The Argentinian Left and Workers Front – FIT – added by the MST, Poder Popular (People’s Power) and our party, PSTU, presented their candidates in a press conference. Our comrade Daniel Ruiz, who is a political prisoner, was nominated a candidate for Federal Deputy in the Chubut Province, Patagonia, in southern Argentina, and was acclaimed. The chanting “Freedom, freedom to the imprisoned for fighting” (Libertad, libertad, a los presos por luchar) was the most enthusiastic moment.
By PSTU-Argentina
The FIT will serve as a weapon for the electoral battle against the government candidate and the Fernández-Fernández formula[i]. It defends workers’ independence as opposed to the employers’ alternatives, and places at the center of its program the need to stop paying the foreign debt as a condition to achieve a working-class way out of the crisis.
We have differences with the other left parties that make up the Front. We don’t hide them. But unity is a breakthrough that allows for a better response in these elections.
Defeat Macri. Face a new Peronist frustration
While IMF tightens its grips, Macri obeys and makes cuts. The next government, whatever it is, will do the same if it neither breaks with the IMF nor stops paying the debt. There won’t be a worthwhile “renegotiation” because this requires the IMF consent. And it will never agree to renegotiate in favor of the Argentine people.
Most of the working class will vote for the F-F formula. In the first place, because they don’t put up with Macri any longer and want to defeat him in the next presidential election. Secondly, because they expect to recover at least part of what has been lost, to keep or recover their jobs and wages, or to defend their achievements.
We respect their opinion, but we do not share it. The F-F candidates have already said they will honor the agreements with the IMF and say nothing of nationalizing service companies or expropriating companies that shut down. Nor have they committed to the demand for abortion and other women’s rights. On the contrary, they want to keep everything as it is. That is, their program is to manage the crisis, not to change things deeply.
We propose to workers, women and young people a workers’ and socialist way out, national sovereignty and defense of democratic rights. We will discuss this program with our workmates in each factory or company, school, university, and community. It will be a campaign to sow awareness that there is a way out. And to warn workers to be prepared for the feeling of disappointment that will surely fill millions who will vote for Cristina Kirchner and Alberto Fernández.
We call strongly to vote for FIT-Unity. And even if we can’t convince the working class, we are committed to fighting together with them, now and after the elections, to break with the IMF, to end the decadence of our country, to recover jobs and wages, to fight back employers, and fight against poverty and hunger. We will fight with them in every corner, no matter who they vote for.
A militant, working-class and socialist campaign
We will campaign to show a path of the revolutionary struggle for socialism. We proposed a completely different campaign to FIT leadership. The socialist program must be linked to a constant explanation of how to achieve this program.
We must say clearly that elections are not the way to get rid of the exploitation and humiliation we endure. That we must defeat all this rotten form of politics that they call “democracy.”
That this can only be achieved by struggling for a revolution to defeat capitalism and impose a workers’ government based on the rank and file direct democracy. Doing what our heroes did 200 years ago: a new revolution to achieve the second independence of our country, freedom for all the people.
Let us not bend to the hypocrisy of the media and their political shows. We must use every opportunity to say to the IMF, to all the bosses, that the working class must rise and do away with them. That for this their “peaceful” institutions are of no use. They only hide the violence of the powerful against those who fight. Or the violence of hunger and misery.
Our campaign must claim the anger of the workers and defend the right to struggle, organize, and our achievements with all the means at our disposal. If those at the top sow violence, the workers have to respond to them as we did on December 18, 2017, when they messed with our old men.
The campaign of Daniel and Sebastián
Maybe the FIT leadership doesn’t accept our proposal to make a different, revolutionary, breakthrough campaign. Whatever they do, the PSTU will campaign in this way. The way the revolutionaries must participate in the lying democracy of the rich: to unmask it.
Through our mouth, it will not be just words but deeds, as on last December 18th. As our comrade Sebastián Romero, the “man of the mortar“, who had to flee to avoid falling in the claws of the employer’s court. Or Daniel Ruiz, who has been imprisoned for nine months in an ordinary cell, as if he were a delinquent when he is an oil worker fighter, a socialist and revolutionary leader.
We will campaign with the banner of Sebastian and Daniel. A banner that combines a correct electoral program – which we share with the FIT as a whole – with a revolutionary practice that fights for the ideas we stand for. Sebastian and Daniel will be our program and our banner.
[i] F-F formula: an electoral alliance to run for the presidency of Argentina in the next election between Alberto Fernández, ex-Kirchner’s Chief of Staff, and Cristina Fernández Kirchner, ex-president, both Peronists linked to the Partido Justicialista.
