Re: L-I: Fwd: Argentina: Another Example of IMF Policies at Work (MY COMMENTS)

["Nestor Miguel Gorojovsky" <gorojovsky@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

En relación a L-I: Fwd: Argentina: Another Example of IMF Polic,
el 20 Apr 00, a las 14:12, Johannes.Schneider@xxxxxxx dijo:

> This just came through the marxism list.
>
> > Argentine officers suspended after clashes with unionists
> > By Gilbert Le Gras, Reuters, 4/20/2000
> >
> > BUENOS AIRES - Argentine police clashed outside Congress with
> > unionized truckers and garbage collectors protesting a labor reform
> > plan yesterday, prompting authorities to suspend 12 officers for
> > excessive use of force.

"Clashed with" is clear doublespeak for "provoked and shot at". There
was no parity at all in the confrontation. The mischievousness of the
Reuters' journalist is evident when he begins by exalting the
"authorities'"decission to suspend 12 officers (who were clearly
acting both under higher orders, on a preconceived plan, and full of
anti-working class petty-bourgeois hysteria), and not by remarking
the fact that actual ammunition, not "just" rubber bullets, was used,
and that a first line union leader was shot, most probably in an
intentional move.

> >
> > Police clubbed union members outside the Congress building in
> > downtown Buenos Aires and one officer slashed a man with a knife,
> > prompting calls for an official inquiry into the conduct of the
> > officers. Fourteen people remained hospitalized after the clashes,
> > reports said.

"Reports said" lots more, Mr. Reuters. I have the morning papers on
my desktop. They do not speak of "clubbing", they also mention
gassing, harassing, shooting, and imperviously insulting protesters.
The calls that have been prompted were for an enquiry of the Minister
of Interior at the House of Congress.

> >
> > Hundreds of members of trucker and garbage-collector unions staged a
> > 12-hour protest outside Congress and managed to halt discussion of
> > labor reforms demanded by the International Monetary Fund that they
> > contend will not cut six years of double-digit unemployment, as the
> > center-left Alliance government hopes.

This is the official Govm't line. The unions did not want to "halt
discussion", they wanted to pressure the Senators, particularly those
of the Justicialista (ex Peronism) party, whom they had warned that
in case they voted for the law they would be considered enemies of
the working class. It was police brutality which halted discussion,
in fact.

And as to the "center-left Alliance", it is just sheer fantasy. De La
Rúa, who has been a lawyer for the most reactionary enterprises in
Argentina and heads the rightmost wing of the already conservative
Radical party, is a member of the exclusive and oligarchic Jockey
Club in Buenos Aires, a place he attained when, a young Catholic
lawyer from Córdoba with good anti-Peronist military credentials, he
chose to marry Inés Pertiné, the grandchild of General Basilio
Pertiné, a pro-Fascist minister of the arch-conservative and
fraudulent President Agustín P. Justo, whose regime came to be known
as the Infamous Decade in Argentina (the 1930-1943 period). He has
placed five (FIVE) economists of the worst right-wing tendencies at
basic posts in the Cabinet, including the Vice Minister of Economy of
Cavallo, Juan LLach, as Minister of Education.

The "progressives" in the Alliance, Chacho Alvarez (Vice President),
Federico Storani (Minister of Interior) and Graciela Fernández
Meijide are TO THE RIGHT of De La Rúa on anything that implies more
than just chatter.

If this is "center-left", what is "center-right"?

> >
> > Television images showed five police officers clubbing one protester
> > who lay sprawled on the sidewalk with blood pouring from his head.
> > Another TV station showed a police officer pulling a knife from one
> > protester who had been wrestled to the ground and slashing him
> > across the back.

The head of the Federal Police explained that what was wrong was not
the fact that the policeman carried a knife with him, but just the
use he had put it to. No comments.

> >
> > ''Without a doubt those violent episodes are absolutely
> > prosecutable, and everyone who has committed a crime should be
> > tried, like those who used inappropriate weapons, which is an abuse
> > of force,'' Justice Minister Ricardo Gil Lavedra said.

