Macri and the IMF must go now.
Advance elections to a Constituent Assembly to discuss how to get out of the crisis.
After the embarrassing spectacle over lack of data, the electoral result of August 11 was a tremendous political defeat for the Macri government, including Buenos Aires governor Vidal. The accumulation of people´s anger over the austerity, inflation and impositions of the IMF led to a massive punishment vote, which resulted much higher than expected. This defeat has opened a political crisis, which threatens to deepen. Less than 24 hours after the election, the currency run that brought the value of the dollar from 45 to 53 pesos meant a devaluation of 20%, with a resulting blow to the popular pocket and the drive to the raise prices. Thus, capitalist “governability” is in crisis due to the political weakness in which the Macri government was left in.
In this context, the MST in the FIT-Unidad affirms that Macri and the IMF have to leave now, not only because their plan of austerity and rapine has already failed, but because every day that passes will continue to sharpen the capitalist economic and political crisis that they want to make workers, women and the youth pay for, at the cost of inflation, precariousness and misery. We cannot wait until December. To solve this, then, we propose to advance the elections and that these elect a free and sovereign Constituent Assembly, in order to debate democratically whether or not we should continue to be governed by the IMF and what substantive emergency measures are needed to get our country out of this disaster.
The Fernández-Fernández formula channeled the angry vote. Beyond their oppositional tone, they propose to renegotiate and maintain the agreement with the IMF, pay the external debt, devaluate and maintain the privatizations; that is, nothing very different from Macrism. The PJ and Massism have already voted for Macri´s austerity laws, while the Peronist trade union bureaucracy avoided and isolated the struggles of the working class. Now, in the face of the crisis, Alberto Fernández lets Macri do the dirty work of devaluation and allows capitalist “governability” at the service of austerity, while the CGT and the CTA continue to look the other way instead of calling a general strike and organizing the plan of struggle that is needed for the government and the IMF to leave.
The MST in the FIT-Unit, which despite the electoral polarization, emerges as the fourth national political force, insists on the proposals we made during the campaign: break with the IMF, not pay the debt and invest those funds in reactivating the economy, prohibit layoffs by law, re-nationalize privatized companies under social control, nationalize banks and foreign trade. We also propose an emergency increase of salaries, pensions and social plans, with indexation to inflation, as well as the freezing of prices and the cancellation of the VAT on family basket items. We call on workers, women and the youth to fight together for this solution, for the crisis to be paid for by those responsible: the capitalists.
Buenos Aires, August 12, 2019