During the last few weeks, proposals have been published about tasks that our front should carry out to better act in the situation of the country. Logically it is always useful to exchange proposals and points of view, debate them in the table of our front, like it will likely happen this week. Nevertheless, we want to reflect on the way to face this debates, which combined with the present and limited functioning of the FIT-U and its national table, ends up generating through the way of events counterpoint to our proposals, in this case the comrades of the PTS and PO, not build collectively, which lead to defining a position and nothing more than that.
We start from this concern, because we are convinced that the FIT-U has a lot of potential and could solve more positive and better things than the ones discussed today, if a deep debate on what our front has to be and how it should work were ever really faced. So that precisely, the exchanges of proposals are carried out in a permanent way and in the very meetings that the FIT-U should have. Because the logic that a party first carries out its own public campaign with a proposal that only reflects its political needs, and another party does the same but with another proposal, in general does not end up in agreements and common calls, but in more disputes, long debates and very few agreements.
We consider this to be very important, because the FIT-U in the midst of the political and social crisis of the country, the crisis of the government and the possible electoral advance of forces of the opposition right wing, has an important political space to dispute and occupy, both in the struggles, in the process of union and student leadership, as well as in the next elections. And in order to try to take advantage of this opportunity, we must produce changes that are not proposed either in the proposal of the PTS or in that of PO.
We are then facing a political problem, because we are not having a common political strategy to intervene in the main events of the class struggle, nor is there so far a common debate on how to approach the coming electoral dispute. And evidently there is also no agreement on how to change and improve the front. On this plane we have made a proposal that we are going to reiterate here, but it is neither shared nor really debated. And this whole situation cannot be solved with proposals invented shortly after the end of the year, but with a real collective debate from which common proposals emerge, and not the other way around.
For our part, we are convinced that the FIT-U could improve a lot by advancing to a change and to really play a role in the face of the current crisis of the country, in all the struggles in course, in the dispute for a classist and anti-bureaucratic leadership in the working class and in the next electoral fight of 2023. For that we propose that the FIT-U take a step forward and transform itself into a big political movement or common party of democratically organized tendencies, where everything is debated and agreements and consensus are tried, and logically when there is none, each tendency has the freedom to carry forward its opinions and actions.
A political movement of currents or tendencies, that is much more than an electoral front, that has an elected and equal national coordination. It should have a board of directors that meets weekly. That in these meetings all issues are addressed; political, electoral, intervention in class struggles as a priority issue, union or student elections, reaching consensus on proposals to bring to the PSC and help energize it, intervention in the socio-environmental and gender fronts, and all the facts of reality that a front that really wants to influence in depth, can not ignore or fail to discuss in common.
We also propose that under this operation and with our anti-capitalist and socialist program as the axis, we think in common mechanisms of participation within the FIT-U for social leaders of the left, for intellectuals, for workers and youth activists who support our front, but are not part of any of our parties. It is our responsibility, as leadership of the FIT-U, to make them protagonists in some way together with us, to take advantage of that political capital in favor of the political and social growth of the Workers Left Front – Unity.
At the same time that we reiterate these ideas, logically we can exchange in our meeting about the other proposals that are being publicly spread and that, as we were saying, do not come to solve the real problems that the FIT-U has. Think, for example, that the comrades of the PTS now propose that our front should go out to meet with recovered unions like the SUTNA, picketers’ organizations and sectors in struggle, to set up a Meeting and that a National Coordinating Committee of Struggles should be formed. But in those struggles where we all intervene, the FIT-U does not do it in common, but rather with obstacles, it is worth as an example the health struggle where both PO and PTS sabotage the new leaderships of ALE and Garrahan. Or the picketers’ struggle, where two of the four parties of the front abstain from intervening. Or the great struggle of the SUTNA, which was not the subject of a debate within the front. It is in this framework, and after months and months where the comrades were ordered by the electoral axis and the very early announcement of their own candidacies, that they are now proposing to us a forced route with almost no possibility of actually materializing, which does not even take correctly the Plenary of Combative Unionism (PSC), which even with problems and weaknesses to overcome, is precisely where the main recovered unions, several of the outstanding sectors in struggle like health, some of the main picketers’ organizations and all the union forces of the FIT-U are grouped together. It is therefore an artificial proposal to create an organism of struggle that does not arise from a genuine process by the rank and file.
On the other hand, the comrades of PO propose an open Congress of the FIT-U, which according to their text “has the purpose of overcoming the present limits of the Left Front – Unity and transforming it into a force of intervention in the class struggle”. The central problem of this proposal, is that in itself to carry out a conjunctural event is not going to change the structural limits of the FIT-U, far from it. It would be an event like so many others, with sectors in struggle present and also debates towards the next elections, and the next day the FIT-U will continue functioning and acting as it does today, with the same limits that it says it wants to overcome, but that with this proposal are not overcome but consolidated. It is therefore a proposal that does not respond to the real needs of the FIT-U, since an open Congress of the FIT-U would only be positive if there were clearly voted policies and internal changes to transform our front into something superior to an electoral front, questions that the comrades of PO still do not ask themselves.
