IV289 - June 1997

The garment industry (which uses imported textiles) has been the fastest growing production sector in the 1990s. About 40 factories, employ over 20,000 workers. Last year, exports (mainly to Europe) brought in $90 million, or 30% of the national income. Wages make up only 6% of the sale price of these garments.

Cambodia’s weak coalition government is falling apart and political violence is increasing. National elections are scheduled for November 1998, but local elections have been delayed indefinitely. As Ken Davis explains, the economy is a disaster, with most of national income coming from illegal logging, smuggling, and foreign aid programmes.

On 4 May the Sunday Business Post carried a major article by the British journalist and television producer Lin Solomon. The piece exposes three of the crucial weaknesses in the German warrant which seeks the extradition of Roisin McAliskey in connection with the IRA mortar bombing of a British Army Barracks in Osnabruck on June 28 1996.

Laurent Kabila says his new government will prioritise the social needs of the population, while respecting market forces and the global neo-liberal economic context. Eric Toussaint and Denise Comanne evaluate the challenge facing the new regime.

Interview with Congo-Zaire’s new Minister of Health, Jean Baptiste Sondji.

The defeat of the Tory government after eighteen years in power, and the election of Tony Blair’s New Labour party, will lead to major changes in British politics. But most of these changes will not be thanks to the new government, but in spite of or in response to it.

The Fourth International expresses its militant solidarity with the insurrectional movement which has shaken Albania.

The Fourth International shares the indignation of all revolutionaries and democrats at the savage operation which the Peruvian government launched against the MRTA militants inside the Japanese embassy in Lima.

The double defeat of French and Belgian imperialism is cause for celebration.