By Sergio García
There are only a few days left for the PASO elections on September 12. The candidates of the false gap fight each other in TV shows and sell-outs like Milei appear. The left, the only sector with alternative and in-depth proposals, is also debating its projects and which path to take. At the end of the campaign we invite you to support our List 10 (R)Evolucionemos la izquierda in the FIT Unity dispute, to make a big, solid and open left. Here are our reasons.
We are coming to the end of the campaign and surely the usual promises are already exhausting you. No wonder. You only need to turn on the TV or go on social media to see a long list of hypocrites who have governed or govern the current disaster, but they talk to you as if they had nothing to do with the precarious life they impose on you, with their permanent austerity measures.
The two poles of this false gap of the Frente de Todos and Juntos por el Cambio blame each other and what comes to light is their shared responsibility. It is enough to remember that it was Macri who brought back the IMF, but it is Fernández who keeps it in the country and pays for an illegal and fraudulent debt. It was Macri who governed for the big agribusiness and extractivism corporations, and it is the current government who maintains the same structure of corporations that plunder and pollute, without changing anything. With Juntos por el Cambio the pensioners lost a lot, as much as they are still losing now. Poverty grew during the previous term of office and continued to grow during these two years. Your salary was not enough years ago and it will not be enough next month and the following months. If you hear that prices increased this month, those are news that you have heard non-stop in the last years and governments. We could go on with more examples that confirm that, behind the nuances and some differences, both poles defend the same model and decadent and unequal system. With their caste privileges at the cost, with which some had parties in Olivos and others celebrated birthdays with mariachis, in the midst of the restrictions due to the pandemic.
Pro-dictatorship impostors
Logically, all this generates a strong social discontent. Traditional politics, the privileged castes are questioned. No wonder. Only that in an attempt to take advantage of this social unrest, new sell-outs appear, disguised as libertarians who are several centuries behind the times. Milei, Espert and their lists try to appear as the new, free and contentious. But they propose very old, conservative, anti-democratic and anti-rights recipes. They are impostors helped by media sectors that, noticing the crisis of traditional politicians, open a door to these sectors that are akin to the big media and financial corporations, whose owners know perfectly well that Milei will defend their class interests if they get to Congress. Hence comes the reception that the libertarians receive from sectors of power and the support they have from well positioned sectors in CABA.
Vote in self-defense
Evidently everything that is wrong; your low salaries, your lack of future, the environmental destruction, the deterioration of health and public education among other things, are reasons that can lead many to not feel like voting, or to think of blank voting, repudiating politicians in general. Or in some cases, perhaps thinking of voting for some lesser evil. We would like to invite you to do something different from all these variants.
On the one hand, your first step is not to vote for the same old ones, those who brought us to this disaster. Because if you always choose among them, don’t expect different results: when the campaign promises come to an end, everything will be the same, or worse. Do not take refuge in your anger by not voting or by blank voting. That does not add up to anything positive and does not matter to the powerful, who do not take into account at all those invalid votes and will continue calmly, governing as if nothing had happened.
From the Frente de Izquierda-MST we invite you to vote differently and positively. To vote in self-defense, for all your rights. To give an opportunity to those of us who are workers like you. To those of us who, like you, fight to make ends meet or to pay an increasingly expensive rent. Play and vote for those of us who have no commitment with the big companies and corporations, and for that same reason we will not tremble to make them pay for the economic, social and health crisis suffered by the popular majorities and the youth. We will strongly hit the interests of those who have the most, and we will redirect all resources to address and solve the serious social problems we suffer.
We value unity and we want to (R) evolutionize the left
To do all this, the first essential step is to strengthen the left in these elections, which is the only political sector willing to turn around everything that is wrong. That is why we presented the FITU again throughout the country, because the left, when united, has much more strength. That is why for the MST unity is an important value, we promote and defend it on the basis of important programmatic agreements and coexisting with nuances and differences.
And we regret that some sectors like Castañeira, Zamora or Altamira-Ramal, have rejected our invitation to join the FITU and make a big PASO, because in their mistaken rejection, in their repeated and unnecessary personalism, they weaken the left. We are going to continue defending the unity achieved in the Frente de Izquierda Unidad and we are going to continue calling on these sectors to join.
Help us in the fight for a bigger, stronger and broader left
Meanwhile, from this place, we also want to tell you that the Frente de Izquierda is up to much more, it has to break its own ceiling, self-imposed by certain sectarian visions of the forces that make up the other list, which close instead of opening our political space to the full. We want a Left Front that will stand for everything, that is not afraid of the arrival of thousands who will come with their own ideas. We want a front that is not afraid of the arrival of people disappointed with other forces. Our task is precisely to open up, to welcome them, to give them a protagonist place so that they can fight together with us against this decadent system. Our List 10R (R)Evolucionemos la izquierda wants that, on the basis of our anti-capitalist and socialist program, we open the FITU to thousands of women workers, workers and youth.
We want a Left Front where all voices are heard and thoroughly valued, where there is no single thought and diversity is respected, where no one is relegated, where all references and ideas are made visible. Where it is not pretended for a few toalways be the spokespersons and main candidates.
We want a Left Front that transcends the electoral agreements, which are positive but only a step. We want it to become a great permanent political movement, with a prominent space for independents and common intervention in all sectors of the political and social struggle. We want to prepare ourselves to be an option of power, an alternative of government together with the workers, popular and youth mobilization. And we want that because we believe that it is possible if we put everything on the line.
We come to these PASO elections with our lists and all our ideas, so that you can know them in depth, so that you know and learn about all the debates that exist between different forces and left-wing comrades. So that you can listen, give your opinion and decide. For all these reasons we propose that you help us in the PASO elections by voting in the whole country for List 10R of the Frente de Izquierda Unidad-MST.
We will continue to promote these proposals and we invite you to help us to spread them until the last day of the campaign. We will fight hard to get as many votes as possible and we also invite you to help us win more votes among your family, friends and co-workers. The more votes we get, the more these ideas of a much stronger, solid, broad and open left will be strengthened within the FIT Unity. That is why in these remaining days we will continue our campaign seeking more support for our lists with Cele Fierro in CABA, Alejandro Bodart in the Province of Buenos Aires, Luciana Echevarría in Córdoba, Jimena Sosa in Santa Fe, Nadia Burgos in Entre Ríos and for all our candidates throughout the country.
Of course, our ideas and proposals go far beyond September 12. That day will be a first test, a first moment that will surely have different results in different provinces. We will see them in reality and we will draw conclusions from them. But beyond that we are convinced that we already have a very important achievement; in this campaign we started to postulate very strongly, through the activity in the street, in the social networks and in the media, these ideas and the call to strengthen this project in the left. Ideas for which we are going to redouble the fight after the PASO, towards the political objective that the FITU changes, surpasses itself and contributes much more, to the struggle for a government of the workers.