We are two weeks away from the national elections for president and for more than 3600 federal, state and municipal candidacies. For over a year, the owners of money and power and all their political and union leaders have been scared to see the whole country in the streets, mobilized, demanding Peña out! They panicked when they saw the possibility of their regime falling. They did everything to get the people off the streets and funnel them into the election campaign. Through mass media, they have been drilling the heads of the population for many months with the idea that their destiny, their future, and that of all of Mexico depend on the results of the polls.
By CST – Socialist Workers’ Current – IWL-FI
Local capitalists and their imperialist bosses fear that “the Tiger will break loose”. This is how they talk to each other about us when the workers and the poor peasants take politics into our own hands and defend it through our mobilization. To prevent it, they have their institutions of political power, their State. And they demand that everything is resolved within them. With their laws, political parties, congressmen and senators, their judges, their INE, [National Electoral Institute] their murderous generals and admirals and, in particular, their Presidents.
That’s what they call democracy! This “democracy” of the rich and for the rich is also a colonial democracy. Because it is first voted in Washington and then they bring the simulacrum of July 1 to Mexico. This is why, before the people’s vote, the candidates have already been chosen by the bankers in Acapulco or toured the US to be chosen by imperialist representatives.
The owners of money and power have made an agenda of the “elections”. There is no family conversation between neighbors, friends, co-workers or schoolmates that does not end in a debate and even the electoral debate itself. Only Chucky Lozano’s goal against Germany blurred these debates, causing euphoria for the national colors. But while popular attention is distracted by the electoral campaign and the show of world cup, the looting of energy and natural resources accelerated to the maximum. Peña Nieto signed decrees to privatize 300 water basins, 55% of that resource!
The “hope of Mexico” in ballot boxes?
Like this we get to the intense and polarized 2018 electoral process, where the massive popular desire to defeat the hated regime of the PRI is presented with only one “option”: to vote a candidate of those parties for president for another 6 years, or the “independents” that foreign and local oligarchy accepted to register through their INE or their TEPJF, [Electoral Court of the Federal Judicial Power] because they guarantee their profits. That is, they call on the poor every six years to “choose” one of the representatives of the rich.
That is the current situation with the massive phenomenon, widespread throughout Mexico, of electoral support to the three-time candidate for president Andrés Manuel López Obrador, and his party Morena. There are great expectations among millions of exploited and oppressed. And that hope, in many cases, turns into blind illusions. These expectations are a direct product of the unbearable situation, of the exhaustion because of official corruption, of the massive desire to kick out the “mafia in power” and, most importantly, of the current lack of other real alternatives in sight. The workers did not – and we still do not have – a legitimate political representation of our class. For decades, those have been buried or corrupted.
In this context, popular opinions range from skepticism and total mistrust towards all to those who preach “hope” as a gospel and wait for AMLO to come as “the savior”. In the middle of this, there is the large majority: those who see AMLO as the lesser-evil, the least corrupt of them, or as a “palliative before the disaster” or that if he wins “he can raise peoples morale and participation.” And even “the most viable option to not voting for the PRIAN”.
The change we all want will not come from elections or from AMLO
Many who yearn for a change of regime and a sovereign country trust that AMLO wants to make this real. In this aspect, we want to engage in a fraternal and respectful dialogue with the thousands of fighters, workers, teachers and peasants who trust AMLO to realize their aspirations for justice and freedom and to achieve fundamental changes, because he promises so. But AMLO only offers ambiguity and continuity of the policies of the government for the last 30 years. His national alternative project reproduces many of the neoliberal schemes that have done the most damage to the workers and the country.
It is enough to analyze the individuals from the “mafia in power” or linked to it by “carnal” ties that AMLO has proposed to integrate the 20 secretariats of its future government. What miracle will transform officials of the World Bank, Monsanto, TV Azteca, capitalist millionaires and managers of foreign corporations, into “bearers of change”?
