At the end of the year, the country’s main political leaders have sought to install a supposedly “republican” agenda but that in reality hides strong antidemocratic dangers.
Mauricio Macri launched his “Clean Record” project so that the judicial caste has more power over elections and political parties. But the most important thing came later. Because that debate was just the backdrop for a deeper one: a political and electoral reform that seeks to ensure that only the large parties supported by businessmen and the caste can present themselves. It was presented by the La Libertad Avanza government but immediately began to negotiate it with Unión por la Patria and other blocks. The PRO says he opposes. In the last hours, former president Cristina Fernández spread the idea of a constitutional reform: “the Constitution must be reformed. There cannot be elections every two years, it has to be every four years,” he said in a radio podcast. The same idea that Gerardo Morales promoted in the Jujuy Constituent Assembly of 2023 and generated a provincial rebellion.
The right and Peronism, in the midst of a brutal crisis, They are “concerned” about the “cost”, “quantity” and “regularity” of the electionsas Myriam Bregman denounced, but in reality It is demagoguery to shape an undemocratic consensus. Behind the promoted polarization there are points of agreement: that you have fewer and fewer political options, fewer political rights, fewer democratic freedoms. They want to give a twist to a regime that is already undemocratic for the vast majority.
Let’s do a brief review of the proposals and then see what the left proposes.
How much concern about the “cost”, about the “quantity” of elections… What’s next?
— Myriam Bregman (@myriambregman) December 4, 2024
A proscriptive reform
In the last few days of November the government announced a “political reform” project which, if approved in Congress, could imply a ban on all left-wing parties and other minorities. They want to impose a political regime in which only a few political parties can have representation in Congress and nominate presidential candidates. Specifically, those that are financed by large business groups. We are not only talking about an attack on the left, which is very clear, but also on the political rights of millions of people who do not agree with the majority parties or coalitions, which are questioned by a deep crisis of representation.
As we say here, the projects include: eliminate public financing so that not all voices are heard, eliminate spaces provided on radio and tv so you can hear a single bell, elimination of the presidential debates or directly delete I STEP them.
This reform could not be approved without the support of the opposition. Milei knows that he has many collaborationist blocks, although at this point he has a crisis with the PRO. That’s why The key is a pact with Peronism. And it is not what La Izquierda Diario says, but rather journalists from “both sides of the rift”: there is a negotiation underway. As we say here, Germán Martínez, president of the Union for the Homeland Deputies block, confirmed it in his own way, when he had to respond to Nicolás del Caño’s questions.
That is why from the PTS in the Left Front we warn about this reactionary negotiation. And we propose that it is necessary for all progressive sectors that reject any proscription – to the left and other forces – to call for the rejection of this reform.
Peronism fights the right-wing agenda
But now we find another fact that confirms that, beyond the “fine print”, they are not discussing how to expand rights and freedoms, but rather restrict them even more.
Or how can we understand Cristina Kirchner’s silence regarding Milei’s reform and her proposal to vote every 4 years? It looks like a “I want a trick” to see who stays with the “Bonapartist” agenda: that is, who proposes an increasingly undemocratic regime, concentrated in a presidential figure with more power, where the traditional parties (the caste) share power and make agreements behind the backs of the people, a people who can only vote every two (or four!) years to supposedly decide their future, when in reality political power is increasingly concentrated in a caste that governs for the businessmen who bank it. The “markets”, on the other hand, vote every dayimposing devaluations, bullfights, blackmailing for benefits or negotiating laws, achieving labor reforms or price deregulations. If Alberto or Milei don’t comply, they want you to wait four years to vote, but also between the same options.
That’s what we’re talking about when we report a Bonapartist attempt: authoritarian, concentration of political power and attack on the rights of the majority.
The former president says in the same interview that “we have a monarchical remora in one of the powers of the State”, referring to the Judicial Branch. However, he sees no problems in reinforcing the political caste in the Casa Rosada, the governorships and the parliament.
Both Milei and Kirchner would have to remember that there was already a laboratory for constitutional reform which generated a popular rebellion. It was when Gerardo Moralesin Jujuy, promoted a series of attacks that included elections every 4 years and many other clauses for the government in power to impose its will without having sufficient majorities.
Morales managed to unite against him the rejection of this attempt to concentrate power and the denial of democratic rights, along with the fight against adjustment. “Down with the reform, up with salaries” was the cry that shocked the province. Only a pact with the PJ saved him from total defeat. Only the left raised those flags until the end, actively participating in each mobilization while denouncing this attack within the Constituent Assembly itself.
Today we see how the right and Peronism They are negotiating to get out of the “crisis of representation”, seeking to shield themselves with more concentration of power, more impunity, more privatization of politics and fewer democratic rights. We can’t allow it.
🚫 Do they tell you that elections are an expense? The same thing they say when they want to privatize other rights. We cannot allow it to go on behind the people’s backs. This infamous reform must not happen. pic.twitter.com/tPELwPHLk3
— Left Front Unity (@Fte_Izquierda) December 3, 2024
The left always criticized this political regime in which the traditional and government parties spend 100 million dollars per presidential campaign, have their television channels and radio stations at their service, and use the apparatus of the national, provincial and municipal states at their service. A regime where the people can vote every two years, and are prohibited from deliberating and governing according to the National Constitution itself, while the large economic groups and the so-called “markets” are the ones that design the direction of the country at their service. The PTS-Left Front fights strategically for a Government of the Workers and the people, a system a thousand times more democratic than the current one, where the working people can decide on a daily basis about all aspects of society. From that place we confront and denounce any attempt to further limit the already limited capitalist democracy.
Are Peronism and the organizations and leaders that align with that party going to support these antidemocratic attacks?
While continuing in the streets, universities and workplaces fighting against the adjustment, the PTS calls: to all the other parties of the FITU, to the rest of the left and to all the parties and personalities that claim to be democratic, to the combative social, worker and student organizations to carry out an extensive and profound national campaign to avoid a new blow to freedoms most basic democracy.
Source: www.laizquierdadiario.com
