Chile - March 11th, 2020

The PTR, MIT and company call for a vote of "Approval" in the "constituent referendum" scam

The renegades of Trotskyism, acting as the left leg of the Concertacion and the CP, are seeking to subject the masses to a plebiscite that will save both Piñera and the Pinochet regime

In recent days, all the groups of renegades of Trotskyism in Chile, such as the PTR/PTS, the MIT/LIT-CI or the MST/UIT-CI, have issued statements calling to vote for "Approval" in the April plebiscite. Their excuse? "To accompany the experience of the masses who go to the plebiscite" and "to confront the right".

They speak of the masses "having illusions" in the plebiscite, that they are going to vote, that "millions want to give a blow to the right in the ballot boxes", when the workers and rebel youth have been leading a heroic revolutionary struggle since October, not to go and vote in a plebiscite, but because they want to overthrow the murderous government of Piñera and the regime of the 1980 Constitution. They know that this is the only way they will be able to get decent wages, work and pensions, recover the copper for the Chileans to finance free education for the workers' children and end with 30 years of opprobrium, looting and martyrdom.

It is precisely the plebiscite that guarantees that this will not happen. Its only objective is to get the exploited off the streets and thus save Piñera, the genocidal generals and the Pinochetista regime as a whole. Therefore, whether the "Approval" or the "Rejection" wins, Piñera, the Pinochetista military forces and the imperialist transnationals will always win, keeping intact the power they lost in the streets. And with both options, the working class, the rebellious youth, the poor peasants and the oppressed masses will always lose. Now, as if that were not enough, these currents of the reformist left are putting their forces at the service of subjecting the hardened exploited Chileans to this death trap.

To claim (as these currents do) that the masses have illusions in this plebiscite is a lie. When the "Pact for Peace and the New Constitution" was sealed on November 15 and the government called for this plebiscite, hundreds of thousands won the streets of the whole country against this spurious agreement signed behind the backs of the masses, over the blood of dozens of martyrs. That is why even the Chilean CP itself and the bureaucracy of the Social Unity Table had to go out to repudiate the call for the plebiscite and denounce it, and only after more than two months of betraying the path to the general strike, were they able to call for participation in the plebiscite. It is clear that without the betrayal of these leaderships, the working class and the exploited would have already been organizing to boycott this trap of those at the top. Unfortunately, instead of confronting this betrayal to the mass struggle, the renegades of Trotskyism are submitting the exploited to the parties of the former Concertacion and the CP and their "constituent assembly" swindle. They show that they are so down on their knees that even the PTR denounces that we are facing a trap to get us off the streets and save the government and the regime, and yet it calls for a vote of "Approval", legitimizing and covering up this anti-democratic fraud. Regrettable.

The parliamentary left seeks to justify such a policy by talking about "confronting the right". But the "momios" (rightists, NdeT), the military forces and Piñera himself could never have imposed alone this way out that comes to save them, because they were cornered by the mass combats. This plebiscite is being imposed by the former Concertacion, the CP, the Frente Amplio and the trade union and student bureaucracies of the Social Unity Table. They are the ones who have been supporting Piñera since October, and with this plebiscite they have come to guarantee that his four-year term in office will be completed. With the plebiscite, it is not possible to "confront the right," as these currents would have us believe, simply because this plebiscite is to "approve" Piñera's staying in power, that is, to keep the right in power! So much so, that the top leaders of Renovación Nacional, Piñera's party, have also called for a vote on "Approval" in April, exposing the crude excuses of the renegades of Trotskyism who are the ones who really "play right-wing politics" with their policy of participating in the plebiscite.

What these people want to hide is that the more the former Concertación plays its role, the more the union bureaucracy betrays the path to the general strike and takes the workers' movement out of the picture, the more they bring the exploited to the feet of the plebiscite, and the more the right wing raises its head again under the pretext of campaigning for the "Rejection". It is this "constituent pact" that paves the way for the "fachos" (fascists, NdeT) to win the streets. It is with this trap that they seek to lull the people to have their hands free to drown Chile again in a bloodbath like in 1973.
Unfortunately, the renegades of Trotskyism have become part of this scam against the revolutionary struggle of the masses; in pursuit of "confronting the right" they ended up in a "democratic front" together with the former Concertacion, the Frente Amplio, the CP and all those who have turned to Chile to help impose this trap: from the UN of the imperialist pirates to the former judge Garzón, jailer of the Basque and Catalan people, to those servants of the Podemos monarchy of Spain, who today are part of the government that administers Spanish imperialism businesses.

We are facing an open policy of class collaboration by these currents of the reformist left, which have broken with any politics of class independence. The renegades of Trotskyism have entered into a political front with the bourgeoisie, as the left leg of the former Concertación and the CP and their call to vote for "Approval" in April.
It is not surprising that these currents have this policy in Chile. The "mother party" of the PTR, that is, the PTS of Argentina and the entire FIT-U (electoral front of the Partido Obrero, Izquierda Socialista, MST and PTS), with the excuse of the abortion law, are in a political front with the PJ and Kirchnerites, as was demonstrated in the stage of the closing act of the 9M mobilization, where they supported the document that was read in favor of the Fernandez government. Not to mention the MIT and the LIT-CI, which have supported bourgeois candidates like Gustavo Petro in the presidential elections of Colombia, while the MST / UIT-CI in Peru is part of the Frente Amplio, a front of class collaboration with politicians representing NGOs, the Church and the bourgeoisie.
We do not forget that all these currents called to vote for the class collaboration front of the PT and the Church in Brazil and also supported the plebiscite in Greece in 2015, calling to vote "No" against Merkel's plan, thus legitimizing the Syriza government to wrest every last one of its conquests from the labor movement in the service of the Troika.
These currents were with Haddad with the excuse of confronting Bolsonaro in Brazil; with Kirchnerism against Macri in Argentina; with the bourgeois government of Syriza against Merkel and the Troika in Greece... and now in Chile they end up with the coup plotters of Christian Democracy, the former Concertacion and the CP with the excuse of "confronting the right" in the plebiscite! Nothing new under the sun: we are facing the old policy of Stalinism of supporting the "progressive bourgeois camps" against the "reactionaries".
This is how the renegades of Trotskyism end up being bankrupt, like a recycled neo-Stalinism hanging on the costtails of the bourgeois regimes, being accomplices of the deviation the latter are imposing on the heroic revolutionary struggle of the Chilean masses.

POI-CI of Chile, member of FLTI