A year after the "made in US " elections A YEAR AGO, the United States achieved at least one if its objectives in Grenada, when the pro-Washington New National Party (NNP) won the December 3, 1984, elections. (1) This was the only success they could boast of after invading the island in October 1983. In every other respect, the situation was hardly brilliant from their point of view. The economy was going from bad to worse. The progressive unions could not be destroyed.
The memory of Maurice Bishop remained alive, and a new party, the Maurice Bishop Patriotic Movement, resumed the fight for his ideas. Now, only a year after taking office, the government is threatened with a grave crisis and the NNP may break apart in the coming months. In the following article, we will try to describe the forces present and the evolution of the situation in Grenada since December 1984.
GRENADA nesses and are accelerating the erosion of his regime's credibility. It is clear that the US wants to replace Blaize with Francis Alexis, a dynamic personality, who, together with his associate Keith Mitchell, could defend the US's long-term interests far better. And, in fact, for some months, despite their claims, Alexis' supporters have been trying to undermine Blaize's power.
In May, Alexis' supporters discreetly let it be known that the premier's right-hand man had handed out large sums of money to officials in the Ministry of Justice to speed up the extradition of the trade-union leader Chester Humphrey. (3)
In July, they made an initial attempt to oust Blaize from his post. At the same time, in private they have been accusing George Brizan of being a "Communist." Some observers predict that in two months, Francis Alexis will be premier, and George Brizan will form an opposition party.
The NNP won the 1984 elections with 59% of the vote. A year later, most Grenadans see the government as incompetent and corrupt. While Blaize's methods have accelerated the regime's loss of credibility, they are not in themselves sufficient to explain it.
More fundamental is the fact that the government failed to solve the burning questions facing the people, first of all unemployment. The rate of unemployment has gone from around 12% in 1983 to around 40% today. What is more, a lot of people who have a job often only work two or three days a week.
There has, of course, been a growth in the number of videos, motorcycles, and Japanese cars, which came into the country duty free or in the bagage of US soldiers. But this has not compensated for the rise in unemployment, higher prices, and the disappearance of the social programs set up under the revolution.
There is only one dentist on Grenada, but the authorities refuse to give work to young people returning from Cuba after finishing their dental studies there.
On the situation before and u the elections of December 1984. see i articles of Laurent Beaulieu in Inter national Viewpoint, No. 64, November 26, 1984; and Steve Roberts in 'IV' No. 67, January 14, 1985. On the revolutionary experience in Grenada and the crisis that led to the murder of Bishop and the US invasion, see in particular the resolution of the United Secretariat of the Fourth International (SU) published in IV" No. 54, June 4, 1984.
2. This and all other quotations originally in English have been retranslted from the French. — IV.
On the Chester Humphrey case, see 'IV' No. 85, October 28, 1985.
3
ARTHUR MAHON
The NNP came out of a fusion of three parties, whose sole common point was allegiance to the United States. The first, the Grenadan National Party (GNP), was led by Herbert Blaize, an old conservative politician, who was to become premier again.
The second, the Grenadan Democratic Movement (GDM), was founded by Francis Alexis, a professor who lived in exile during the Maurice Bishop regime from 1979 to 1983 and worked with the CIA for the "restoration of democracy" in Grenada.
The last, the National Democratic Party (NDP), was formed after the invasion by George Brizan, who was once associated with Maurice Bishop's New Jewel Movement (NJM) and worked with the revolutionary government.
But for the strong pressure by the United States and their own fear of seeing the former dictator Eric Gairy win the elections, this motley coalition would doubtless never have come together.
Immediately after the elections, tensions began to show up in the government. Since then, Herbert Blaize's adversaries have complained constantly about his autocratic methods. Lacking confidence in anyone but his intimates, he has reserved all the ministries for those closest to him. In an entire year he has called parliament into session only twice, even though the NNP holds all the seats save one. Moreover, members of his family have been appointed to diplomatic posts.
