We are a few days away from the presidential elections. However, the result is already known because of the impact of the PASO1, and so there is no electoral effervescence in the streets. The transition from one government to the other already began, up to the point that the IMF and businessmen were occupied, for the past months, in establishing negotiations with Fernández. Something is clear: the longing of millions became a reality. Macri is done, and there is no media offensive that can revert this.
By PSTU-Argentina
The hatred to Macri and his government by millions of workers is more than fair: he is responsible for the hunger of hundreds of thousands of working families; for the unemployment and the amount of people living in the streets; for the retirees not be able to afford their medicines; the increase of labor deaths and male-chauvinist violence, including femicides; for strugglers like Daniel Ruiz to be for more than a year in prison and Sebastián Romero persecuted for 22 months…
Alberto Fernández, with his Frente de Todos [Everyone’s Front], the almost inevitable future government, claims to be the opposite of Macri. Is he, really?
Opposite or “moderate opposition”?
Alberto Fernández talks about “Standing Argentina” [Argentina de Pie] but proposes to renegotiate the debt with the IMF, aiming to gain more time to pay for it, with the goal of implementing a less brutal adjustment… which is still an adjustment.
He says he will not propose the Labor Reform, but he will encourage the change of agreements per branch. Which is basically to implement the reform but sector by sector.
Alberto Fernández says abortion needs to be legal, but he made electoral alliances with known pro-clandestine abortion figures, like Manzur2, in whose province an 11-year-old girl that was raped was forced to give birth.
Alberto Fernández says he is the opposite to “Macri’s adjustment” but Mayors and Governors that support him implement and will continue to implement the adjustment, like Chubut’s governor, Mariano Arcioni, who pays the salary of state workers in installments while he increases his own wage and his team’s.
Alberto Fernández claims to defend those who work as well as women, but he made electoral alliances with the most putrid traitor union leaders, like Santa Maria (Secretary General of the SUTERH3), responsible for Macri advancing with the adjustment as he did, by not confronting him despite the workers’ disposal to fight.
Alberto Fernández proposes a Social Pact, which is nothing but the “social peace” – to take workers off the streets for the bosses, together with the traitor union leaders, can move forward with their plans. This is why the CGT is reunifying now.
The opposite to Macri is the FIT-U4
Among the candidatures for presidency, only one has a program opposed by the vertex to Macri’s: the FIT-U, which proposes a solution to the crisis serving the working class and poor people.
The FIT-U does not propose to “renegotiate the debt” but not to pay it and use that money to respond to the necessities of the millions that live in misery, instead.
It does not propose the Labor Reform, not in general neither by sector, but for all of us to work the necessary hours with the guarantee of a wage that allows us to live.
The FIT-U defends the rights of working women in a broader dimension, more categorically, because working and poor women’s right do not stop at the legalization of abortion – which is, yes, an essential fight we need to face. We also have the right to dignified jobs, to stop being slaves of domestic labor (with quality State kindergartens and babies’ and elders’ nurseries). We have the right to not live with the fear of being victims of male-chauvinist violence.
In the FIT-U rolls there are activists from the whole country, some of them signatures of the main struggles that made Macri lose prestige, like our comrade Daniel Ruiz, candidate to National Deputy for Chubut – symbol, together with Sebastián Romero, of the fight of thousands of workers against the Social Security Reform, which signed the beginning of the end of Macri’s term. Daniel just got out of jail after 13 months as a product of the mobilization. The vote for the FIT-U is also a vote to strengthen the construction of a new leadership for the working class movement.
The only “tactical voting”: a vote for the revolution
Many comrades that might agree with the left proposals saw in the “Frente de Todos” the tool to bring Macri down, and this was overwhelming. In this general election, the possibility of Macri winning is not real, anymore. So the trap of the “tactical voting” only strengthens the “lesser evil”.
From the PSTU, we do not believe that we can achieve the program proposed by the FITU through elections. We take advantage of this moment to tell the thousands debating what is the solution for the country that it is not about voting the “lesser evil boss”. Us, workers, need to rule, and build a world without exploitation and oppression, a socialist world. And for that to happen we need to make a revolution, like the one in 1810 to free ourselves from Spain, but this time led by workers. To make a Second and Definitive Independence, to break the bonds with the IMF and organize the society not serving the profits of a few but the necessities of most of the population. We think all the forces in the FITU should say this clearly and out loud.
We propose to you to strengthen this proposal with your vote, which is nothing less than strengthening the struggles in course, like Kimberly Clark’s, teachers in Chubut, and all of those that, sooner or later, will come, and to which we will need to respond together.
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Translation: Sofia Ballack.
Notes:
1 PASO: First Term Elections.
2 Juan Luis Manzur, governor of the province of Tucumán for the Frente para la Victoria, former Cristina Kirchner roll.
3 SUTERH – Unitary Union of Commercial Buildings and Horizontal Property Workers.
4 FIT-U: Left and Workers’ Front – Unity (former FIT).
