World News IN BRIEF Ultra-right tightens grip on Salvadol

Scan page 5

REAGAN'S team is faced with the need to accomplish. a change of horses in the rapidly moving situation in El Salvador.

Their chosen puppet ruler, the former Christian Democratic President Duarte, who has been the civilian figurehead of the savage military regime since 1979, failed to secure a majority in the farcical "elections" at the end of March.

Since then the parties even further to the right of the Christian Democrats, having taken a combined total of 59% of the votes, have been haggling between themselves on how best to capitalise on their victory.

Their problem has been that Duarte was the chosen instrument for Reagan's FMLN and preserving a repressive regime as a bulwark against revolutionary struggles throughout Central As such, Duarte has been able to secure an ever-increasing volume of American economic and military aid which might not necessarily pass on to a successor deemed unsuitable by the US State Department.

Reforms Duarte's twin tactics of brutal military intimidation of the workers and peasants combined with a limited programme of 'reforms' including limits on the holdings of the biggest landowners and nationalisation of the banks, were designed in collaboration with the US hopefully to create a more stable political foothold for the long-term development of capitalism in El Salvador.

Duarte's more right wing rivals stror limit extre Majo of th Duar him appa side At c Duar exec:

noto ultra accu ambi in t Arch desci path fore, tion son effor nece totte Salvi has num a lo used 5 however campaigned gly against even this ed package of reforms. »deed the principal me right politician, in Roberto D'Aubuisson le Arena Party, branded 'te as a 'traitor", , likening to a water-melon -rently green on the outbut in reality red inside. ine point he called for te to be jailed - or even uted! )'Aubuisson himself is irious as a leader of an -right "death squad" sed by a former US assador of complicity he murder of Catholic Ibishop Romero and ribed as "psychoic killer"

Vot surprisingly, there, the Reagan administrahas regarded D'Aubuisas a liability in their rts to maintain the issary flow of US arms aid to prop up the ering state machine in El ador.

The war in El Salvador been seen by increasing ibers of US politicians as st cause, and they have I the pretext of concern over 'human rights' as their reason to mount a growing challenge to further allocation of aid to the Salvadorean military.

It is for this reason that D'Aubuisson, although now established as the most powerful politician in El Salvador, with a majority in the newly elected Assembly for the right wing coalition which he heads, has not himself taken the Presidency.

Instead a less overt reactionary, banker Alvaro Magana, was elected President last weekend and has taken over Duarte's post.

But Magana will have no serious powers of his own. Before his election had come a sequence of manoevures which place the new regime firmly in the grip of the extreme right wing coalition.

First came the election of D'Aubuisson as President of the Constituent Assembly.

Then the right wing majority in the Assembly went on to vote sweeping powers to the Assembly giving themselves a virtual veto over any actions by the President. Policia polici NACIONAL HACIENDA The Assembly now has the right to decide on the President's appointment of ministers and vice-presidents.

It has also taken full legislative powers, as well as the power to appoint members of the Electoral Commission and all judges.

• At the same time D'Aubuisson's right wing cronies took all seven seats on the secretariat of the Assembly.

And while they avoided an immediate clash with the US government and made no attempt to undo Duarte's package of reforms, the right wing endorsed them in such a way as virtually to preclude any further land reform or nationalisation.

With the Christian Democrats now effectively walled off from any influence on government policy and the far right controlling all the levers of power, the Salvadorean military leaders have yet to spell out where they stand on the new situation.

During the protracted manoeuvres between the March 28 "election" and the appointment of Magana as rry Sloan President, army chiets have rumbled increasingly openly over their concern that the new governmental leader had to be one able to deliver a continued flow of US aid sufficient to maintain the war against the left.

This war shows every sign of intensifying in the next period as the FMLN guerrillas embark on what they apparently describe as a "final offensive" against the regime from their strongholds in the countryside.

While such a guerrilla military offensive will certainly test and expose the weaknesses in the armed forces, there are few grounds to believe that we are yet at the stage where a "final offensive" can topple the rickety and divided Salvadorean state machine.

In particular the level of mobilisation and political agitation among the working class in the towns falls short of that necessary to make possible a concerted uprising against the military.

The urban working class has borne the brunt of military repression and death squad intimidation in the aftermath of its mass strikes and struggles of 1978-9.

It is to the organisation and mobilisation of this working class that the revolutionary forces of El Salvador must look as the next step in the struggle for the military and political overthrow of D'Aubuisson and his gang.

Meanwhile the Reagan administration ponders its chances of selling Magana as a figurehead President to the growing body of sceptics in the US Congress.

In this setting the British labour movement must step up the fight for solidarity with the FMLN liberation forces, mobilising the biggest possible forces for the demonstration against Reagan's visit to Britain on June 6. Mid-East ZIONIST leader Menachem Begin has made it clear that he sees the next stage of the so-called 'peace process' as including the establishment of Israeli sovereignty over the occupied West Bank.

As he spoke, struggles continued on the streets of Nablus, where Palestinian youth have been leading militant resistance to the latest Zionist crackdown.

Begin Norway IN NORWAY, police have been in action against militant picket lines of striking transport workers who had halted supplies of petrol and food in their fight for increased wages. Their strike is illegal under Norwegian law.

WHILE British imperialism shows its teeth in the South Atlantic, the US warmongers have been conducting their third major show of strength in the Caribbean within three weeks.

The exercise, Ocean Venture 82, is designed both to intimidate revolutionary forces in Central America and to influence the outcome of the elections this month in the Dominican Republic.

----- pull-quotes -----

strategy of repressing the left wing guerrilla forces of the