Chile - June 9th, 2021
The farce of the elections for representatives to the "Constituent Assembly" has been consummated, sustained in the betrayal of the union bureaucracy and the collaborationist left
Imperialism and the capitalists celebrate: Piñera was saved from the revolutionary fire of the masses and continues in La Moneda attacking the working class and the exploited
The victory for the workers and the poor people will come when we make the yell of October 2019 come true:
Out with Piñera and the entire pro-imperialist regime of the '80 Constitution!
On May 15 and 16, municipal elections were held, for governors and centrally, to elect the 155 members of the Constitutional Convention. It was made up of 37 representatives from the Pinochetist Right, 25 from the former Concertacion, 28 from the CP - Broad Front (Frente Amplio), 48 “independent” ones (who are from different lists such as the List of the People) and 17 seats for indigenous peoples.
Piñera and the Pinochetist Right obtained only 8% of the votes from the total electoral roll and the former Concertación got 5%. Furthermore, these two pillars of the civil-military regime lost key Communes that were historically controlled by them. All this shows the deep hatred of the masses for the bourgeois parties that have been administering the Pinochetist regime for 30 years. And also, the repudiation of the exploited against these parties' supporters: the traitors of the union bureaucracies of the CUT and the Social Unity Board, who didn’t get a single “constituent” seat. This while there were again about 60% abstentions, demonstrating the enormous loss of prestige that the civil-military regime has among the great masses.
Given these results, the Communist Party, the Broad Front and the entire reformist left affirm that Piñera, the Right and also the former Concertacion suffered a "resounding defeat" and that the workers and exploited were the great winners of this day. A real smokescreen because with these “constituent” elections, those who really won were all of them whom we were struggling to defeat in the streets with the revolutionary struggle we began in October 2019.
Those of us at the bottom left everything in combat, starring in huge days of revolutionary general strike, massive actions in the streets, clashes with the murderous pacos (cops) by the "first line", etc. We put in the order of the day to bring down the government, blow up the regime servant of imperialism and thus advance in conquering our dignity and our just demands. But they took the triumph out of our hands. Piñera was saved after his head hung by a thread, hacked by the revolutionary mass struggle. The president of the 8%, hated by all the people, continues in La Moneda government palace mercilessly attacking the workers and the masses under the orders of Biden and the Wall Street pirates. What "triumph" are they talking about if thanks to this deviation by the "constituent process" this murderous government continue in power, when we had everything that was needed to throw it away?
The Pinochetist generals celebrate because they continue to be the fundamental pillar of the regime and keep their juicy portion of the copper business. The imperialist transnationals and bankers continue to plunder all the wealth of the nation, with their businesses and property protected from the danger of the revolutionary fire from below.
Meanwhile, the Christian Democrat coup-plotters and other parties of the former Concertacion continue in the cave of bandits of the Parliament, legislating against the people at the service of the capitalists.
And all the corrupt politicians, the genocidal militars, the repressive pacos and other murderers of our martyrs are still free, while 2,500 of ours are still in prison, subjected to hellish sentences by the Pinochetist judges who continue to manage the anti-worker justice system.
They all want to convince us that this was our victory… but these elections have ended and those who remain in power are Piñera, the genocidal officers and the Pinochetist-Concertationist caste of judges, all led from the US imperialists' Embassy.
For us, starvation wages, unemployment, labor slavery, private education, theft of our pensions, collapsed health services continue and every day we suffer more and worse hardships, aggravated by the Covid19 pandemic. We didn’t conquer our dignity and none of our demands were resolved.
This deception and this trap is the result of the "Pact for Peace and the New Constitution" of Piñera, the Pinochetist Right, the former Concertacion and the Broad Front, together with the "pacos de rojo" ("red cops") of the Communist Party. They, from the leadership of the CUT and together with all the union bureaucracies of the Mesa de Unidad Social (Social Unity Board) took the working class out of the path of the Revolutionary General Strike to overthrow the government and the regime and separated the labor movement from the rebellious youth of the "first line" and of the masses in struggle. They used all their strength to get us off the streets, subjecting us first to the plebiscite fraud and now to the “constituent” farce.
