Red Weekly 15 July 1976 Burnham's only answer to opposition is to try to stitle it — he has attempted, fo instance, to ban Dayclean, the paper of the revolutionary Working Peoples Jagan's solution of all join together to save Guyana' is similar to the support given by the Stalinist Workers Liberation League in Jamaica to the State of Emerg ency mere, under wich about 400 people have already been detained. Such policies reflect only the bankruptcy of Stalinism in the face of the colonial revolu tion, and in particular its timidity or outright betrayal in the face of the possible real movemen or the masses.
Paul Sharpe vote for Otelo is a vote against the bourge oisie and a class vote. But it is quite illegitimate to deduce from this that there is some kind of qualitative differ ence between Otelo and Pato We are told by comrade Firth about Otelo that 'the implementation of such a programme - even it une metnoas n outlines are incapable of realising such a goal - poses witnout a doubt the destruction of capitalism in Portugal (Red Weekly, 8 July). But it is totally illegitimate to separate out means and ends in such a total fashion.
Otelo is not simply confused about how to smash the State in the course of bring ing about his economic programme (as for instance was the MIR in Chile - or for that matter the UP or the MES in Portugal), but he poses the implementa tion of his programme precisely through ine bourgeois State. This is not the hall. mark of a centrist but of a left reformist.
It is not necessary to deny that Otelo's programme is a bourgeois pro. gramme to assert that he is a candidate of the workers movement. Pato's pro gramme is a bourgeois arogramme. but because of his organic ties with thi workers movement a vote for Pato is a class vote, Do too Is Ine vote Tol But in calling for a vote for Otelo as well as Pato, it is even more import ant that we take care not to breed illusions.
Precisely because Otalo appears more left than Pato now, he will create a store of confidence in the working class and be able to come forward at a later date to present himself as different in a more critical choice. Unless we warn now and prepare for that we store up illusions in his reformist project.
This is connected to another point Characterising Otelo as a centrist can lead to a gic overestimation of the possibilities of the present situation. It can lead to the wrong conclusion that 17 per cent of the electorate and a greater percentage of the working class -in some key bastions like Setubal etc. an absolute majority of the working class - have broken from the reformism and class collaboration of the CP-SP But this would be a wild over•estimate or te situation. On the contrary wy derining te politics or Carvalho as at most left reformist, then we can understand why the key task is not to be found in the triumphalist schemes of the centrists but in preparing the fight to prevent the reabsorption of this layer into the schemes of the SP-CP.
It is for these reasons that we should have characterised both a vote for Otelo and a vote for Pato as a class vote But clearly our Portuguese comrades nad eventually to make a choice, not or principle, but one which would aid their task of future clarification. This had to be for the LC/ to call for a vote for Pato. - BRIAN GROGAN.