Argentina: MST statement at the FIT Unit in the face of the Buenos Aires police conflict
The conflict between sectors of the Buenos Aires Police, which was later joined by a part of the provincial Penitentiary Service, and that still remains without resolution, has opened an evident political crisis and expresses a particular combination of elements of different signs. Installed in various places with their weapons and mobile phones, They even claim before the Olivos Presidential Fifth itself.
It's more: The official confirmation of a salary increase did not satisfy the troops, that require knowing the precise figure, a meeting with his boss Sergio Berni and other demands. The Buenos Aires chief of staff, Carlos Bianco, confirmed that Berni remains in his position. Both announcements confirm that the government's priority is its repressive apparatus., while maintaining starvation wages, layoffs and suspensions for the entire working class.
On the one hand, It is clear that the social control role of the quarantine and the constant encouragement from the national government and especially Sergio Berni have emboldened that force., whose nature is repressive like that of all police. The result of the continuous praise and harangues of political power, plus the recent government announcement of a multi-million dollar mega “security” plan for the Buenos Aires suburbs, without a doubt it has been to empower the largest police force in the country.
Both, This conflict is a new expression of the more general social decomposition that crosses the entire country. By breaking the verticality of its chain of command, including Berni and Governor Axel Kicillof, in fact it weakens its role as a repressive apparatus. And as an effect, the police demand for a 56% a 64% salary increase and the government's immediate yes encourage the anger and demands of workers, especially those of the State, whose salaries are more than relegated. These should be the priority: the true essentials, like those in health who are on the front lines of the pandemic, and a group has joined our organization, transport, of supermarkets and other workers, They all deserve an immediate and substantial salary increase, as well as retirements and social plans.
In that sense, We repudiate the caradurism of the right-wing political opposition. When Macri was the government in the province and in the country, he not only adjusted state salaries downwards to “reduce public spending.”, He governed at the service of the IMF and dismantled public health and education, but applied a whole series of repressive measures against social demands, the youth and the poor, with the Chocobar doctrine as its flag.
At the same time, Nor do we believe that the police conflict today is putting the validity of the constitutional order at risk., of this limited “democracy”, as some official political and union sectors proclaim in order to unconditionally defend the provincial and national governments of the Frente de Todos, political leaders of this crisis situation.
But along with the salary increase, democratize the force and right to unionize, The police statement of claims includes the point 14 against “retaliation”: summaries, arrests, disaffections, transfers. We reject it outright, since it implies impunity for violence and other crimes in Buenos Aires. It is impossible to separate from this context the direct responsibility of that force in the forced disappearance followed by the death of Facundo Astudillo Castro., trigger happy cases, police abuse and corruption crimes.
from now, The claim of the uniformed personnel does not raise a necessary point such as the non-repression of social protests: workers struggles, land grabs, environmental marches, etc. In addition to Berni leaving right now, A true security policy would require not only the fight against social inequality as the basic cause of crime., but the dissolution of this Buenos Aires and other police forces to build a new, totally different democratic security body, preventive in nature, non-repressive and with participation and social control, among other background measures.
No clear perspective yet, The ongoing police conflict is another symptom of a more structural illness: the social crisis that deepens day by day under this capitalist system and the unviability of the IMF adjustment plans and their repressive correlation to impose them. The true solution then lies in promoting an economic and political project of the opposite direction., anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist and socialist, whose axis is popular well-being and not the benefit of the rich and corporations or the repression of working people.
9 September 2020
