Argentina: Elections - Speech from Headquarters
Speech given by Christian Castillo from the PTS and the Left Front
12/08/2013
Speech given by Christian Castillo from the PTS and the Left Front, after receiving nearly 1 million votes nation wide:
Comrades,
First of all I want to ask for a round of applause for the militants of the Left and Wokers’ Front. To the comrades of the Partido Obrero (PO), the Partido de Trabajadores Socialistas (PTS and Izquierda Socialista (IS). They’ve made a great militant campaign that allowed us to receive these great results nation wide.
I want to point out that practically all the polls were completely wrong. They were acting as tools of the political maneuvering of the ruling class that is looking to configure a right wing succession of the Kirchnerist Government. However, while they were preoccupied with the main candidates of Massa, the front UNEN and other similar candidates, workers that struggle to remove the bureaucracies from their unions and the youth that is becoming aware of the world capitalist crisis were working through a process, and today they told the regime "We are voting for the Left Front".
It is not a "statistical" error that in Mendoza, the left is the 3rd political force of the Province, with Nicolas del Cano being the political surprise of the elections; or the 10% of the votes in the capital of Cordoba (2nd biggest city in Argentina), the 8% in the capital of Neuquen with Andres Blanco, a worker from the factory Zanon, and Patricia Jure a teacher activist, the 4% in Santa Fe and the close to 5% we are getting in the province of Buenos Aires and the city of Buenos Aires.
During the whole campaign we’ve been saying that votes come and go, most of all we are happy because in order to achieve an electoral result, we didn’t dilute our program, we didn’t follow the government, we didn’t follow the central-left, but rather we held to our anti-capitalist and socialist politics in struggle for a workers government like it is stated in our 26 point Left Front program.
(Chants: You will soon see the working class in power)
Comrades, this phenomenon goes beyond us, the comrades that are more known, appear in the media, of the Left Front. In many provinces comrades that were presenting themselves for elections for the first time received great results.
We are standing against a great political phenomena, and we were able to accomplish this because between elections we are at the head of every workers and political struggle: For the life in jail for the union leader convicted of murder, Pedraza, against the government espionage program of "Projecto X", struggling to kick out the bureaucracy, in every workers struggle, and even during this campaign, while many candidates debated against Macri (the mayor of Buenos Aires), our candidate and subterranean worker-delegate, Claudio Dellacarbonada didn’t budge against him (in the negotiations against the opening of a new subway station that didn’t have proper security measures the mayor was trying to open as an election stunt). And for the ones that said that for struggling you will loose votes, we stood our ground against the station opening, and even the mainstream oligarchy newspaper "La Nacion", had to admit that every one of the workers and delegates demands were legitimate, and that the ones defending the lives of the passengers are the workers like Claudio Dellacarbonara, who next to Altamira (PO) lead the Left Front’s ticket in the city of Buenos Aires.
To conclude comrades, our objective is the struggle for a socialist revolution. If we achieve congressional seats they will be used towards that goal. TO achieve this, every comrade that helped us during the elections has to become a conscient militant towards this goal, which is our biggest goal: the struggle to expropriate the expropriators, the struggle for a workers’ government and to bury capitalism forever, in Argentina and the rest of the world.
VIDEO: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ox1mUliXJX4 (Vista previa)