{"id":8991,"date":"2019-11-05T18:19:59","date_gmt":"2019-11-05T18:19:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lavozlit.com\/?p=8991"},"modified":"2019-11-05T18:19:59","modified_gmt":"2019-11-05T18:19:59","slug":"elections-in-argentina-polarization-and-a-new-cycle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/workersvoiceus.org\/es\/2019\/11\/05\/elections-in-argentina-polarization-and-a-new-cycle\/","title":{"rendered":"Elections in Argentina: Polarization and a New Cycle"},"content":{"rendered":"

With an election marked by immense polarization, the 2019 election calendar ended and a new political cycle opens.<\/em>
\nBy PSTU-Argentina\u00a0 10\/31\/2019<\/strong><\/em>
\nThese general elections were almost lived as a runoff, where the two majority candidates took 88% of the vote. Fernandez\u2019s victory was expected, but Macri was doing everything to make the defeat less painful, and he did it: 40% compared to 32% of the PASO (primaries) is more digestible.
\nDoes this \u201ccomeback\u201d mean that there wasn\u2019t much indignation against Macri? No, the comeback has a mathematical explanation and policy: if we add up the increased number of voters, plus the votes that escaped Lavagna, Gomes Centurion and Espert, we will find the majority of the votes that increased Macri\u2019s percentage. But, what does this mean politically? It means that, just like many voted Alberto as the \u201clesser evil\u201d against Macri; others voted Macri as a \u2018\u2019lesser evil\u2019\u2019 against Alberto and Cristina.
\nPolarization also reflected the different social sectors:\u00a0 the difference between the Capital (Buenos Aires )as the maximum expression of the urban middle classes (where Cambiemos retained its post with 55% of the votes) and the Buenos Aires suburbs , with the largest working class concentration of the country, where Alberto won, except in some northern municipalities. Workers\u2019 hatred of Macri was expressed at the polls and was capitalized by the \u201cFrente de Todos\u201d.
\nThe return of bipartisanship?<\/strong>
\nAll the bourgeois and media sectors celebrate the results as a sense of institutional re-composition. Even Carri\u00f3 said he was retiring because \u201cthe Republic returned.\u201d That\u2019s because Cambiemos appears , by the electoral result , as a strong \u00a0opposition , which will counteract the ruling party. Maintaining that balance will be the commitment of all the bosses\u2019 alternatives.
\nNow, we must see what happens as things develop , because if something characterizes both fronts is their lack of cohesion . Will Cambiemos radical dispersion continue? Will the Frente de Todos last long with the actual conditions? The dispute around who climbed onto the victory stage does not envision a serene scenario.
\nUltimately, it will be the class struggle that determines how the bourgeois alternatives will develop: will Fern\u00e1ndez be able to impose the austerity measures requested by the IMF without contradictions from the union sectors that make up his front ?
\nAnd the millions who voted to end Macri\u2019s austerity , how will they react when their illusions are not fulfilled? This process is just beginning, but it is clear that workers will take the stage when they see that their expectations are not being met.
\nFIT-U: A political balance<\/strong>
\nThere is an important setback in the vote for the FIT-U in relation not only to the previous elections since the Front exists, but even to the last Primaries . The FIT-U won 697,776 votes in August. In addition, there are the almost 180,000 that the New MAS obtained, votes that naturally had to strengthen the FIT-U. But now, there were only 561,214.
\nThe most direct and true explanation is the brutal polarization between Fernandez\/Fernandez slate and Macri, which eclipsed the voting of other groups. Perhaps, then, that setback was inevitable, and we must see the votes achieved as a conquest, a \u201chard core\u201d of adherents to a leftist program. To some extent it is so.
\nHowever, that explanation is superficial. We have to try to see the class content of the achieved votes , and on that basis make a political balance of the FIT-U campaign itself.
\nThe election had clear peaks in three districts: Buenos Aires , Chubut and Neuqu\u00e9n. In Buenos Aires, 6.12% of the votes for national deputies were obtained. In Neuqu\u00e9n, 5.48%. This province (together with Jujuy and Santa Cruz, where 4% was exceeded) are places of historical high voting of the FIT. In other areas of traditional high voting (Mendoza and Salta) the results were very low.
