Versión en español

Romina Del Plá, candidate for Vice-President, said at the rally in 9 de Julio Avenue in Buenos Aires that "the Left Front – Unity (FIT-U) must prepare to lead the rebellion of the Argentine people”.

"The FIT-U's campaign is linked to the necessary irruption of the working class in the national political stage, in order to break the austerity plans and set in motion a solution of its own, in stark contrast with those who would have us abandon the streets and lift strikes, so as to not make waves,": with these definitions Romina Del Plá, began her speech this afternoon in the FIT-U’s massive rally .

The candidate and current National Deputy pointed out that for the motivations behind the rally on 9 de Julio Avenue, had "a common denominator" with the enormous camp-out of the Polo Obrero (the Worker’s Party’s jobless group) and the “Piquetero” front (unemployed workers) did weeks ago on that same avenue "for actual work and increased social plans to affront the rise of the cost of living and hunger," as well as with the plenaries and protests that combative unionism has executed, "placing a program in defense of wages, for the prohibition of lay-offs and suspensions, against labor flexibilization and work precariousness in Plaza de Mayo (Buenos Aires’ main square)”.

Regarding the national political situation, the leader of the Workers’ Party (PO) stated that "the scenario is increasingly clear. The defeat of President Mauricio Macri (and María Eugenia Vidal, the governor of Argentina’s most populous province) has hastened the development of the national bankruptcy and this situation has forced presidential candidate and frontrunner for Peronism Alberto Fernandez to deliver soothing words to the capitalists, because this is the class for which they are going to govern. Now they have begun to speak of a 'way out in the Uruguayan style', and we have to make it clear that the renegotiations of the debt in Uruguay have been made on the basis of nominal wage cuts and brutal austerity in education, health and pensions. 

That is to say that they don't want to pay the Leliqs' interest (bonds with an 80% interest rate which banks that have loaned funds to the Central Bank possess), which means that they are going to lash out with a hyper-devaluation of the Peso, which the will workers pay for with a huge confiscation of their salaries. We have to unmask this fraud and denounce in these three weeks (until the elections) the meaning of the 'ways out' that they are introducing, explaining that any of these does not imply rejecting the payment of the foreign debt and breaking ties with the IMF, it will lead us towards more hunger and a catastrophe for the workers”.

Then, Del Plá denounced that "in this line of giving political signals, the Alberto Fernandez – Cristina Fernández de Kirchner tandem’s support to megamining has been quite significant, even in San Juan, where Barrick Gold has produced one of the greatest environmental catastrophes that the country has ever suffered,'' as well as the guarantees promised to the oil lobbies, and also a trust law to enable capital flight without hindrance. 

"These are solutions at the service of devaluation, of extractivism. The whole idea that they are going to reignite the economy is nothing more than a reedition of the policies of bourgeois nationalism, of rentier economic policies totally submitted to imperialism,"  warning that "even that is unfeasible with an international fall in commodity prices, with a dreadful commercial war among the main world powers that exacerbates the worldwide capitalist crisis.”

Following the same vein, she emphasized that "due to the devastating effects of this international capitalist policy, numerous rebellions are being sparked around the world: we have Ecuador confronting Lenin Moreno, the Argentinean Alberto Fernández, or the Haitian uprising. The Left Front – Unity must prepare to lead the rebellion that sooner or later the Argentine people will carry out, to establish once and for all a working-class government, the only possible way out.

The renowned activist in the education sector and Secretary General of La Matanza county’s teachers’ union (SUTEBA) pointed out that "the Fernandez’ want to avoid the struggle and the rebellion of the workers like the plague, that is why they are putting together this social pact with the capitalists, who demand labour reform, and the union bureaucracy, which is preparing to enable those demands of the capitalists to go through”.

In this sense, she denounced the reunification of the two main union confederacies (the CGT and the CTA), without prior consultation with the workers involved, as a "unity of the union bureaucracy to set aside our demands" that "should not be confused with the unity of the workers’ movement. it is not being hatched so that the laid-off workers overcome in Kimberly Clark and Ansabo factories, or the teachers and the public servants of Chubut province, whom we tell from this stage not to relent, because we are going to support them till the very end, until Governor Mariano Arcioni is gone and the resources of the province fall into the hands of the people of Chubut. We will be able to unite the workers' movement when we kick out the bureaucrats and erect a new leadership, voted on by a congress with delegates elected by the workers”

Del Plá stressed the importance of vying for a massive ballot for the Left Front-Unity, since "we aren’t indifferent to the workers separating themselves from the capitalist parties and placing their vote for political independence" and to the extent that "in a Congress where Macri’s legislators and the Peronists have voted for each and every one of the austerity laws, we need to expand a group of deputies that acts as the true voice in defense of the workers, women (we have the only electoral ticket which is 100% ‘green’, that is in favour of legal abortion) and young people," as "a step towards preparing to undertake the struggles against all the things to come".

She concluded: "Let's redouble our efforts and our initiatives in order to establish a true alternative in service of the workers, to bring an end to the IMF’s regime. All of this in order to bring about an emancipatory perspective for the working class".