Argentina: Report to Alejandro Bodart. "The agreement between the PO and the MST has enormous political importance"
We reproduce this note published in Socialist Alternative, MST newspaper, with the partner Alejandro Bodart, Secretary General of the MST in the Front of Izquierda Unidad and pre-candidate for governor of the Province of Buenos Aires. We asked him about the prospects for the country, the political significance of our recent agreement with the Partido Obrero and the open plenary of the left and the fighters that both forces convened for Saturday 17 of June in the Plaza Congreso.
How do you see the panorama of the country with the next government?
We are going to a country where the crisis will undoubtedly take a leap, where the government, whoever it is who finally ends up triumphing, it will do so with very few expectations of the mass movement and it will have to apply a brutal adjustment plan, go against the salaries of state workers, against retirements, against social plans, make working conditions more flexible, An atrocity. All this to comply with the conditions imposed by the IMF, continue paying millions and millions of dollars of foreign debt and respond to the true owners of Argentina, What are the large national economic groups and international corporations?.
Since this adjustment will not happen without repression, They are going to try to curtail democratic freedoms. We are already seeing this type of attack in many provinces, like now in Salta and Jujuy, where they promote ordinances, laws and even constitutional changes in order to fine, persecute and prohibit popular mobilization. They are going to try to restrict the right to strike and social protest.
Therefore, it will be necessary to prepare for this difficult perspective and hence the importance of strengthening the left, not only electorally but above all organizationally, to be able to respond to this reactionary offensive that they are going to try to apply and that we will try to make it not happen. So, the perspective that we see is towards a new Argentinazo similar or superior to that of December 2001, that is to say, a new process of massive mobilization, a rebellion against poverty and endless adjustment, that ends up putting the government in crisis, the parties of the system and all the institutions of this false democracy at the service of the rich.
What is your political assessment of the MST-PO agreement?
The agreement between the PO and the MST has enormous political importance. It is given on the basis of fundamental political coincidences in relation to the battle that we have to wage to reverse an increasingly electoral tendency of the FIT Unit. And to try to transform the front into a tool not only for elections, but fundamentally to organize the workers' resistance, youth and people to the reactionary capitalist counter-offensive that is already underway and that is going to deepen after the October elections.
That is why a left front is needed that not only meets every two years to see how to participate in the elections, but rather act united every day to fight the unions against the bureaucracy, to support social organizations that fight against the State's attempt to nationalize them, and against the attempt of the bourgeoisie that wants to eliminate social assistance to force a sector of the working class to work in conditions of semi-slavery. A front to support the youth, to the environmental struggles, to women and diversities, to the retirees who are on the canvas, to all the popular sectors that come out to defend their rights.
But the MST-PO agreement is also important to counteract a very dangerous political trend that could end up liquidating the Unity Left Front.. I am referring to the attempt to hegemonize it by one of the member forces, PTS, and thus change the essence of the FIT-U, which is a united front of parties and not a tool around which a single party ends up deciding candidates and profile, when we even have many nuances with that profile that said force has been raising.
How important is the call to the plenary of the 17 of June?
The importance of the plenary is strategic, not only at this electoral juncture, since it would allow us to avoid having two lists in the PASO if all the members of the front participated in the plenary. that way, among all the militancy, the friends of the front and those organizations that without being a part support the program, the best formula could be chosen, it could be discussed which is the most appropriate profile and which are the fundamental points of the program of the FIT Unit to carry out in the next period.
But the open plenary of the 17 It has an importance that goes beyond the electoral plane, since it would be the way to begin to organize the enormous sympathy that the front has and make those compañeras and compañeros fighters who approach and surround us stop being merely passive observers, that are called from time to time when there are elections, to become active militants of the organization and thus strengthen the social structure of the front in the different levels of society. Then we will not only have hundreds of thousands of votes, but we will begin to have tens and then hundreds of thousands of militants, that it is the only way to ensure that the fundamental changes that we propose can be carried out and become a reality in the near future.
In your opinion, What are the perspectives of the FIT Unit?
We are at a crossroads on the Left Front. It has been a huge victory that has brought together the bulk of the Argentine left and this has allowed the left to strengthen in the last period. But we're at a crossroads, since the front must evolve and become not only an electoral tool but also an alternative in the streets to broadly organize the militancy, the activists, supporters, to fight in all fields against the different options of the Argentine bourgeoisie in the perspective of a government of the workers and the popular sectors.
If the front fails to evolve, it can retreat. In fact there is some stagnation that is related to this problem. along with it, if the hegemonism of one of its member parties were consolidated, essentially based on an electoral project without having a direct relationship with the real structuring of that force in the working class, in the popular sectors, in organized militancy, could eventually lead to the front exploding.
That is why the fight we are giving is so important. First to defend the FIT Unit, to strengthen it as a fighting option. Because we are convinced that the front cannot be satisfied with just getting a deputy here, another deputy over there... It has to be a political option to respond every day to the different situations that the country suffers and in the different sectors of society, in the perspective of becoming a government option.