To make it worse, there is a flood of PRI, PAN, PRD and union “charros”[1] – like Napito and Elba Esther – who “clean up” in Morena with VIP passes for Congress, senators, governors, mayors and aldermen… Who believes that all those recent political “migrants”, responsible for the “Pact against Mexico”, guilty of sinking the country with their laws, will now save it?
We do not see any demonstration that AMLO wants real change. He proposes a change of people, but not of institutions or even of the system. When asked about NAFTA – the main instrument of submission of Mexico – AMLO’s response was, “it is necessary.” About NAICM (the International Airport,) it was enough that the magnate Carlos Slim went out to defend his business for AMLO to offer him a private concession “if he wants to do it with his money”. Overnight, AMLO abandoned the thousands who have fought and are fighting against this destructive megaproject, which is only a mega-business for the “mafia in power” and its capitalist owners. Regarding the dismantling of Pemex and the auction contracts for oil areas, based on the “energy reform” law, he proposes to “revise” the contracts, but he already said, “I will not touch the laws” of EPN [Enrique Peña Nieto] for 3 years.
The recent “amicable” meeting between AMLO and Larry Fink, owner of BlackRock – global megabank that is buying City Banamex and monopolizing most of the oil and pipelines in Mexico – after which they announced that there were “major agreements,” is another sign of alarm. In the face of the violent repression to the CNTE teachers, not a word from AMLO in repudiation of the government or in solidarity with the current fight in defense of public education…
And so there is a long list. Instead of maintaining a firm stance against the – as AMLO himself said – “rapacious minority that has done a lot of damage to the country because they are largely responsible for the national tragedy,” the favorite candidate ended up raising a white handkerchief and sending them a “sign of love and peace”. There will be no peace for the people if these “rapacious” capitalists are not defeated.
AMLO’s strategies of “white handkerchief” with the oligarchs and love at first sight with BlackRock is a suicide or a conscious deception. There will be no love and peace consenting with capitalists the surrender of the country through those who run to rule it.
We will not vote for any of the candidates – We will annul the ballot
All the other candidates are political representatives of the “rapacious minority”, agents of colonization and the destruction of Mexico. Both, Jose Meade – Peña Nieto and Videgaray’s proxy – and Ricardo Anaya – a rich demagogue who launders money and keeps his family in the US – are repudiated. They do not deserve more comments. However, for all of the above, we do not trust that AMLO and his government – which have the best chance of winning – make the changes that millions expect so that we stop being “piñata of foreign governments”. In the July 1st election, we will not support any of the candidates.
On the other hand, hundreds of thousands, even millions, reject the fraudulent electoral system of the “democracy for the rich” regime and made the conscious decision not to vote, to abstain, because they consider it a farce. We fully share such rejection. But we do not call for abstention. We will go to vote. We will null the ballot to actively express our rejection. And we call on those who share our opinion to do the same. The INE considers it “null vote.” Precisely, “null” is our confidence in all the candidates of the regime.
Yet, we have full confidence in the thousands of fighters and millions of humble workers who aspire to achieve the changes they need and deposit that trust in AMLO. We want to mobilize with them to really sweep the entire mafia out of power and punish it for its crimes. Therefore, we respect their current voting preferences, although we do not share them.
We will continue to support their battles unconditionally and to accompany them in their political experiences. We will continue with those thousands and thousands of comrades as we have done up to now, giving them our honest and respectful opinion. And we will continue to be much more at their side in the ongoing struggles, such as that of the CNTE, telephone operators, oil workers, and oppressed communities and peoples. We will continue to support them without conditions in the battles that will take place in the next period of the inevitable clashes between the exploited and the exploiters, whatever the course of the future government may be. And it is in this way that we will build from below a truly independent political alternative of and for the workers, that will lead all the exploited and oppressed.
***
Translation: Corriente Obrera.
Notes:
[1] Union leaders that protect the bosses and or government’s interests over workers’.