Thus the bourgeoisie managed to strengthen its damn institutions of dominance and this fraud of the Constitutional Convention be carried out, which doesn’t affect any of its businesses and interests and is regulated by the bosses' politicians. This "Constituent Assembly" is a detour to divert our revolutionary combat and keep the bourgeois regime intact, making some other cosmetic self-reform to the damn Constitution of '80 to keep safe the rule of the exploiters against the working class and the exploited masses. This rigged and undemocratic Constituent Assembly, which saved Piñera government that was dying and with him the entire civic-military regime, doesn’t represent us.
The great electoral result achieved by the CP, the Broad Front and the "independent" representatives: Stalinism in all its variants always ready to save the Pinochetist regime
While Piñera's Pinochetist Right and the former Concertacion sank electorally, the CP and the Broad Front made a good election, obtaining 28 “constituent” seats.
The CP Stalinists have bet on the renewal of their main candidates, putting on new public faces to better deceive the workers and the exploited, as is the case with Irací Hassler, who has just won the mayor's office in Santiago.
Meanwhile, her current partners in that front of class collaboration that is the Broad Front also achieved good results, winning, for example, the Valparaíso governorate.
The "great novelty" was the election made by the People's List of the self-proclaimed "independent" candidates, who got 27 seats in the Constitutional Convention, with a program that doesn’t question the property and business of the capitalists and imperialism, but only proclaim their opposition to the "abuse by monopolies".
Like the CP and the Broad Front, the People's List speaks of “constituent mayoralties” and that they will fight for a Convention consulting with the people through “mechanisms for greater citizen and civil society participation in decision-making”. This policy means to suffocate every fight we wage for our just demands to submit it to the Constitutional Convention, the mayors and other institutions of the Pinochetist regime. We have already seen Podemos in the Spanish State apply this recipe to save the Bourbon monarchy from the combat of the Indignados in 2011.
Meanwhile, the CP and its appendages enlist their forces for the presidential elections in November, telling us that we must "all go against the Right" to get Piñera out at the polls... Their program is for Piñera to end his term in peace!
The MIT and the PTR want to "democratize" the Pinochetist regime by the hands of the rigged "constituent"
Unfortunately, currents such as the MIT / LIT-CI (which obtained a “constituent” seat as part of the People's List) and the PTR / PTS, are dedicated to legitimizing this new trap against the masses by claiming that this totally rigged and fraudulent Convention can "become sovereign, remove Piñera and assume power."
Their struggle is to "democratize" this Convention so that the same people who saved Piñera remove him and subsequently a bourgeois government of the "Constituent Assembly" assumes power: that is, a government comprising the bosses' politicians of the Right, the Christian Democratic coup plotters and the former Concertación, together with the forces of the CP, the Broad Front and the "independents." They want us to believe that by the hand of that bourgeois power we can defeat Piñera and the Pinochetist regime and grant democracy, bread and freedom to the exploited!
Thus they sow illusions in this farce of the Constitutional Convention, when it’s not going to guarantee even the slightest democratic demand to the masses, because it is an appendage of the Pinochetist regime and is under the control of that caste of counterrevolutionary officers of the Armed Forces that guard the private property of the capitalists and imperialism through rifle-pointing.
They even want the Constitutional Convention to assume power, wich is a totally undemocratic institution, established by the "Pact for Peace and the New Constitution." Behind the people’s back, there they agreed on the rules of this “constituent” scam controlled by the Pinochet regime, without the power to define anything. With the force of law they regulated this Convention, stipulating that their deputies were to be chosen with the electoral rules of the Constitution of '80, that they don’t vote by majority and minority but have a quorum to hold sessions, that they cannot present any article that proposes to cease Piñera, nor break any treaty of submission of the nation to imperialism, or review the judicial sentences against political prisoners.
