COLOMBIA, June 13—The Colombian ruling class finds itself in the middle of a historic election campaign between former member of leftwing rebel group and mayor of Bogota Gustavo Petro against Ivan Duque. Duque is “handpicked by ex-President Álvaro Uribe Vélez, a towering figure among the country’s conservatives for his staunch opposition to the peace deal signed between the Colombian government and the FARC guerrilla group” (The Nation, 4/18).
Colombia, the U.S.’s closest strategic ally in Latin America, is dealing with a fractured ruling class that risks upending the peace deal. Volatility in Colombia means uncertainty for imperialist rivals U.S., Russia, and China.
Petro is a liberal nationalist candidate who promises to tax wealthy landowners and stock investors. He also “favor[s] downgrading their country’s economic and military ties with Washington” (Foreign Affairs, 10/3/17). Duque’s patron Uribe, “whose political philosophy is known as “uribismo,” stands for military and paramilitary warfare against the insurgents, close ties with the United States and the ruthless eradication of drugs” (The Washington Post, 5/23).
Don’t fall for the electoral game
They try to deceive the masses with their corrupt electoral circus waving their flags of: lies, anti-communism, fake peace accords and false anti-corruption campaigns. They do this to paper over their state crisis and breathe new life into their discredited institutions of bourgeois dictatorship. They pacify the struggles between local bosses and consolidate their political, economic, and cultural power over the masses who suffer under the warlords that savage them with misery, hunger, and unemployment. They increase the destruction of the environment and invite more droughts, floods, avalanches, and even earthquakes.
The only true advance for the international working class is to unify the struggle to establish a new communist social order that provides for their needs, especially the basics such as: clean water and food, well-built housing, comfortable and flexible transportation, high schools and universities with excellent education and much more. All of this without counting money, profits, or borders.
For 208 years, Colombian capitalism has achieved its liberal-conservative dictatorships over the working class and unemployed. This has deepened the dependence on U.S. imperialism by robbing riches and natural resources. It is clear that it is really the IMF, World Bank, UN, OECD, the mafias, and the corporate monopolies that rule. Who and How? They threaten workers to vote for Iván Duque (the “right-wing” candidate) or else they will be jobless because if Gustavo Petro (the “left-wing” candidate) wins, businesses will be expropriated and businessmen will flee the country creating another Venezuela, and so we must save our country from the clutches of communism. This fear mongering fabrication hides the fact that both liberals and conservatives are workers’ class enemies. The working class is clearly disillusioned by the electoral system: “All of the surveys, however, feature a high percentage of the population intends to abstain from the vote, cast blank ballots, or are undecided” (Telesur, 6/12).
Lefty ideas at ballot box is a dead end
The working class will never have power by following the electoral path. We can see this clearly.
More recently, we see in Colombia how former guerillas and union leaders have become mayors and governors who oppress and jail their electorate. These elected officials have followed their bosses down the path of nationalism and class collaboration, demoralizing the revolutionary struggle and reinforcing the concept of bourgeois democracy.
Capitalists need elections to sell us on the myth that voting will help to reform the profit system and make it more responsive to the needs of workers. However, this is not the only reason. They also hope to find populist (fascist) candidates that can mislead and pacify the millions of workers who are not conforming to their plan. In either case, our class gains nothing by electing either one.
The bosses’ candidates will never liberate the working class. Only the destruction of the bourgeois state and its wage slavery with a communist revolution can liberate the working class from oppression, exploitation, racism, sexism, and imperialist war. We don’t need the bosses or their fake elections. With our newspaper DESAFIO we are present in marches, meetings, and electoral discussions; presenting to workers our ideas about the unity of struggle and organization. Many tell us that this sounds fine, but it is a long struggle, and what do we do in the meantime? We respond with class struggle and recruitment efforts to PLP.