PGE: Enough of "eating them with potatoes"
In process. The clashes and negotiations between parliamentary blocs for the General Budgets of the state 2021 (PGE) they are going to an outcome. The PSOE-UP government obtained a majority of 198 votes against 150 and obtained the rejection of the seven amendments to the totality that requested the return the project to the executive. With this result, continue the process parliamentary, it will be debated and voted again in the Lower House with dates 30 from november and 3 December and the Senate will be turned. Although in a country mired in a deep institutional crisis, economic, political and social, You can not say "the last word has already been said ", the government has moved towards final approval.
Seduction failed. From the beginning of the debates the government sought to negotiate with the PP and Ciudadanos. Because, officials bitterly regretted that the popular sided with the VOX far right in rejecting. citizens, in his attempt to acquire a center-right profile, first i know showed willing to negotiate, but finally "Returned to the sources”And announced your rejection of any agreement that included "ETA members and pro-independence activists". The government had the policy of seducing the right, but it failed.
The partners. In this context, the coalition once again appealed to its partners investment, even at the cost of recreating an unstable and complex relationship. The PNV does not missed the opportunity to agree, as he did with Rajoy, since he is a partner whoever it is while the interlocutor on duty guarantees your demands economic. So did EH Bildu who supports Pedro Sánchez to “open a window of opportunity for the democratization of Spain” as part an ongoing strategy to “grow and reach the republic basque”. Y, no surprises, ERC joined again, giving continuity to its policy of trying to negotiate with the government at all costs.
Libertarian budgets!? Beyond sustained critical phraseology and independence, a construction of support for the bourgeois government is raised and in this way to the monarchical-parliamentary regime of '78. Freedoms democracy that the people defend in the streets cannot be exchanged for economic benefits that will go to the coffers of the local bourgeoisie. The that from a speech for freedom support the PSOE-UP government, are closer to the demand for autonomy less than the Catalan and Basque Republics, in the middle of a continued offensive of the state Spanish against the democratic freedoms, with repression, political prisoners and exiles.
Recent memory. In 2018, when Rajoy was about to leave power, he told who would later replace him: «They are going to have to eat with potatoes », even if the government changes. In the other one extreme, Pablo Iglesias defined those assumptions as: «... crumbs social, the budgets of the scam, consolidate a model based on extreme inequality and precariousness. it is a budget that most social to live in the most absolute insecurity, minimize the state of wellness…». You surely remember what you said, but, in the light of so many broken promises, some wonder if it will really drive a deep break with the previous budget.
Again "with potatoes”? With these antecedents, Several questions arise, what will happen to the PGE2021? they would reverse the cuts in health?Will education improve? Will the layoffs and adjustments to workers? Will injustices be solved with pensioners? Will the millions of euros earmarked for royalty be eliminated corrupt for Juan Carlos I to live the high life and escape from Spain? Everything indicates that again, they will want the people to eat the budget "with potatoes" and bear the costs of the crisis. How are they raised, the PGE do not will solve none of the social fund problems, sharpened by pandemic, but they will once again favor the richest and most powerful.
Change something, to hold everything. The resources that will feed the budget will come from the millions of euros promised to Spain with the EU recovery fund, once they get over the blockade of Hungary and Poland. From the hand of the funds will come the adjustments, as the CUP deputies when they presented amendments to the totality of the budgets. It is true that public investment will increase, but in a much lower proportion than the enormous social needs, mainly in public health and education. Workers' incomes will continue to deteriorate due to labor reform and insufficient wages. Pensions will be updated according to the CPI, but lengthening the retirement age. The resources will not be used to receive the thousands of immigrants fleeing Africa to the EU, if not then prevent them from entering the EU or expel them hot if they cross borders. The money will continue to fuel militarism and support for Morocco, as much as an immigration officer, as occupant of Western Sahara. The funds will not prioritize measures against unemployment, nor the fight against patriarchal machismo with a budget increase in line with the serious situation that women live. As we have been denouncing, the big favored ones will be the big IBEX35 companies and the richest. They have been preparing that destination for a long time in meetings between officials and large employers, under the formulation of a mutual collaboration. It is beginning to be embodied with LOSS to control and execute the largest investment projects endowed with the European fund, under the control of the Council of Ministers, easing controls on public procurement and business grants, that is to say, doing the "blind eye" legalized by the state.
Mobilization for a workers' and popular agenda. He "bad smaller" It is the same political trap that the parties repeat throughout the world as a formula to sustain regimes and the state. Neither it is original to pose "Support the good and reject the bad" something that always ends in the same: Nothing changes. What is needed is that CC.OO majority union centrals. and UGT call to fight, to mobilize, to the general strike to impose a truly progressive budget in favor of the working class and popular sectors, that faithfully reflects the interests of the neediest who make up the vast majority of society.
For a new political alternative. Rajoy's budget was disastrous, and that of Sánchez-Iglesias will not change it qualitatively: was designed in the offices of officials of the '78 regime, together with the great capitalist entrepreneurship and under the impositions of Brussels. It takes a budget built from below, with participation popular and democratic, to decide their own destiny. And it becomes more necessary never to build a new political alternative, a radical left front, anticapitalist, of independence of class, that calls to mobilize consequently, facing the social democracy and the center-left with its reformist traps and both right as ultra, both in institutions and on the streets.
