa Carneiro's death in
AD was supposed to become permanent right bloc and change the election laws so as to assure that it could retain control of political power But the laws it proposed were
Finally, a counterattack by the workers movement started to take form, reflected by the two 24-hour general strikes called by the CGTP in 1982 and the positions taken against the government by the smaller labor confederation, the General Workers Union (UGT, Which is influenced by the SP.
The 1982 municipal elections dealt a mortal blow to the AD, which lost more than a half million votes and fell more than 10% behind the combined vote for the workers parties. The left took around thirty municipalities away from the AD. It now holds the majority on the city councils of Lisbon and Oporto and the chair of the Coimbra city council.
The SP is the main gainer from the defeat of the AD. But the CP is holding its ground. In more than 90% of the city councils it controls, it got an absolute majority. It increased its lead over the of the bourgeoisie, won the presidential SP in the Lisbon district, which will elect ment.
Since then, division has increased in
•Workers and peasants united in the struggle against capitalism' (DR)
the workers movement. The SP went through a grave crisis in connection with the discussion of the presidential candidacy of General Ramalho Eanes- «gusgeneral secretary, Mario Soares, pended himself"
in protest against the
PERÁRIOS E CAMPONESES
SP supporting the president who dismissed him from his post of premier.
The strained relations between the SP and the CP have grown more strained.
UNDS NA LUTA CONTRA O CAPITALISMO
The SP has gone to the point of rejecting any meeting with the CP leadership. And it supported the government when the police special task force opened fire on a
May Day rally of the Portuguese General
Confederation of Labor (CGTP) in Oporto, the country's second largest city, killing two workers.
But at the same time, the government and the right-wing coalition were rapidly
56 out of 246 parliamentary deputies.
Following these returns, the crisis of the AD snowballed. The chairman of the PSD, Pinto Balsemao, resigned the post of premier and proposed a decorative nonentity, Vitor Crespo, to replace him.
Freitas do Amaral, refusing to participate in such a government, resigned from his party. For two weeks, there was an Incredible chronicle of meetings, accusations, proposals and counterproposals.
The majority of the bourgeois leaders had to admit that the AD was incapable of forming a new government and that special elections were inevitable. Moreover, they had to recognize that these elections would produce a new majority.
But at the end of the day, the CDS tugal. In 1974-75, the country went through a prerevolutionary crisis. 1975-79, it was presided over by a classcollaborationist government. 82, for the first time the AD as a purely bourgeois bloc was able to run the country on the basis of a slight electoral majority.
Now we are going back into a period of governmental instability, of permanent political crisis, with the feature that the breakup of the AD portends not only its
In Gijon,
defeat in the coming elections but also in all of its component parties.
The most effective ways to take advantage of the crisis of the right, to deepen it, and to fight for a workers government are to advance the political, economic, and social demands of the workers movement both before and during the election campaign and to strive for working-class unity in mobilizations and in parliament.