Yesterday may have been a new turning point. The protest in front of the Congress in support of the just cause of retirees was massive, very strong, and had expressions in various other parts of the country, even in spite of the government’s campaign of intimidation to weaken the call for supporting retirees, the shameless policy of fake news in the mass media tied to the libertarian government and the brutaly complicit absence of the CGT.

The scripted repressive provocation Minister Bullrich mounted early on and the massive deployment of hydrant trucks, tear gas, rubber bullets, undercover agents and a thousand other maneuvers was unable to easily disperse the protest. During hours, the protest was a dramatic expression of anger around the Congress and at night, it turned into self-organized pot-banging protest on many corners of the city of Buenos Aires and the surrounding neighbourhoods.

At the same time, yesterday’s repression and the statements of Bullrich and other members of the ruling sect, place an unquestionable fact on the agenda. We are facing changes in the political regime that we have known until now. There is a shift that has fascist features, threatens elementary democratic freedoms and looks more and more like a dictatorship:

• Bullrrich anticipated protest before the protest that they will “find for legal charges” to endorse the criminalization of protest.
• Devious, savage, brutal beatings of retired men and women were celebrated by the repressive forces.
• Cops provoked demonstrators with McCarthyist chants (“come and get it, lefties”).
• “Undercover” agents acting blatantly, as seen in videos showing the repressive forces planting weapons to prosecute demonstrators with illegal posession of weapons.
• Federal Police officers taking selfies, laughing and celebrating in the midst of the repression.
• The grotesque presidential spokesman tweeting a fake flyer of the Left Front Unity with “instructions” for the mobilization.
• Everything happenned in the context of the application of an illegal anti-protest Protocol that has been legally challenged but, in the end, a Judiciary that is tied to whoever is in power (with very few exceptions) allowing all this barbarity to pass.

That is to say, taken as a whole, there is an ultra-reactionary conception with fascist elements that is being transformed into State policy, threatening democratic freedoms and de facto altering the political regime we have known up to now. What is happening is of enormous gravity.

In parallel, the tally of people wounded and arrested, and the case of photojournalist Pablo Grillo, who is currently fighting for his life in the Ramos Mejía Hospital, is the demonstration of the brutal plan, premeditated with malice by the Ministry of Security in the general framework of this conception that emboldens and gives the repressive forces carte blanche to act with savagery.

Therefore, a first categorical definition is that Patricia Bullrich cannot remain a minute longer in her position and must resign.

But the context of yesterday’s protest adds many more problems for the libertarian government:

• The President and his sister traveled to Bahía Blanca amid the catastrophic floods and, in spite of the media “shield” operations, they were repudiated by the people there. After almost a week since the floods began, they tried to show up and save face, but it backfired.
• Yesterday, while the mobilization faced brutal repression in the Congess Plaza, inside the legislative cave of bandits, the ruling party failed in its attempt to provide the President impunity for the crypto-scam and had to adjourn the session to avoid the treatment of the retirement moratorium, the nomination of judges appointed by decree and the delegated powers. The “outside” had an impact on a legislative session that revealed the structural weaknesses of a degraded political regime in crisis.
• On top of all this, the government is in the middle of negotiations with the IMF, desperate for dollars to continue feeding the vicious circle of speculation of banks and trader friends. Needing to show the markets social control, stability and institutional order, it instead offered a panorama of strong complications that threaten to feed back and derive into a more general crisis of governance. The outcome remains to be seen.

For the time being, since February 1st with the massive action in repudiation of Milei’s homophobic remarks in Davos, added to the blow to the credibility of the government itself around the crypto-scam, plus the mobilization of March 8, then the catastrophe of Bahia Blanca and yesterday’s disaster that amplifies widespread indignation against the government , it is clear that there is sufficient social strength to confront the government’s offensive in the streets and raise what is growing as a popular slogan: Milei has to go. This government is done, and to gt rid of them it is fundamental to massify and nationalize the popular response with permanent mobilization.

It must be said that another clamor that does not stop growing is the enormous repudiation of the CGT and all the traitorous union leaderships that are acting as accomplices of the government’s criminal policy. We need an active general strike, with a plan of struggle, discussed and voted in workplace assemblies. But we can expect nothing from the bureaucrats allied with Milei . For that reason, in reality, relying on the independent and militant unions, and the anger that is spreading among workers because of the social situation we are living, we have to consider the need to build a new union federation witn a different leadership that actually responds to the needs of the rank and file and not to their own privileges and those of the bosses.

We also cannot fail to point out the absence of Peronism, of its main leaders, in the call to yesterday’s protest, and their inaction beyond statements against the general aggression against the people that is taking place. It is evident that the infighing of the apparatus, the electoral speculation and the lack of an alternative program to resolve our country’s crisis invalidates that political force as a real option for the workers and the people. The resounding failure of the government of Alberto Fernandez, Cristina Kirchner, Sergio Massa and company is still very fresh in the memory of the population.

Given all the above, we believe that it is immediately fundamental to call for a big mass protest next week all over the country in support of the demands of the retirees, but also stating that Bullrich and Milei must go, because they are enemies of the people, repressors and criminals. Let the protest take the form of a national flag concentration or “cacerolazo” (pot banging) and end with mass rallies in all the squares and political centers of Argentina.

Obviously, we demand the immediate release of all arrested yesterday.

Furthermore, this whole situation, also strengthens the perspective of a united and massive mobilization on March 24 (anniversary of the 1976 military coup), which must become a strong and historic demonstration against the national government and accelerate the countdown for the end of this disaster that is leading Argentina.

One last reflection: this country has been governed by Radicals, Peronists, the military, Macrist businessmen, and now by this delirious gang that call themselves libertarians. The only ones who never governed are the workers and the left, which raises an anti-capitalist and socialist program, completely opposed to all the traditional political variants.

It is time to consider this historical and strategic perspective.

Milei, Bullrich and their entire government are done: they must be thrown out like in 2001.

Finally, we want to poset a task and a challenge that we consider crucial: to overcome the failed experience of Peronism in government and to bury the nightmare that currently governs, it is necessary to raise a political alternative of the left, of workers and the opressed that can overcome all sectarianism, dogma and seperate itself from all the practices of the old politics. It must be open and democratic from below, and raise a program that breakes entiresly with the capitalist model of social catastrophe that is sinking us as a people.

Our party is convinced that this is urgent, necessary and, if the political will exists, completely possible.

We call on every activist of the working class, the student, gender, LGBTIQ and human rights movements and on critical intellectuals to join us in this path.

The people, from below, must democratically decide how to proceed.

Let’s prepare a government of the workers and the left.

Let’s build an anti-capitalist and socialist political alternative to overcome all that has already failed.

MST National Leadership

March 13, 2025