May Day: electoral crisis and the urgency of a workers’ way out of the crisis

The electoral situation in Peru is going through one of its most critical moments. The resignation of Piero Corvetto as head of the National Office of Electoral Processes (ONPE), amidst allegations of irregularities, logistical failures and accusations of fraud after the first round on April 12, only confirms what we have been pointing out: the electoral system and democratic institutionality are deeply deteriorated.

What happened is not an isolated event. Tables that were not installed, materials that did not arrive on time and exceptional decisions to extend the voting period evidenced an operational collapse that directly hit the citizens’ confidence. The subsequent resignation of Corvetto, accepted by the National Justice Board (JNJ), seeks to contain the crisis, but does not solve the underlying problem: a system incapable of fully guaranteeing a legitimate electoral process.

This is no longer only a matter of determining who will dispute the second round, but of assuming that this scenario demands a clear position regarding the projects at stake and, above all, regarding the structural limits of a democracy that has proven to be incapable of channeling the demands of the majorities. Today, without complementary elections or extraordinary review mechanisms, the official count has defined that the second round will be disputed between Keiko Fujimori and Roberto Sanchez. This definition, far from closing the crisis, reconfigures it, transferring the accumulated tensions of the electoral process towards a new stage in which it becomes unavoidable to adopt a clear political position.

From the workers’ perspective, this dilemma cannot be approached in neutral terms. The Fujimori dictatorship is not and cannot be an option, since it represents the historical continuity of an authoritarian, exclusionary model, deeply functional to the interests of an economic elite that has governed with its back to the people, consolidating inequalities and restricting rights. But at the same time, neither does it constitute a real solution to continue granting a margin of action to the logics of the criminal pact that crosses the State and that, under different political expressions, guarantees the reproduction of an order in which nothing changes in essence. Thus, the problem is not limited to choosing between two candidates, but rather to recognize the limits of a system that reduces political participation to limited options, while blocking fundamental transformations.

This scenario acquires an even more significant dimension when placed within the framework of May Day, International Workers’ Day. This is not merely a temporal coincidence, but a direct interpellation to the historical meaning of this date: the organized struggle of the working class for their rights and for the transformation of society. Today, in Peru, this struggle is expressed in a context of structural precariousness, widespread informality and absence of basic guarantees, where millions of workers sustain daily life while the political system is incapable of offering real answers. In this context, the electoral discussion cannot be separated from the need to build a political horizon that has at its center those who produce wealth and, nevertheless, remain excluded from decisions.

From Alternativa Socialista Perú, we reaffirm that the strategic task is to advance in the construction of a government of and for the workers, which does not administer the crisis but faces it from a perspective of structural transformation. This implies assuming that the alternative will not come from above nor will it be the automatic result of the electoral contest, but must be built from below, based on conscious organization, the articulation of struggles and the strengthening of an independent social and political force. In a regional context marked by the advance of the ultra-right and the hardening of conservative projects, this task becomes even more urgent: there is no possibility of stopping these processes without grassroots organization and mass mobilization.

In that sense, today Together for Peru appears as a possible channel to express part of that discontent and that aspiration for change, not as a finished solution, but as a tool in dispute that gathers the echo of a people demanding justice and deep transformations. Our task, then, is not to delegate, but to actively intervene so that this tool is strengthened in an independent and class sense, capable of overcoming the limits of the system and opening the way to a real alternative. Because in the face of a system in crisis, it is not enough to choose: it is necessary to organize in order to transform. And that task remains clear: let those who have never governed, the workers and the people, govern.

Alternativa Socialista Peru
The left that fights and transforms