\nSome conclusions can be drawn from the analysis of these three \u2018\u2019top\u2019\u2019 districts.
\nThe vote for Miryam Bregman in Buenos Aires , which almost won the congress seat, far exceeded that of the FIT-U, as a result of a vote recount from votes to Alberto Fern\u00e1ndez. It was a campaign aimed at achieving empathy with middle class sectors and median income workers (most of the capital\u2019s population), and even with Fernandez\/Fernandez voters. In our opinion, an incorrect approach, the thousands and thousands of pesos destined to promote Miriam as an objective in itself was a waste of money , to the extent that it was not used to accompany the figure of Miriam with revolutionary slogans, as if Miriam\u2019s candidacy would solve women\u2019s problems .
\nIn Neuqu\u00e9n and Chubut, the provinces where the FIT-U maintained a higher percentage of its historical votes, the explanation is completely different.
\nIn Neuqu\u00e9n, there is a tradition of intervention by the left in the working class, and the central figure, Ra\u00fal Godoy, is a leading ceramic worker from the Zan\u00f3n struggles.
\nIn Chubut, the dominant candidacy was that of Daniel Ruiz, an oil worker with a long tradition of struggle, imprisoned for 13 months for having faced the Macri Pension Reform, and a reference with Sebasti\u00e1n Romero of the resistance to the government that is leaving.
\nIn both cases, a labor and struggle profile in the campaign and candidates allowed us to hold a strong vote in sectors of our class.
\nSome conclusions<\/strong>
\nFor revolutionaries, a campaign\u2019s balance is not centrally made of the number of votes obtained, or posts won, rather to the extent that the campaign helped to promulgate a working class, socialist, and revolutionary solution.
\nThe analysis of the election results serves as a measure to see to what extent our positions took root in a sector of our class.
\nThe main conclusion is that the type of campaign decided by the FIT-U parties for the whole country, similar to the one in Buenos Aires, and aimed at the middle sectors, without expressing a frontal combat against the political regime and the solution being a socialist ,working class\u00a0 revolution , was wrong. It was so because of its content and form. A diluted, democratizing discourse, and a \u201ccivilized\u201d image, as one more option from capitalist democracy. Guided more for a candidate\u2019s popularity than by a program.
\nBut even in terms of its results, that campaign was effective in Buenos Aires , but not in the country as a whole, nor in the suburbs and working-class areas. On the contrary, both in Neuqu\u00e9n and Chubut, worker and struggle candidates gave good results.
\nThe PSTU campaign<\/strong>
\nParticularly in Chubut, the candidacy of Daniel Ruiz and the campaign carried out by our party, the PSTU ( the only representation of the left in Comodoro Rivadavia, the largest and most working class city in Patagonia) in primary elections , a worker and revolutionary campaign that proved effective in the working class and \u00a0state workers in struggle.
\nWe humbly try to do what we believe revolutionary organizations should do during elections: project working class and fighting candidates, with Daniel Ruiz and Sebasti\u00e1n Romero (symbols of direct action against the Macri government), present a program with a solution to each\u00a0 of the needs of working people, always making it clear that it will not be through elections, nor the accumulation of government posts that we can succeed , but rather through a worker and socialist revolution, which truly changes the rules of the game.
\nTranslation by Blas (Corriente Obrera \u2013 LIT)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With an election marked by immense polarization, the 2019 election calendar ended and a new political cycle opens. By PSTU-Argentina\u00a0 10\/31\/2019 These general elections were almost lived as a runoff, where the two majority candidates took 88% of the vote. Fernandez\u2019s victory was expected, but Macri was doing everything to make the defeat less painful, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13882120,"featured_media":8992,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_wpcom_ai_launchpad_first_post":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"{title}\n\n{excerpt}\n\n{url}","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[27806],"tags":[27738,29910,29997,29998,27936,27962,29999],"class_list":["post-8991","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-internacionalinternational","tag-argentina","tag-electoralism","tag-fit-argentina","tag-fit-unidad","tag-latin-america","tag-pstu","tag-revolutionary-electoralism"],"translation":{"provider":"WPGlobus","version":"3.0.5","language":"es","enabled_languages":["en","es"],"languages":{"en":{"title":true,"content":true,"excerpt":false},"es":{"title":false,"content":false,"excerpt":false}}},"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t