In any case, about all this we will debate in the meeting of the National Table of the FIT-U and logically we are open to exchange on other possible initiatives such as rallies, forums, common declarations, common support to struggles in course or other initiatives that we can organize before the end of the year. Then in 2023, while we continue to promote the workers, popular and youth struggles in each sector, we will also face the electoral debate in our front. To see if, taking into account the national development of each force, its political, electoral, social and militant weight, we can build a proposal of common lists for the national elections, something that would already be very important, also knowing that, in case of not achieving it, our front will continue united, even if it goes in different lists in the PASO. And previously, we will also have to deal with the common participation in the early provincial elections, which will be the first electoral challenges we will have in the first months of next year.
But we are deeply interested, facing the vanguard, the workers and youth activism, the thousands of sympathizers and followers of our front, not to make a debate in itself nor a dispute to see who is right, but that once and for all the FIT-U is ready to reflect in depth on how to really improve, what changes to bring about, how to make it bigger, stronger, more integral in its intervention.
The FIT-U that we built is a conquest of unity of the left, the only political space independent of all the employers’ and bureaucratic sectors and with an anti-capitalist and socialist program. It is today the only political front that can offer a real alternative path to millions of workers and youth. That political place won puts us before the responsibility of discussing everything seriously and deeply, breaking with routinarism, electoralism and fragmented actions. We pray for an open, public, loyal and positive debate, that ends in better changes for the FIT-U, which is equivalent to really making a contribution to the cause of the workers and the youth.
Mariano Rosa and Sergio García, for the leadership of the MST in the FIT-Unity
Cele Fierro for more and better left
By Nicolás Zutión
Since the 5th of this month Cele Fierro has been visiting different parts of the country. First a rally in Córdoba, then her main presentation in CABA, and finally the participation in the events organized by the MST in Rosario and Entre Ríos. A leader who, as she tirelessly expressed, is preparing to defend the socio-environmental and working class banners, and also to be part of the electoral fight in 2023.
During these weeks, different rallies and events of the MST in the FITU have taken place in different parts of the country, starting with the big Encounter in La Matanza, headed by Alejandro Bodart with the presence of Cele Fierro. In this framework, on November 9, after having visited the province of Córdoba and participated in a big rally together with Luciana Echevarría, Cele Fierro was presented as national pre-candidate of the MST and spokesperson of the Ecosocialist Network and the MST in the FIT-U. The meeting that took place in Groove, crowded with young people, representatives of militant trade unionism, socio-environmental and neighborhood activists, found in Cele the voice and militant strength to represent the struggles of all these sectors. The major media outlets of the country echoed this news, reflecting the advance of the ideas of our party and the figure of Cele, as an important contribution to the Left Front.
While we are going through a great economic, political and social crisis, it is more necessary than ever to have leaders whose strategic priority is to support the workers’ and popular demands and the demands of the socio-environmental and gender struggle. This is the great role that Cele Fierro took on, as she said, with great pride and responsibility. Also with active and daily militancy, as evidenced by her presence and permanent accompaniment in the struggle of public health workers in these times. As Cele also replied, beyond the upcoming electoral struggle, it is very important to develop and strengthen the ongoing conflicts.
In line with this, she also participated in the events in the provinces of Santa Fe and Entre Ríos, both very numerous with the participation of hundreds of activists who filled the Auditorium of Luz y Fuerza and the Club Catamarca. The national referent was in two of the provinces most affected by the fires in the wetlands, together with the local referents of Rosario and Santa Fe, Jimena Sosa and Fernanda Gutiérrez, as well as Nadia Burgos from Entre Ríos, where she made it clear that: “This model of plundering and contamination is no more. And it does not go any more together with all the traditional politics that continues to legitimize it with the sole objective of complying with the IMF’s plans. The right-wing opposition to the Frente de Todos proposes nothing more than the continuity of the current extractivist model which, in addition, deepens the adjustment. That is why I believe it is important to build more left to be a brake to this model, and at the same time to strengthen a horizon of transition to another matrix of a country, of society, which includes not depredating nature, because there is no planet B”.
A pre-candidate and spokesperson to transform everything
Cele Fierro’s tour, framed within the activities of the MST at the national level, synthesizes a living and growing party ready to combat the disappointment and possibilism of the Frente de Todos. Its new function is at the service of strengthening a left that seeks to make politics in the first person, with the workers, youth and all the sectors in struggle, in the face of so much right-wing excess. To wrest control of the country once and for all from the decadent 1%, who want to condemn us to live in appalling situations, and to set up a government of those who make the world move.
Cele Fierro is a pre-candidate and spokesperson that shows a change, the need to get rid of all those who have already governed and failed and to no longer believe in supposed “useful votes” that end up being useless. Calling to strengthen the left by spreading a model that confronts the big bosses, ecocide and dependence on imperialism by the hand of the IMF. Against the policy for a few, Cele invites to say enough and defend what is ours in self-defense. Against the ruling right wing of the Frente de Todos and the different variants of the opposition like Larreta, Macri, Bullrrich or the liberfachos of Espert and Milei.
As we were saying, we are ending a cycle of important events all over the country. To those already mentioned, we can add the good events organized in Salta and San Juan, with the presence of Vilma Ripoll. Events in Jujuy, Catamarca, Tucumán, La Rioja and Santiago. Also in Mendoza and Chubut. In Neuquen it was postponed due to weather conditions. After these activities the MST in the FIT-U is preparing for the new stage of struggles that is coming, with a leader who is at the service of turning everything around, at the service of fighting for an anti-capitalist and socialist strategy. And with our whole party with our leaders, contributing our strength and ideas to the Left Front Unity, for the political battles to come.
