It has been 72 hours since the general elections and, between electoral maneuvers and the ineffectiveness of the private company in charge of the logistics of the process, the candidate of Juntos por el Perú, Roberto Sánchez Palomino, would face Keiko Fujimori, recurrent candidate and heir of a dictatorship that left painful memories in the great majority of the Peruvian people.

In the face of the oversupply of right-wing candidacies and proposals, the option of Juntos por el Perú (Together for Peru) emerges as a hope for the popular sectors. In spite of its limitations, it represents today the only real possibility of confronting a candidate who promises more austerity, more precariousness and greater hardships for the workers and the people.

In order to defeat Fujimorism and all that it represents, it is necessary, in self-defense, to support Juntos por el Perú. This also implies an active effort so that the popular organizations defend the vote won and continue to struggle for unity around the only alternative that, as has been demonstrated, has real possibilities of stopping the advance of the right wing.

Therefore, we make an urgent call to the leftist organizations that supported candidates with marginal votes, such as Venceremos, as well as to those who promoted the blank or null vote -options that obtained the lowest percentages in the last decades-, to pronounce themselves in support of this candidacy and to strengthen a front that will prevent the triumph of Fujimorism. A front that, in addition, guarantees the convocation of a free and sovereign Plurinational Constituent Assembly, puts an end to the 1993 Constitution, demands the freedom of Pedro Castillo and all political prisoners, and advances in the implementation of a program of progressive transformations.

Not supporting Juntos por el Perú means, in practice, opening the way to more surrender of our resources, more poverty, less health, less education, lower salaries, greater labor precariousness and a significant setback in democratic rights.

The JP proposal, in spite of its limitations, has conquered an important space among workers, peasants, popular sectors and social movements in the countryside, the highlands and the city, as reflected in the distribution of our votes. An example of this is the overwhelming vote for Brigida Cura in Puno and for Analí Marquez in Cusco.

However, this is not enough in the face of the challenges ahead. A stronger, broader organization with deeper proposals is needed, since the country’s crisis demands structural transformations: palliatives and superficial measures are not enough.

The real power will try to continue to be exercised from the Congress, which concentrates veto and vacancy possibilities in spite of being the most repudiated institution in the country. They will try from that cave of bandits to continue guaranteeing privileges and profits to the powerful and that is why we will have to defend in the streets what they will try to take away from us from the desks of the congressmen. These reasons are what will demand that we strengthen the Left, anti-capitalist, feminist, eco-socialist and socialist pole within JP.

From our grouping Alternativa Socialista, we intend to go beyond the electoral terrain. We are committed to building a permanently present left, not only at election time, but alongside workers and the new social activism: in the neighborhoods, fighting for access to basic rights; with farmers, promoting a real agrarian reform; with women, defending equality; and with dissidents, in defense of their rights. Likewise, we denounce and reject opportunists who, attracted by power, seek to position themselves without real commitment to the people.

In synthesis, we seek to build a political tool that is not limited to the testimonial, that critically accompanies processes such as that of Juntos por el Perú, but with its own program and vocation for power. An organization that, together with the organized workers, fights to bury the 1993 Constitution and call for a Constituent Assembly with true popular participation.

We want an organization that acts in the day-to-day struggles and promotes them with determination. We want it to be built with thousands of fighters and activists who, day by day, forge the profound changes that Peru needs.

If we want to punish Fujimorism and its accomplices, we must defend the vote of Together for Peru and the right that the people have won to dispute the second round. At the same time, we call on all the anti-capitalist forces to come together in a common organization that fights for a government of those who have never governed: those from below, the workers and the people.