Iván Duque is an open enemy of the workers and exploited people, not only because he comes from the most reactionary bourgeois sector, grouped in the Democratic Center Party, and for being the apprentice of ex-president Alvaro Uribe, but because all his political and economic plans are in service of favoring the richest national and imperialist entrepreneurs.
By the Executive Committee of the PST –Colombia
For workers, Duque’s administration only promises a pensions reform, more health and education privatization, increase in taxes, the lowering of the minimum wage for millions of families that only have this income, the sustaining and deepening of labor outsourcing, and the actual prohibition of social protest and the continuation of murders of social, demobilized leaders. Along with a strengthening of the regime and the protection of the military and paramilitary with the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP) reform.
On the other hand, around eight million Colombians, among them thousands of workers, expressed their inconformity after 16 years of government under the Uribe flag and its bourgeois allies, through the vote on candidate Gustavo Petro. These eight million people should take the streets today to fight Duque after elections and defeat his plans, disastrous for the population and the working class. We cannot allow paramilitary and hitmen who silence the social leaders to blackmail us. On the contrary, we must carry out a National Strike and adopt the slogan: Before every murder, immediate National Strike! We must take on this slogan to let all the contract killers and those who finance them know that a broad sector of the population and the workers are not willing to continue seeing the social, union and human rights leaders be killed. Neither will we let the exploitation plans and the misery of the working people continue.
Therefore, we reject the signing of the “Rejection of violence against social leaders pact” – by Gustavo Petro, Aida Abella, of the Common Alternative Revolutionary Force (FARC), the democratic Pole and those who supposedly represent the left in Congress. President Juan Manuel Santos and Iván Duque and the representatives of the parties in Congress and in public offices led this pact, published in the El Tiempo newspaper on Sunday, July 29.
This shameful pact seeks to cover the backs of the outgoing and the ingoing presidents, the parties of the bourgeoisie that have ruled this country at their will during more than 200 years. They are responsible for the violence, the poverty and the misery that 8 million –mostly workers- rejected in the ballots last June 27, and had already been rejecting in the streets. These 8 million expected Colombia Humana (Humane Colombia) and the parties that are victims murders to lead a great struggle movement: for each vote to turn in to cry of protest in the streets. We expected that this August 7th, just as July 6th, the plazas would fill with the cry, no more murders, no more Uribe, yelling “Uribe paraco, el pueblo está berraco” (Uribe paramilitary, the people are angry). We did not expect to see his signature next to those responsible for paramilitaries, the false positives and misery, in a hypocrite pact rejecting the violence they themselves push against social leaders.
Just as we joined all the discontent in the past presidential elections with a critical vote on Gustavo Petro, we now propose to go to the streets in real class struggle opposition. We are convinced that this is the only way through which the necessary deep transformations for workers and the poor are possible. Just as Argentinian, Honduran, Haitian and Nicaraguan workers are uprising today through mobilization and direct struggle against their governments and regimes; it is now the time for Colombian workers. Not one day of truce to Duque, to be able to end this cycle of massacres, misery, repression and exploitation without limits, and give way to a workers’ government.
No Truce for Duque! No more murders, immediate national strike!