International Viewpoint 23 December 1985
Managing a situation as delicate and novel as the one in Grenada requires special qualities, and Herbert Blaize is hardly up to it, to say nothing of his poor state of health. Indeed, he was quite frank about his failings at the time of the elections.
When he was asked what his greatest strength was, he replied: "I have no strengths. I'm just an ordinary man who believes in the Lord, has confidence in Him, and knows that He will sustain him." (2)
Blaize is a typical representative of the traditional bourgeois layers in Grenada, who have always lived parasitical lives. Having been planters, they invested in trade.
Incapable of takinginitiatives, Blaize has relied entirely on the Americans. When Vice-President Bush came to Grenada in the spring of 1985, he begged him to leave the occupation troops in position. He called for a "Marshall Plan" for Grenada, amounting to 500 million dollars, a totally unrealistic demand that could only discredit him.
After the departure of the US troops in June 1985, Blaize and his intimates, acting over the heads of the other ministers, began to use the elite paramilitary force trained by the US to suit themselves, for example, brutally shutting down a radio station, repressing street vendors, or even burning the dwellings of young marijuana smokers. Such actions have aroused strong protests from the population.
Washington is not unaware that such attitudes reveal Blaize's weak-
Thissituation has caused the greatest suffering in the countryside, and many young people have gone up into the hills to grow a little marijuana. Cocaine and prostitution became prevalent while the US soldiers were on the island, and burglary became common.
The young people have no hope, and it is indicative of the decay in the situation that in the past two years the number who pass their exams has declined by half.
Pursuing the "free enterprise" economic policy advocated by Reagan, the government has continued to dismantle the public sector set up under Bishop, which had become the driving force of the economy. For example, the old Holiday Inn that was purchased under Bishop has recently been rented out to a private concern at sixty cents a day per room.
The government hoped that foreign investors would pump new life into the economy. But these hopes have been cruelly dashed. "This is a sad story, " Blaize was to conclude, when the US firm Ingle Toys shut down a few months after getting thousands of dollars in subsidies from the US government. Indeed, it was a sad story, and there have been a lot of others like it since.
The US government tried every means to convince company heads to go and invest in Grenada. But the only ones that rushed in engaged simply in speculation. It is true that by comparison states, Grenada has a lot of disadvantages for an investor.
The island has a troubled past, to say the least. The government is weak. The youth still have a rebel spirit. And the unions are far from all having been tamed.
The infrastructure is inadequate, in particular as regards electricity supply. Industrialization is very recent, and still very poorly developed. The domestic market is small, to put it mildly. And on top of all this, Grenada is the Caribbean island furthest from the US.
After this failure with US companies, Washington's policy today is rather to encourage Grenadans, of whom there are many in Brooklyn, to set up small businesses in their home country.
In recent months, it is France that has shown the most interest in Grenada. A French business based in Florida, the Groupe International du Transport et de T' Industrie Petroliere, is building a 700-room luxury hotel, and is going to aid Grenada to set up a national airline, which it will control.
In September, Keith Mitchell visited France. And the French government reportedly committed itself to partnership in the search for oil in Grenadan territorial waters, as well as to set up a hydroelectric plant and a modern telephone exchange.
As a leader of the Maurice Bishop Patriotic Movement put it, since this government cannot create productive jobs, it is confining itself to carrying out the tasks of a colonial government, that is, "filling in the potholes in the roads and collecting taxes."
A large part of the US aid is in fact going to road repair. This makes it possible to employ a few thousand people, who are working in primitive conditions, since the asphalt factories and stone-crushing works have been shut down or sold off.
Since the invasion, the US has given only 8 million dollars a year in aid. And a lot of people who voted for the NNP in the hope that this would bring the US dollars flooding in are now bitterly disillusioned.
No force in Grenada today has attracted the people on the rebound from the NNP. Two movements are, however, seeking to occupy the space that it has left empty, and have seen their following grow over the past year.
