Grenada puppet regime convicts Coard faction

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By MACKLER On Dec. 4, a 12-person jury in U.S.occupied Grenada convicted former Deputy Prime Minister Bernard Coard and 13 other defendants of the Oct. 19, 1983, murder of Grenadian Prime Minister Maurice Bishop. The defendants received the death sentence and are to be hanged by the U.S. puppet government.

Coard and his supporters were also convicted of the murder of 10 other leaders of the New Jewel Movement (NJM), the party which Bishop founded and which led the 1979 revolution that removed the U.S.supported dictatorship of Sir Matthew Eric Gairy.

The seven-month trial attracted the attention of the U.S. capitalist media, which is still eager to justify the brutal and illegal invasion of Grenada by 8000 U.S. troops six days after Bishop's murder. By labeling the Coard faction "hard-line Marxist," the jingoist press fraudulently associates the ideas of Karl Marx and revolutionary socialism with the practice of murder, terrorism, and dictatorship.

Invasion targeted revolution

The U.S. invasion, however, had nothing to do with protecting the people of Grenada against these practices. The U.S. govern -ment never raised a word of protest against the Gairy regime, whose infamous Mongoose Gang maintained a reign of terror in Grenada for decades.

The real target of the invasion was the revolutionary movement in Grenada. The Bishop-led NJM had instituted a series of popular measures that signaled major improvements in the lives of the Grenadian people and inspired people throughout the world who seek to break from imperialistimposed backwardness and domination.

A torrent of lies accompanied the virtually unchallenged U.S. invading force that killed several hundred Grenadians as well as 47 members of a Cuban con -struction crew working at Point Salines Airport, the site of the invasion.

The Reagan administration, backed to the hilt by the Democratic Party, claimed that its action was necessary to protect the lives of some 500 U.S. medical students. On the day of the invasion, the world's capitalist press was filled with spurious reports that the U.S. Army was being challenged by 1500 heavily armed Cuban soldiers.

Within days of the invasion these lies were exposed. There was no Cuban army. The medical students themselves had given the State Department assurances that they were in no danger.

Coup paved way for invasion The counterrevolutionary actions of the Coard faction paved the way for the U.S. invasion.

Internal differences leadership first became public when Bishop was placed under house arrest by a nearly unanimous membership vote. He was charged with refusing to accept a decision to sharply reduce his authority in the party and with spreading rumors that Coard was plotting to kill him.

The Grenadian people witnessed the spectacle of a political party arresting the nation's most respected leader. And when the people themselves, outraged by this action, mobilized to free Bishop and impose their judgment on Coard's actions, they were gunned down by the Coardcontrolled Grenadian Army, which then imposed a "shoot on sight" curfew.

Coard's actions were taken in the name of the great majority of the New Jewel Movement, a political party of fewer than 400 members that rarely met and whose policies were determined by a tiny Central Committee. There were no traditions of party democracy within the NJM. Its leaders were not accountable to an informed party membership or to any of the mass organizations of the workers and farmers.

The mass organizations that did exist in Grenada were viewed by the NJM as vehicles to mobilize support for popular campaigns. They allowed for the public expression of opinion but they did not function as democratic decision-making institutions.

There is no record of debate within the NJM on these fundamental questions. While the NJM generally ruled with the assent of the Grenadian people, its entire leadership acted on the false and paternalistic premise that its decisions were superior to those that might arise from formal bodies of the masses themselves.

The Grenadian people and the militias that had been formed had no weapons. These were under the control of the army, a fatal NJM policy based on the mistaken idea that the people do not need to bear arms because the interests of a revolutionary government and its army are always identical to those of the people.

When Coard resorted to force to impose his will, the Grenadian people had no way to respond. The door was wide open for a U.S. invasion.

Regime has no authority to judge The illegitimate Grenadian regime, which rules by force of U.S. arms, has no political standing to judge or impose sentence on the Coard faction.

As Don Rojas, who was press secretary to Maurice Bishop, stated in an open letter dated Nov. 8, 1986: "No U.S.-installed government such as that in Grenada today has either the moral or political legitimacy to imprison, try, or render judgment on Coard and the others responsible for the murderous events of Oct. 19, 1983."

[In the court proceedings, Coard slandered Rojas, accusing him of being a CIA agent. In his open letter, Rojas fully refutes these slanders, explaining that Coard's charges were designed to "divert attention from his responsibility for his crimes."] The current Grenadian government derives its authority solely from the U.S. Army and from individuals like Lt. Col. Oliver North, the Reagan administration adviser who planned the Grenadian invasion and later diverted funds from secret U.S. arms sales to Iran to the Nicaraguan contras.

The judgment of Bernard Coard and his co-thinkers will ultimately be made by the Grenadian people themselves—not by their captors who today occupy their country.