2023-09-18 12:53:59
White vote and fight organize
All candidates promise to solve society’s problems if elected. Although the vast majority of them and their parties have been in governments and parliamentary institutions doing the opposite: governing and legislating for the rich, against the poor, embezzling the public treasury and deepening the social crisis.
In elections there are no guarantees for those at the bottom
In what has to do with electoral participation, the reactionary constitution of 1886 was more “democratic” than that of 1991. The workers’ parties could participate only with the registration, in the Registry Office, of the candidate or the list of candidates and some witnesses. Then, the Socialist Workers Party had legal status and space on television.
The 1991 Constitution gave democratic guarantees to minorities such as indigenous and black communities, which is very good. But it eliminated them from other sectors. Those who want to participate in elections must rent a legal representative, set up an electoral company and dedicate themselves to managing and preserving it, making alliances with political sectors where what matters the least are principles, receiving money of dubious origin to finance the campaigns. This is the reason why the vast majority of left-wing parties are electoral in nature, for whom the goal is elections, the rest is tactical.
In the historic Pact, robbery has been unleashed with multiple fractures during the process of electing candidates and forming the lists, unprincipled agreements, nepotism and clientelism ride on the thesis that alternative projects must be strengthened to prevent that fascism takes regional power. The unrest is growing at the bases, especially in the popular sectors who observe how retreaded politicians, or those appointed from above, settle into the first places on the lists that are closed, leaving the true fighters and leaders outside of any possibility. Social leadership or proposals are not part of the criteria.
An example of the above was the demobilization policy that the left-wing parties that lead the workers’ confederations had, in the face of the 2021 strike. They called for the strike to be lifted to channel discontent in the elections. In order to add more votes, these parties and coalitions that call themselves left-wing accept into their lists politicians who come from the ranks of traditional politics, who then delegitimize the entire project with their corrupt practices or their policies against the masses. Such is the example of Barreras or Benedetti in Congress, or “Manguito”, those same types of characters are on all the lists for the regional elections. The dissatisfied bases protest without anyone listening to them, in some places there is talk of the lack of union representation, of women or of indigenous people; It is also reported that the heads of the list are chosen from above.
Definitely, these elections do not represent anything positive for the workers and the people. Just as a year ago the contest distortedly expressed the desire for change, and the vote for Petro a progressive phenomenon associated with the National Strike, these elections do not represent the fight, but rather the denial of it. Lacking legitimacy with seriously questioned organizations, without representing workers’ and popular power, they become an obstacle to the struggles. A new illusion of achieving the desired change through the polls, conquering territorial power, while at the same time making an agreement with the usual ones from above. It is the example of how to put the struggle at the service of the elections and not the opposite, which is what should be done.
Class independence and fight against capitalist exploitation
The Socialist Workers Party, as we explained in edition 749, is not abstentionist, it participates in elections following the principle of class independence and putting the elections at the service of the fight for the socialist revolution, to change the capitalist system, eliminating profit, labor exploitation and inequality, and fighting to build a revolutionary leadership to lead the socialist revolution to a successful conclusion; the rest is tactical. For this reason, in the last elections our vote for Petro was tactical, formulated as a critical vote.
We voted for Petro to accompany the expectations of the workers, and to deal a blow to the parties of the bourgeoisie, as we effectively did; But we did so warning that his policy and program would not change anything, because it would maintain the capitalists’ profits through the exploitation of workers. He has accomplished that and that is why we do not support him. However, as of today we continue to believe that voting for Petro without supporting his program and his Government was the correct decision. However, at that time we did not call to support the lists of the Pact in Congress, because they were composed of all types of opportunists and bourgeois politicians.
When we had legal status and could participate with our own candidates, we did not do so to generate hopes in the elections, but to take advantage of the platform and denounce the system of exploitation, corruption and inequality, proposing a program at the service of the socialist revolution against capitalism. We turned the television program into a news program at the service of the workers so that they could denounce their conflicts and call for mobilization activities, and to agitate our program. If we regained our legal status again we would do the same.
They deceive us in the elections
Elections are not as free as they would have us believe. They condition us with campaigns of fear and promises of change, promoted by the major media controlled by capitalists.