Faced with this, these currents ask for this rigged Convention to break with those “pre-established agreements”. This is like asking a lion to become an herbivore. Why is the majority of that Convention going to break the agreements if the Pinochetist Right, the Concertacion, the Broad Front and the CP are the ones that endorse and defend that pact to the letter? And if they did, the generals would come out to prevent it in the name of "law" and in "defense of democracy." Although these currents want to hide it, there is no possibility of conquering the slightest of democratic demands without crushing this caste of Pinochetist officers.
MIT and PTR have long stopped fighting for the socialist revolution, but they are not even consistent democrats, because to fight for democracy till the end they would have to mobilize and arm the workers to defeat the repressive forces of the state and their assassin generals. Their policy is the "peaceful way" to "democratize" a regime that imposed itself by massacring the revolutionary workers of the Cordones Industriales and bombing La Moneda.
Against what these currents propose, we Trotskyists affirm that only a provisional revolutionary worker and peasant government, based on the self-organizing bodies of the exploited masses, is the only power that will be able to guarantee even the slightest democratic demand for the exploited because it will have defeated the Pinochetist caste of officers, disarmed the murderous pacos, expelled the US imperialists' military base of Concón, etc. For this reason, this workers' and peasants' government will be able to expel imperialism, expropriating the bankers and transnational companies that plunder copper and breaking their political, economic and military treaties of submission to the nation. And it will even be the only one that, against the fraud of this Constitutional Convention, will be able to guarantee a revolutionary, truly free and sovereign Constituent Assembly, imposed on the rubble of the regime of the 1980 Constitution. A Constituent Assembly composed of one delegate for every 10,000 electors chosen taking the country as a single district, with recallable delegates who earn the average salary of a worker, reunited in a single Chamber that declares the cessation of all powers of the state and of the civic-military regime, which will be able to resolve democratically because it will not have the bayonets of the Pinochetist generals pointing to their heads. Only with arms in the hands of the people we are going to conquer national independence, land, freedom and dignity.
That is why it’s necessary to return to the Plaza de la Dignidad, to win La Alameda and the streets of the entire Chile and resume the revolutionary mass combat to overthrow Piñera, the regime of the 1980s Constitution and all the power of the exploiters. And, on the rubble of the bourgeois state, impose the power of the working class and the exploited masses, that of the vast majority of the nation, which is the path from which they took us out with this farce of the "constituent process."
Our fight for dignity won't be surrendered!
The struggle to sweep away the Piñera government, the regime of the 1980 Constitution, for the most elementary democratic demands and for our just demands, must return to the safe hands of the working class and the exploited.
We will conquer and defend the democratic demands of those below, not by means of a rigged Constituent Assembly, but with the methods of struggle of the working class: strikes, pickets, the general strike, the combat of barricades, resuming the revolutionary path of October of 2019 and setting up the organizations of self-organization and direct democracy of the workers and the exploited, such as the base assemblies, the unitary factory committees like the Industrial Cordons in the '70s, the “first line” in each factory, mine, port and workplace.
Today Stalinism in all its variants proclaims that we will achieve the freedom of political prisoners by pressing for the approval of the "general pardon law", that is, from the hand of the same Parliament that voted all the repressive laws for which our comrades are imprisoned. The policy of the CP is for Piñera to free some of our comrades, in order to advance a "reconciliation pact" that will consecrate impunity for all murderous politicians and military.
We from below don’t forgive or reconcile! Without justice, there is no peace! Unconditional release of the more than 2,500 political prisoners, and trial and punishment of all murderers and repressors! Against the Pinochetist courts, we have to impose workers' and popular tribunals to judge and punish all the murderers of our martyrs of yesterday and today. In order for them to stop repressing and killing those who fight, we must fight for the dissolution of the murderous cops, the intelligence services and all the repressive apparatuses of the state and set up self-defense committees and the worker and peasant militia.
