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The 19 and 20
Por Raymond -
Friday, Dec. 20, 2002 at 10:16 AM
webmaster@po.org.ar
The popular rebellion has ushered in a new historical stage, which is in the middle of the process of maturing. On its basis will emerge an authority having its origin in the movement of struggle, capable of calling for a sovereign Constituent Assembly
EDITORIAL
ON THE EVE OF THE 19 AND 20
Christian Rath
"You are calling for a mobilization on the 19 and 20 to oust Duhalde, for a new Argentinazo and a Constituent [Assembly] to replace the government. How will it be achieved and what will that Constituent [Assembly] be like?" When Marcelo Zlotowiajda, on the program Journalists (Periodistas) last Sunday asked Raul Castells (MIJD – Independent Movement of Retired and Unemployed Workers) and Néstor Pitrola (Polo Obrero – Workers' Pole) this question, he was giving a measure of the political situation.
The journalist was acknowledging the alternative to power posed by a unified group of the piquetero leadership, the Popular Assemblies, the MIJD, and the PO (see PO No. 781) in the face of the complete failure of the government to overcome social collapse and find a way out of the political decomposition of the regime.
In the lapse of a week the government went from demanding "the dissolution of the IMF," in the words of Chancellor Ruckauf, encouraging the "line" of negotiating separately with the World Bank and the IDB, to admitting that there was no way of "bridging" the IMF; afterwards it allowed news to be leaked of a "surprising coincidence concerning the statistics of the next economic plan" and again announced the possibility of an imminent accord (daily La Nacion 12/18). The strategy of according with the IMF has been the cornerstone of the government's policy: it has destined 4.8 billion dollars of "fresh funds" to paying the debt and assigned 22% of the 2003 budget towards making payments on the interest. But the IMF is chiefly concerned with conditioning the political process and the elections themselves.
The government says that it has put an end to the recession, but after a drop of 30 per cent an increase of 1 or 2 percentage points means nothing. There is no possibility of reactivating the economy in a country where the wages have fallen 30 per cent and the basic food costs have risen 73.8 per cent in the course of the year. The government is without a candidate of its own for the PJ (Justicialist Party - Peronist), another measure of the crisis.
National bankruptcy
Due to this acute turn in the political crisis, the call to occupy the Plaza de Mayo and all the plazas of the country made by the piquetero organizations and Popular Assemblies, has acquired such force and produced such an acute political delimitation. Duhalde's government, which usurped power with the vote of a Legislative Assembly explicitly unauthorized by the popular rebellion, has not been able to comply with the essential part of the mandate conferred upon it by the capitalist class: to neutralize and revert the revolutionary situation created by that rebellion. The installation of the 19 and 20 as a day of mobilization, For all of them to go (Que se vayan todos), Duhalde out now, and for a Constituent Assembly, is a political victory for the movement of struggle oriented towards the overcoming of isolated actions.
The campaign of the government to assure its survival collides head on with the national bankruptcy. Three provincial governments (Entre Ríos, Tucumán, Neuquén), are on the edge of the abyss, centers of lightning growth in poverty and complete and absolute political decomposition of the states (municipal workers have gone unpaid, in the Litoral province since September). But dozens of cities (Esquel, Berazategui, Centenario, Salta) are very near to a political explosion.
The Council of Dialog (Mesa del Diálogo)
Because it is conscious of facing an unresolved crisis of exceptional characteristics, the government has appealed to the Church itself to try to attenuate the tendencies towards mobilization of the people. The call for a day "for peace" on December 18 is an initiative aimed especially against what the press calls "the hard core" of the piquetero movement. The imposters, which is what they should be called, act for the government and have received the support of the CTA (Argentine Confederation of Labor), the CCC (Combative Class Struggle Current movement of the unemployed – Maoist) and the FTV (movement of the unemployed). Luis D'Elía is a prominent spokesperson for this political maneuver. The FTV and the CCC are politically active in the camp of the Argentine Dialog, whose great objective is to monopolize the management of the plans of social welfare and the resources offered by the World Bank.
Those making the call on the 18 are calling for days for "peaceful social co-existence" and say that "peace is built with justice and with non-violent methods", but they say not a word of the unpunished crimes of the 43 assassinations perpetrated since the popular rebellion, a role that is fitting for those who cover up political crimes, guided, in the best of cases, by pressure from political power.
Constituent Assembly
The call for a free and sovereign Constituent Assembly is a conclusion which flows obligatorily from the democratic demand par excellence of the moment: "Que se vayan todos – All of them have got to go." For the masses, the bankruptcy of capital, expressed in the daily death of children through malnutrition, becomes present as a crisis of political representation. And through this crisis of political representation, the problem of power is raised. The slogan of Constituent Assembly puts forward a unification of aims among the working class in struggle, the Popular Assemblies, the savings account holders and the confiscated neighbors, on the basis of an elemental consideration: for "all of them to go" and for "none of them to ever return" it is necessary to destroy the power of Duhalde and the governors, because only by destroying this power is it possible to choose a new representation of the people, and not of the old party hacks, belonging instead to the members of the assemblies, to the
The popular rebellion has ushered in a new historical stage, which is in the middle of the process of maturing. On its basis will emerge an authority having its origin in the movement of struggle, capable of calling for a sovereign Constituent Assembly.
We propose this demand, really decisive at the current moment, in order to overcome the limitations of the Argentinazo of one year ago, limitations which permitted the usurping of the popular rebellion
See croniques and photos of Federal March to Plaza de Mayo