The reformist politicians in the Government today threaten us with supposed fascism and the return of the “right”; They offer us a new country while they negotiate our rights with the opposition and imperialism. The right-wing bourgeois opposition threatens us that if we fight for change, the country “will become like Venezuela”, with greater crime and social degradation, but what it offers us as a solution is more prisons, more repression, more death.
The candidates, in non-electoral periods, are in their mansions, in government command positions and in public corporations, managing the businesses of the rich, legislating for them and dividing up the business with private contracts. But during electoral times they disguise themselves as people and visit popular towns and neighborhoods, co-opting the leaders of the Communal Action and popular activists so that they organize the machinery well.
In the electoral period each person is an individual, each individual a vote, each voter a victim of bourgeois democracy. In that field, they beat the workers and the rest of the dispossessed, they dominate us.
The fight in the streets is our terrain
In the streets it is more difficult to control us. In the mobilizations we go with a certain level of organization. We act more collectively and if governments, as representatives of the bourgeoisie and defenders of their interests, repress us, we act with class solidarity and organize ourselves better to continue the struggle. In the street fight, in the national strike and in the general strike we are not individuals but collectives.
The issues over which we remain divided disappear and we unite. It is enough to remember how the members of the soccer teams put aside their fanaticism for sports companies that take advantage of this division and deadly confrontations between the poor, and the maneuver was reversed: the national strike prevented Colombia from hosting the America’s Cup soccer. A country united against the businessmen.
Through the mechanisms of bourgeois democracy, no minister can be overthrown, no matter how hated by the masses. Counter-reforms cannot be defeated either. With the struggle in the streets we overthrew two ministers of Duque’s government and defeated two counter-reforms: the health reform and the tax reform.
In the streets, in the heat of the community pot, we built assemblies, we got to know our neighbors and the power of collective struggle. That is not achieved in elections. Elections teach us to believe that others, from above, will solve our problems, that we just have to vote and then wait.
What should the next battle be like?
The social crisis has not been resolved and will not be resolved with the promises of the candidates in the elections, nor with Petro’s policy of consultation with landowners and businessmen. Petro promised to dismantle the discontent, but by not having taken radical measures in favor of the workers and the poor, this discontent remains. This has been stated by the indigenous communities and residents of departments such as La Guajira and Cauca.
The road blockades, that is, the fighting methods that were promoted in the strikes of 2019 and 2021, are resumed. What has not been achieved is the unification of the mobilization at the national level, as happened in 2019 and 2021.
Given the deepening of the social crisis, it is necessary to once again promote the unified struggle, but trying to resolve important problems that were limiting in the strikes of 2019 and 2021. One of them, the participation of workers to control production and block the profit of the capitalists. That is why we promote the slogan: It is not at the polls, it is in the streets!
Vote blank and fight for democratic political reform
For the elections that are in progress there is not as much enthusiasm in any candidate as there was with Petro. Each candidate, each list and party participates in the elections with the objective of winning positions in local governments and public corporations. They aim to reinforce the illusion that through elections the problems that afflict the poor can be solved.
We do not have legal status nor are there independent candidates whose objective is to agitate the struggle in the streets, the national strike, the overthrow of the capitalist system and a program for socialist revolution. Even the candidates who come from the labor and popular movement, and who have been fighters, are tied both to the Pact’s class collaboration program and to the opportunist politicians on the lists. That is why what we propose is to vote blank, as a way of protesting.
We protest first of all against the undemocratic regime and the rules of the Colombian electoral system, which in practice deny the right to choose and be elected. In Colombia, only those who have financial means can participate in elections, both because of the enormous cost of the campaigns, if they want to compete, which they must pay if they do not win the million-dollar policies, even the risk of being fined if they do not. cross the undemocratic threshold.
Not only do we call for a blank vote on this occasion, but we will begin the process to demand the restitution of our legal status. But this would not be enough, with the current legislation, even if it were granted to us, we would have no way of maintaining it, due to the policies they require, and we would possibly lose it in the next election, and the right to political participation would continue to be denied to the majority, for the working class and the poor.
Therefore, this fight is also for truly democratic political reform. We want electoral guarantees and political participation, not only for ourselves, but for the entire working class who have been one of the main victims of the armed conflict, stripped of their rights for decades. We invite you to support us in this new fight we undertake.
But we also protest, and we call on all fighters to reflect on the electoral practices of the so-called left, which unfortunately are not different from those of traditional politics.
Executive Committee of the Socialist Workers Party
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