"Vote against the dictatorship"
after the repression,
At present, the Frente Amplio is very weak inside the country, and its representatives are influenced decisively by the Communist and
The following is a somewhat abridged whether they say they are "for the pro-
Nonetheless, in meetings in Uruguay, the comrades of the Frente Amplio decided to call for a blank vote, relying on the authority of the chairman of the front, General Liber Seregni, who supported that position from prison. I want to make it clear that the position of our party, the PVP for a blank vote in these primary elections does not mean that we exclude the possibility of antidictatorship fronts with sections of the bourgeois parties.
To the contrary, our party has called several times for the formation of such a front, but on the basis of a public agreement, an agreement based on consistent opposition to the dictatorship and calling for real struggle and mobilization to win the democratic demands raised by the people.
Q. What is the present situation of the trade-union movement?
A. After many years in which trade-union activity was almost totally suppressed, in 1980 the dictatorship issued a law on professional associations. It was designed to divert the trade-union movement that was beginning to revive. In order to accomplish that, however, the dictatorship was obliged to grant a certain margin for maneuver, which, however narrow, made it possible to reorganize workers. So, they permitted the formation of trade-union commissions in the workplaces, with a lot of restrictions. It included the proviso that there could be more than one commission in each workplace.
Since then, more than 200 commissions have sprung up, and they have maintained a spirit of working-class unity. They have not split. And many of them publish bulletins. The government plans call for continuing this process of forming commissions until it leads to the creation of unions. But we think that as the process develops the workers will maintain their spirit of class independence and wreck the military's plans for atomizing the working-class forces.
In this process of reorganizing, the Uruguayan workers need to be able to count on the international solidarity of the workers movement. Recently a delegation of Brazilian trade unions of all tendencies, including the bureaucracy, visited my country. It played an important role because it enabled a workers movement that has been illegal for a decade to reestablish some international ties 12 translation of the statement on the Uruguayan primary elections by the Partido Socialista de los Trabajaderes (PST-Socialist Workers Party) of Uruguay, an independent Trotskyist group. The PST-U left the Fourth International in 1979, but it now belongs to no international grouping. The statement was issued in Monteviedo a few weeks before the primary elections.
After its crushing defeat in the constitutional referendum, the dictatorship is now preparing to implement its alternative political plan.
Thanks to the political truce offered by the so-called opposition politicians, the dictatorship has been able to regain its footing after the defeat suffered in the referendum. After months of intense discussions in the name of "dialogue" and orchestrated around the theme of "transition," it has come up with a new proJect. In this framework, the politicians of the supported putting General Gregorio Gomez in the presidency.
For the bourgeois opposition leaders, their fear of the poor masses and workers organizing was so great that they did not hesitate to sell-out the "no" vote victory in the referendum, and crawl back under the protecting wing of the dictatorship. In fact, in the ten years of the dictatorship they have scarcely ventured from this hiding place. What the generals had to promise them to get them to shut their mouths was not much. It was enough to give some partial concessions, even ephemeral ones, to get these people to run to the government palace and bow down...
To put it another way, to call for voting fowthe candidates of the traditional parties of November 28 has the same significance for the government as calling for a "yes" vote in the 1980 referendum. Voting "yes" to dialogue is voting for a country where wages constantly go down and the number of unemployed constantly goes up, for a country without jobs, full of political prisoners, victims of torture, people banned from public life, and "missing persons." It means saying "yes" to pillage by the bosses and the military, to the abandonment of the country to imperialism, to the denial of democratic rights. Finally, voting in these elections for the candidates of the bourgeois opposition parties - whether they say they oppose the government or cess" — means saying "yes" to maintaining the dictatorship.
The kind of candidates we find on the slates of the so-called opposition makes this all the more clear - exploiters and people response for repression against the workers and the masses. Those who vote for the "opposition Blancos" should know that they will be voting for General Ventura Rodriguez, former chief of police, who ordered the butchery of work. ers. They will be voting for representatives of the imperialist banks, such as Pons Etcheverry, and such ill-reputed former ministers as Pivel Devoto.
The same sort of figures adorn the slates of the "oppositionist Colorados." This ilk goes from the lawyers of imper ialist cooperations like Torigo to avowed enemies of public education like Sanguinetti. This is why the only way that the workers and the masses can make their votes count is to cast blank ballots, to vote against the dictatorship and the champions of dialogue.
By casting blank ballots, we will be voting against the economic plans of the government and the imperialists, for re storing the buying power of wage earners and pension recipients, against layoffs and unemployment, for the restoration of social benefits, and against higher prices and rents.
We will be voting against restrictions on the right to strike, for the free func D tioning of the trade unions, and against the trade-union law.
We will cast blank ballots also to demand an end to the intrusion of the ti state arm into the schools, for autono- in mous and democratically run universities, against entrance examinations.
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We will be casting blank ballots to demand the release of the prisoners an end to torture, return of the exiles and for the reappearance, safe and sound, of the "missing persons."
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In short, we will mobilize for jobs, better wages, and freedom. We will vote and we will mobilize to bring down the dictatorship."...
—Cast a blank ballot against the dictatorship and policies of dialogue!
-For free elections and a constituent assembly elected by universal suffrage, without anybody being banned from participation in political life, without political prisoners, exiles, or "missing persons."
—For a government of the workers and poor masses.
who were involved in the 1964 coup, and who were later linked to the Alliance for National Renewal (ARENA), the predecessor of the PDS, and then to the PDS itself. This was notable in Sao Paulo where the PMDB candidate was supported by a powerful employers federation.
However the PDS, although losing its majority in the Federal Chamber, has by legal mechanisms, retained its majority in the electoral college, which will elect the new president in 1984.
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE
RESULTS FOR THE BOURGEOISIE
The outcome of these elections can be considered as the fruition of the 'liberalisation' scenario that was the aim of the old strategy adopted by the regime. This scheme provided for a bourgeois opposition and a 'responsible' workers opposition. This plan had been disrupted by the emergence of the Workers Party (PT), but the relative elec toral defeat of this party and the election of Brizola has relaunched the former perspective.
The bourgeoisie urgently needs to establish a mechanism for a social pact with a house-broken opposition that controls at least part of the mass movement. This is a job that the labour bureaucracy in the Brazilian Communist Party, and in the Maoist Brazilian Communist Party is ready to fill.