But the head of the Police, Minister Federico Storani, explained that
since the protestors intended to "close the doors of Congress",
strong action was necessary.

[...]

> > ''This government is so desperate to meet its IMF commitments it's
> > willing to use force on its own people,'' said one woman as
> > protesters waved ''United Left'' and ''Down with antiworker labor
> > reform'' banners behind her.

The idiocy of foreign newspeople. What actually counts is not what "a
woman" with "United Left" banners behind has said. The "woman" may
have probably been Patricia Walsh or Irma Ripoll, candidates to the
Major of Buenos Aires, which is to be elected on May 7th. Both are
non existent as long as mass politics is considered, and in fact the
groups they lead are opportunistically taking profit from the
workers' leaders struggles while at the same time opposing them as
"bureaucrats".

The legislation that prompted the
> > protest would reduce severance packages and cut costly red tape
> > involved in hiring workers, update labor contracts and simplify wage
> > talks.

No. What it would do is to impose as a legal fact what is the current
practice of unimpeded patrons' ravaging of the Argentinian working
class, and blast the few last remaining conquests.

[...]

> >
> > After the clashes, senior members of the opposition Peronist Party
> > said the vote on the measure would be delayed for now. The bill
> > already was passed by the lower house of Congress and was before the
> > Senate, where the Peronists hold a majority.

Justicialista, not Peronist. What remains of Peronism, today, passes
through the combative CGT. The rest of what answers to that calling
is just cold ash of a long ago vanished cool fire.

More than that: there is appearing a wing of Peronist members of the
Congress that begin to prefer support from the combative CGT to that
of the powers-that-be. While pressed by their provincial governors in
order to have the new code enforced (as Julio FB commented
yesterday), the Senators are always pressed by the voters and by the
general relation of power. The _Clarín_  coverage of debates within
the Justicialista bloc of senators is quite revealing:

********BEGIN QUOTE OF CLARIN, main section, page 8********


"You are putting the PJ (Partido Justicialista) in the hands of
Moyano", spit in obfuscation the Radical senator José Genoud at the
head of the Peronist senators, Augusto Alasino, after the latter
informed him that the session, due to the violence against
protesters, was to be delayed.

"It was not an easy decission for the Peronist Senators bloc.  Only
one hour after the premonitory chicanery by Genoud -he was to later
on publicly make the same accusation- Alasino knew that within his
own bloc there were similar ideas.

It was Palito Ortega [a creature of Menem, former governor of
Tucumán, now Senator, a man that was refurbished as a politician
after a long carreer as a low quality popular "rock" music after some
courses in Miami!, NG] the first one to show his doubts around the
"social reading" of the episode: it would seem that the PJ had backed
the union leader.

"And so what" -ejected Ricardo Branda [another Senator]- "i prefer
Moyano and not the CGT 'gordos'".

Palito gathered the support of Carlos Corach, Eduardo Bauzá, Eduardo
Menem, Osvaldo Sala and some others [that is, Menemism in full].

Another one lamented: "We are installing Moyano as a leader" [my
comment: Moyano does not need the PJ Senators to install him as
anything, but of course a split in that bloc would be useful to us].

"That one would never vote for us" - mumbled still another Senator,
who had suffered the opposition of Moyano to the Menem government.
[This observation is as accurate as telling].

[...]

At 7 PM, Genoud delivered a press conference, where he reviled the
decission by the PJ Senators: "They gave Moyano a victory. And Moyano
represents a minority fraction of the CGT. This is the man who said
that he would by all means obstruct the reform of the labor code"

******END QUOTE*****

In fact, it was Genoud, at last, who made the best reivindication of
Moyano.

The old mole is beginning to show the nozzle through the burrows, or
so it seems.





Néstor Miguel Gorojovsky
gorojovsky@xxxxxxxxxxx