John Howard, leader of a coalition of the Liberal and National parties defeated Prime Minister Paul Keating in Australian elections March 2. Howard will lead the new administration, ending 13 years of the social-democratic Labor Party regime. Rising unemployment, more than 15 percent in some rural towns, and cuts in federal assistance programs after four years of drought were among the reasons for widespread dissatisfaction among working people, many of whom voted for what they thought of as a lesser evil - the coalition of major parties not in office.
U.S. to pay kin of Iranians killed
U.S. State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns announced
February 22 that Washington will compensate the families of
248 Iranians slaughtered when a U.S. warship shot down an
Iranian Airbus plane July 3, 1988. Missiles fired from the USS
Vincennes destroyed the plane over Iranian waters killing all
290 people aboard. The Iran Air flight was a regularly
scheduled civilian shuttle from the Iranian coastal city of
Bandar Abbas to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates across the
Persian Gulf.
According to the New York Times, Burns said $300,000 would be paid for each wage-earning person killed and $150,000 for each non-wage earning victim. Former U.S. president Ronald Reagan made the offer while in office.
Gorbachev eyes presidency
Mikhail Gorbachev, a longtime rival of Russian president
Boris Yeltsin, announced at a news conference March 1 that he
may run for president in that country's June 16 elections. "In
my heart, I am prepared," he said.
"A scenario of the choice of the lesser evil is being imposed on the public," said Gorbachev, presenting himself as a democratic alternative to Yeltsin and Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov, the front runner in the race. Gorbachev was the last president of the Soviet Union before it was formally dissolved in 1991.
Chauvinist Serb general indicted
The so-called international war crimes tribunal indicted
Gen. Djordje Djukic March 1, making him the second indicted
suspect being held at The Hague. Djukic, captured in January
and extradited to the Netherlands in February, commanded
logistics for the Belgrade-backed Serb forces in Bosnia. He
was a close aide to Bosnian Serb chauvinist leader Gen. Ratko
Mladic, who has also been indicted. Only two of the 53 people
indicted by the imperialist crafted tribunal have been
apprehended.
Turkish parties agree to form coalition government
Turkey's prime minister Tansu Ciller, leader of the True
Path Party that ran the government until the December 24
elections, and her conservative rival Mesut Yilmaz agreed
March 3 to form a coalition government. Yilmaz, a leader of
the Motherland Party, will head the new minority government
for the remainder of the year. The move served to block the
Welfare Party from heading the government.
The Welfare Party, which has heavy support among Muslims, came in first in the country's parliamentary elections with 21.4 percent of the votes. It will now become the main opposition party in the 550-member Parliament with 158 seats.
Gonzalez loses Spain elections
Felipe Gonzalez, the social democratic president of Spain,
lost the March 3 election to José María Aznar, the candidate
of the conservative People's Party. Over a dozen top officials
in Gonzalez's Socialist Party administration were charged with
corruption, including the head of the Civil Guard and the
chief of the Bank of Spain. Other damages to Gonzalez's
integrity were allegations that his regime ran a secret
campaign organizing death squads against the Basque movement
fighting for independence.
Colombia fails U.S. certification
U.S. president Bill Clinton announced March 1 that the
government of Colombia failed to stanch narcotic trafficking.
A U.S. law requires the president to report each year which
countries supposedly linked to illegal drug trade are
combating drug trafficking and which are not. Colombian
president Ernesto Samper is resisting allegations that his
1994 election campaign knowingly received more than $6 million
from drug cartel figures.
White House spokesman Michael McCurry asserted that the decertification of Colombia could affect $750 million to $1 billion in Export-Import Bank commitments and $50 million in loans. Washington would also vote against requests by Bogotá for any loans from the Inter-American Development Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and other development banks.
Washington's move has caused outrage among many in Latin America, including some bourgeois politicians and commentators. "Who certifies the United States?" asked one columnist in El Diario, a Spanish-language New York daily.
Affirmative action tour planned
Angel Cervantes, a student at the University of California
at Irvine, announced that students who oppose the decision by
the Board of Regents to abolish affirmative action programs
will organize a three-month walking tour around California to
build support for affirmative action. "We will march through
various communities, touching various people," and encourage
voter registration Cervantes said at a February 26 news
conference and rally in Sacramento.
Earlier in the day students rallied in front of the business office of Sacramento businessman Ward Connerly, the Regent heading the campaign against affirmative action. Several dozen university students picketed Connerly's lawn chanting, "Hey, hey, ho ho, Ward Connerly has got to go!" California Gov. Pete Wilson and Connerly announced February 21 that they and other supporters collected almost 1.1 million signatures supporting a referendum on abolishing affirmative action programs in state government.
Abortion clinic eviction halted
Four appellate justices of the New York Supreme Court
overturned a lower court decision and ruled February 20 that a
landlord cannot evict the Long Island Gynecological Services,
which had been the target of antiabortion violence. The
landlord, Ronald Morey, pursued the eviction, arguing that
performing abortions attracted violent protesters who
threatened tenants and damaged his building.
Morey tried to impose a so-called safety rule in January 1995 to prohibit abortions in his building after a right-wing thug murdered two people at a clinic in Brookline, Massachusetts. "Abortion providers have the same rights as other tenants," said Donna Lieberman, an attorney with the New York Civil Liberties Union, who represented the clinic. Lieberman hailed the ruling as a "victory for all women."
- MAURICE WILLIAMS