One is the Grenadan United Labour Party (GULP) of former dictator Eric Gairy, who was ousted from power by the revolution of March 1979. It got 36% in the 1984 elections. The other is the MBPM, which was credited with 5% in those elections, although in reality it got more.
Gairy has two big aces. On the one hand, in the 1950s he led a big agricultural workers strike that took an insurrectionary turn. He was imprisoned at the time, and in the eyes of the Grenadan peasants became the first figure to represent them in their conflict with the city people linked to the planters and to the colonialists. And the great majority of the Grenadan people still live from agriculture.
On the other hand, Gairy remains an adept demagogue, endowed with an unquestionable charisma. His social base is among the poorest and most backward, largely illiterate, strata.
In the past year, Gairy has been working to consolidate and extend his influence. He has gone "to the grass roots," which he did not do in the first period after he returned to the island. He has held several successful rallies. He has reestablished his old union, which is based mainly among agricultural workers.
In October, the former dictator launched a strike on the plantations for higher wages. At the start, the strike call was heeded by about 55% of the workers concerned. But after the government threatened to fire the striking workers, support crumbled rapidly.
On the other hand, Gairy has had scant success with the youth, who make up half the population. Having lived the better part of their conscious lives under the revolutionary regime, teenagers are turning more readily to the MBPM, which in May launched the Maurice Bishop Youth Organization.
At a meeting organized recently to pay homage to the martyrs of October 19, 1983, [Bishop and his Comrades], the average age of the 1,500 participants was hardly over twenty.
The Grenadan revolutionists came out of the October 1983 crisis almost totally isolated. They rebuilt links with the population through the Maurice Bishop Foundation, whose aim was to keep the memory and work of Maurice Bishop and his comrades alive. Then, they started the newspaper Indies Times. After that, they launched the MBPM, which had only a handful of activists when the election campaign started. Revival of the revolutionaries
Through their electoral work the Grenadan revolutionists were able to get involved in mass political activity again and take their manifesto and proposals into the villages. Coming out of the elections, they had a new party that today claims about a hundred members, a not insignificant number for a country of 110,000 inhabitants.
The MBPM has to work under constant pressure from the intelligence services set up by the US. In Washington, Herbert Blaize made no bones about his intentions to repress the revolutionists: "You can't get rid of these people just with a rescue mission," he said, referring to the US invasion.
The MBPM suffers from three other handicaps. The first, and perhaps the main one, was explained by George Louison, one of the party leaders, in an interview in February 1985:
"If Maurice Bishop had been alive, we would have won the elections hands down. But we are burdened with the legacy of the October 1983 events - Maurice's murder on October 19 and the US invasion on October 25. The people say that they gave everything they had to a party, to a revolution, and to developing the nation. The collapse of the revolution shook their faith. Consequently, they lost confidence, they lost hope, and that is what has to be rebuilt. .." (4)
The crisis of confidence in the progressive movement that ensued from
4. This interview was published in 'Africasia,' March 15, 1985. International Viewpoint 23 December 1985
PORTUGAL the crisis of October 1983 cannot be overcome until Grenada goes through major new experiences.
The second obstacle to the MBPM taking advantage of all the opportunities that exist today is its lack of cadres. Of the twenty members of the Central Committee of the New Jewel Movement in 1979, only two are members of the MBPM. The others were killed or are in prison awaiting the start of their trial for the murder of Maurice Bishop.
Drawing the lessons from the failure of the NJM, which was a quasi secret party, the MBPM leaders have opened their party's doors wide. And this past year they have put the stress on internal democracy. But the lack of cadres is a brake on this process.
The third obstacle is the fact that the MBPM is a poor party. Unlike the others, it gets no aid from any fraction of the bourgeoisie. So, it has the greatest difficulty in getting its paper out every week, and it is unable to print enough copies. For this reason, international solidarity is more urgently needed than ever.
The MBPM is striving to become the majority party in the working class, as the NJM was on the eve of the revolution of March 1979. And it realizes that in order to accomplish that, it has to try to win Gairy's