Radicals, socialists and Peronists closed an agreement in the early hours of Friday to call a Constituent Convention in the province of Santa Fe. But the reform of the provincial constitution is far from being done to put the economic resources of the province according to the needs of the workers and the people: the central objective is to achieve the re-election of the governor.
The election of the conventional constituents will be held in April together with the local PASO. The vote once again showed that the radicals of Pullaro and the “socialists” of Clara García were united, who are part of the official front and became the main defenders of the deeply regressive provincial retirement reform that was approved months ago.
An undemocratic reform to consolidate an authoritarian state
The sanction of the call for constitutional reform aims to strengthen the authoritarian aspects of a state that has proven to be a faithful defender of the businesses of big businessmen and drug trafficking. The government of Maximiliano Pullaro, under the umbrella of ‘security’, empowers the repressive forces and strengthens the most authoritarian aspects of the regime. When celebrating the vote, the governor himself makes it clear: “the State will be more powerful than any criminal organization.”
Already at the beginning of the year the government reformed the Criminal Procedure Code, giving greater powers to police and infiltrators. The population of Rosario is one of the most monitored with artificial intelligence monitoring. Youth are harassed, demanding the presentation of their ID to the police forces under the threat of arrest. And this persecutory atmosphere led to repression in the provincial legislature during the sanction of the retirement reform and to the unprecedented raids on private homes and the arrests of teaching and state officials.
The support of Peronism and the majority of the Del Frade bloc to the constitutional reform plan helps to consolidate an authoritarian state that, with the excuse of drug trafficking, makes the political life of the province more undemocratic.
The voting process itself is undemocratic and establishes mechanisms to tilt it in favor of the radical ruling party and Peronism, which is fragmented. It establishes a proscriptive minimum floor of votes necessary to be able to access the Constituent Convention: they seek to leave out the organizations that face adjustment. Pullarism negotiated that it be 2.5% of the electoral roll and with that agreement it achieved the votes of two of the three deputies of Del Frade’s Broad Front for Sovereignty. The floor is on the electoral roll regardless of attendance at the polls, so it rises to 4 or 5 percent. This restrictive mechanism already meant that in 2011 Carlos del Frade was prevented from accessing the provincial bench despite having obtained the necessary votes but not exceeding the 3% voter registration floor, a requirement established by the military dictatorship. On that occasion they correctly reported him; This time it was appropriate to do the same and not contribute the votes to the ruling party.
Peronism, which has just led the province for four years, also obtained a favorable voting method for its interest in reorganizing the “PJ tribe”, divided nationally and provincially. The conventional ones will be voted during the local primaries and will be chosen in two ways: 69 conventional ones are voted; 50 per single district through the D`Hont system and 19 per department, without relation to the amount of population. For example, the department of Rosario, which has almost 1,400,000 inhabitants, has the same amount as, for example, San Jerónimo, which has a population of almost 85,000. This method especially allows Peronists to put together their lists from the departments despite the divisions they maintain provincially.
A single objective of the ruling party: achieve re-election to continue the adjustment
The approval of the call was behind the backs of the entire population, in the midst of secret conversations and negotiations: the vote took place at two in the morning. The objective of the ruling party is to approve the possibility of the governor’s re-election, which would enable a new mandate for Maximiliano Pullaro. At the same time, in line with the policies of Javier Milei’s government, the ruling party seeks to incorporate fiscal balance and zero deficit into the provincial Constitution, continuing the adjustment policies that it already applies in the province. They also want to incorporate a clean record law; an interference of justice in the selection of who can be candidates, in line with the policies of the PRO and the national government. And they seek to raise the rank of security areas.
Octavio Crivaro, PTS leader in the Left Front, points out that the constitutional reform “is not designed to reorganize the resources of the province, to discuss what to do with the large landed property, the grain companies, the dozens of private ports, with the river Paraná and its use as a private commercial route to take our wealth. They don’t want to discuss poverty, hunger, wages, health or education. “They just want to negotiate the possibility that the governor can be re-elected and how to move forward with the adjustment.”
At dawn, secretly, Pullaro’s deputies, his PS employees, Perotti’s PJ and 2/3 of Del Frade’s bloc approved a constitutional reform for the sole purpose of allowing Pullaro to re-elect. A caste against the grain of the situation of retirees and workers.
— Octavio Crivaro (@OctavioCrivaro) December 6, 2024
Radicals, socialists and Peronists agreed on an agenda that has nothing to do with the needs of the workers. From the left we propose that the province and its resources must be reorganized according to the needs of the population: reduce the working day to 6 hours to generate jobs, rediscuss the monoculture of soybeans and the production of cereal companies to generate food in the perspective of nationalizing large landed property and private ports to decide what is produced and how: in harmony with the natural commons. The province’s resources have to go to education, health, housing and culture; not into the pockets of businessmen or the IMF.
This underlying perspective is what we fight for every day, seeking to develop a great socialist workers’ party of the working class that will allow us to defeat Milei and the adjustment governments on the path of the general strike to win a workers’ government that back to history.
Source: www.laizquierdadiario.com
