Why we quit the Social and Popular Block?

Last 9^th of August, a general plenary meeting voted a proposal posed by the leadership of the Social and Popular Block (BSP) to promote an alliance with the concord of the neoliberal and fascist parties. This decision was based on a written report put forward by the leaders of the BSP declaring that “a possibility is dawning for a dialogue” between the BSP and the Concertacion (Concord), for they have already nominated Fernando Logo[1] as their candidate.

The report admits that it was the BSP who actually generated the approximation for both organisations have a “reciprocal interest in a common candidate.”  The BSP based their intention to join force on the conviction that everything was valid as long as it served the purpose of defeating the ANR (legal name of the Partido Colorado  – Red Party in government) in the forthcoming elections and that from that point of view the candidature of Fernando Lugo should be a “proposal for all the opposition forces beyond the National Concord, the BSP and any other force”. Consequently they propose an electoral alliance between BSP and the Concord so that Lugo may become “a candidate of all the Paraguayans, a national candidate“. When they say “all” they mean that Luga is to be the candidate for Jaegli from PLRA[2] as for Juan, the underpaid worker from Cateura.

This agreement is far from being “tactical” or “temporary” as its defenders will try to present it. It is not restrained to the electoral scope and to the defence of Lugo against a possible impugnation of candidature by the ANR. The BSP goes further than that and put forward a “dialogue” to establish a common minimum agenda of government for the intention is also to govern together with these parties. In order to deal with all these points, a “liaison instance” has been put forward for which Juan Torales (CNT[3]), Camilo Soares (PMAS[4]) and Miguel Lopez (TEKOJOJA[5]) have been appointed.

As far as the Workers’ Party (PT) and the Humanist Party (PH) this decision of constituting an alliance between the BSP and the Concord Parties is directly unacceptable. The policy of cramming workers’ organisations, peasants and neighbours organizations, that are part of the PSP, into one space with parties representing employers, large landowners and fascists can only be regarded as treason to the interests of political independence of the organisations of the toiling masses of the cities and the countryside.

This is how the BSP surrenders the banners of class struggle and tramples the principles defended in its origins when it was clearly stated, the liberation and the sovereign of our people will not come from any great entrepreneur or landowner, banker or ruler, but we shall conquer it with the joint struggle of the workers of the cities and the countryside oriented towards a new democratic order where the right to life with be superior to the right of property and private profit. Very much to the contrary, today BSP capitulates to the rich and poses an alliance with the executioners of the people, those who day after day have been attacking the interests of workers and trying to squash our struggles.

The alliance posed by BSP is with those who on that very day has voted amendments of the Penal Code meant to deepen the penalisation of social struggles and of State Terrorism; it is with those who expelled the peasants from their land; it is with those who allowed the Yankee troops to station on lour land; it is with those who year in year out vote miserable budgets for health and education; it is an alliance with the fascist Oviedo whose hand are stained with blood of young fighters. In short, it is a an alliance with all those parties that have been governing together with the Colorado Party and share their responsibility for the disastrous state the country is in now. For all these reasons we have taken the decision to leave BSP. We believe the BSP has crossed the class line in its posture of unconditional support for the candidature of Fernando Lugo who is not the candidate of the right and defends a programme that goes against all the historic demands of the social and left wing demands, as his alliance with the rich. Today, supporting the candidature of Lugo is the same a supporting the political project of the Concord, and the Concord Project is the project of the neoliberal, pro-imperialist bourgeoisie and the Oviedist fascism.

The PT and the PH are not prepared to accompany BSP along that path. We shall keep on fighting for the total defence of the political independence of the organisations of the oppressed against the oppressors. With this in mind, we shall seek the necessary alliances but in a principled way and with our own class brothers and fraternal organisations in order to build what the BSP was once meant to be: a tool for articulation, struggle and unity of the working class, valid as an alternative for the radical change of our society. It is within this framework that we shall struggle with all our might so that in the forthcoming 2008 elections we, the workers, may have an independent voice and so be able to present class candidates against the continuity of the Colorado Party but also against the candidate of the bourgeois “opposition”.