Those at the top speak of "democracy" while Pinochetist military patrol the streets of Chile. We must impose the end of the curfew and the “state of exception”, dissolve the caste of the Pinochetist generals, end their theft of the copper businesses and expel the US military base of Concón. These are the true elementary democratic demands for which we must fight, together with the unconditional right of common soldiers to organize, democratically elect their leaders and through these committees join the mass organizations in struggle.
There will be no "democracy" or "freedom" with imperialism plundering our nation. Copper must return to the hands of the Chileans, expelling the transnationals and blowing up the FTAs. Thus we will be able to conquer our fundamental democratic rights: free and quality education and public health, work, decent salaries and pensions, and the land for the poor peasants against the forester companies and large landowners that have usurped with blood and fire against the Mapuche community members.
For this we must fight for the renationalization without payment and under workers' control of copper, banks and ports throughout Chile and for the expropriation of the AFPs without compensation.
The seat of María Rivera of the MIT / LIT-CI and of all those "constituents" who claim from the working class, working women, and so on; it cannot be at the service of legitimizing this rigged Constituent Assembly, making people believe that something good can come for the exploited from there.
Comrade Rivera, one of the few constituents who have fought for the freedom of political prisoners from day one and the only one who toured the jails to defend them, has publicly stated on television that she will not sit at the Constitutional Convention until the comrades are released. Now nothing prevents Comrade Rivera and all the "constituents" who claim the revolutionary mass combat of 2019, from breaking with that appendage of the Pinochetist regime and using their tribune and all their forces at the service of calling the working class and the masses to return to organizing and rising up against this damned government and regime.
To make this program a reality, the working class must take it into its own hands and once again break into the first line of combat with its fighting methods, following the path of the national port strike in last April.
Out with the traitors of the CUT bureaucracy and all the collaborationist leaderships!
National Struggle Front to reopen the path to the General Strike
With delegates with a rank-and-file mandate from the entire labor movement, rebellious youth and poor peasants
The fight for our just demands is in the streets. From the Port Union and all the combative workers organizations, from the "October 18 Coordinator", from the ACES and the militant secondary groups, from the territorial assemblies that have called to confront this electoral farce, let us put all the forces to make this Front of National Struggle to centralize the fight for our claims.
For its part, the National Coordinator of the MIR has proclaimed its opposition to the scam of the “constituent” process, but their policy was to proclaim the “popular struggle in the populations (Communes)”. This means continuing to leave the rebellious youth and the exploited masses separated from their best allies, the working class, which is the only one that due to its role in production can hit the government, the capitalists and imperialism where it really hurts: in their profits and their ownership of the mines, ports and factories throughout Chile. If the National Coordinator of the MIR really wants to confront the fraud of the Constitutional Convention, they must put all their forces at the service of conquering this Front of National Struggle, to advance in defeating the strikebreaker union bureaucracy and free the hands of the working class to lead the combat of the whole of the oppressed masses of the nation. Otherwise, regrettably, they will continue to allow the Stalinist bureaucracy of the CUT and the Social Unity Table to go on betraying the working class and subjecting the exploited to the farce of the "constituent".
The only solution for those below is the victory of the socialist revolution!
The workers and the exploited will raise the power of those below, we will defeat this infamous regime and bring to victory the revolution that they crushed in ‘73 and the one that they have now handed out taking it from us.
We will fight alongside the insurgent masses of Colombia and wave the Palestinian flag in every corner of Chile because our struggle also lives in Gaza, Jerusalem, Haifa and every corner of occupied Palestine.
Chile will be socialist or will it be a Wall Street colony!
Partido Obrero Internacionalista (Internationalist Workers Party)– Fourth International (POI-CI), adherent to FLTI
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