Chile – Municipal Elections 2024: Forward with the Electoral Boycott!
We publish an unofficial translation of the statement by Revolutionary Front of the People and published by Prensa Chiripilko.
“The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class are to represent and repress them.”
Karl Marx
Municipal Elections 2024: Forward with the Electoral Boycott!
On Saturday, October 26 and Sunday, October 27, the next municipal elections will be held to vote for Regional Governors, Regional Councilors (CORE), mayors and councilors.
This deserves an important reflection, analysis and call to action regarding the characterization of the country and the predominance of agriculture in our rural areas that we already described in several previous articles.
The politicians have already focused on their electoral campaigns, flooding the urban and rural landscape with their faces and cynical smiles. They come back with their promises that they know they will not keep or cannot keep, lying with grandiose phrases such as “Now is the change”, “I defend the people”, “Experience and service”, “With me we will grow together”, “Recover and defend traditions”, and others, that head their leaflets and posters.
The candidates make up a true electoral circus: drug traffickers, corrupt former police officers, big landowner despots, pseudo “influencers”, religious fanatics, pedophiles and endless rotten elements of society. Likewise, many others are running for reelection as mayors and councilors to continue their work of strengthening their networks of influence through nepotism, political favors, and even servitude. Added to the opportunists who have jumped from one party to another seeking to offer themselves to the highest bidder to sponsor their electoral campaigns, including the false “independents”. They are clowns but not funny.
Some candidates are aware of several of the problems that afflict the masses and bring them out in their speeches to draw attention to their campaigns. They talk that they will work to improve health, education, connectivity in rural sectors, against crime, unemployment, the increase in basic services and more…
But the truth is that the masses know the truth and express it with phrases like:
“Now that they are in the campaign, they remember the poor”, “They only come out to get the vote, then we don’t see them anymore”, “They only say nice words so they can later steal”, “That candidate is looking to get a good position for himself and his family, nothing more”, “Voting is useless, it does not change anything”…
These expressions of the working people confirm the tendency towards Electoral Boycott and the rejection of the old bourgeois-big landlord democracy that has been increasing in recent years.
After the establishment in 2012 of an automatic registration upon reaching the age of majority (18 years) and voluntary voting (a measure taken under Piñera’s first term), the levels of electoral participation that were already declining fell even further, making our country one of the countries with the highest electoral abstention in the world since 2013, as the following graphs show:
All of the above reflects the discredit of the people in front of the elections since the poor gain little or nothing by voting and with each new electoral period, the candidates themselves, by not fulfilling their promises and working merely for their personal interests, generate greater rejection by the masses to attend the polls.
To try to counteract the low electoral participation, the old State once again established mandatory voting through a constitutional reform in 2022, reestablishing the mandatory nature of suffrage for all citizens in the various electoral processes. The measure was accompanied by the “stick”, fining and prosecuting those who did not vote with large sums of money and even imprisonment.
Why so much concern among the ruling classes about absenteeism and abstention in elections?
Because these are their weapon to fulfill the political objective of “legitimation”, that is, to seek governments at the national, regional and communal levels resulting from elections as means of “giving them legitimacy” and “authority” recognized by the people.
However, this measure did not bring the results they expected, especially for Boric’s current government.
Let us remember the plebiscite of September 4, 2022 where a large mass of voters, many popular young people, rejected the proposal for a New Constitution promoted by the opportunist government of the Frente Amplio and the false “Communist” Party as protest and showing discontent against the yellow and country-selling government of Boric. The second constitutional proposal voted on December 17, 2023 was also rejected as it was prepared and defended by the most reactionary and anti-people sector of the right that until that date appeared in the ranks of the national electoral politics.
This has caused the ruling classes and the plans of imperialism in our country to be frustrated by the need to fulfill their three counterrevolutionary tasks, which are to reinvigorate bureaucratic capitalism, restructure the State and conjure the revolution.
Does this mean that the popular masses do not want change?
Absolutely not. Of course they do want it and they express their discontent by increasingly discarding illusions and lies.
The multiple protests that gradually grow in combativeness have been a powerful example of this. From secondary student demonstrations in 2001 (mochilazo) and 2006 – 2008 (March of the Penguins), against “HidroAysén” in 2011, the great Student Movement for Free Education in 2011 and more, protests and combative uprisings in Freirina 2010 – 2012, Aysén 2012, Chiloé in 2016, Quinteros-Puchuncaví 2018, the constant armed struggle of the Mapuche people to this day and of course the great popular revolt that began on October 18, 2019 are just some of several current examples that remind us that our people have never stopped fighting, showing that what is missing is an organization that achieves to unite all the people and that does not surrender to class conciliation or to the state terrorism that unleashes police and military repression.
The rejection of the current government, the sabotage of electoral propaganda in its different forms and levels of consciousness, the expressions of grievances and day-to-day comments show that the working class does not want to continue living as it has done until now.
And this has grown due to the crisis that the rich and the monopolies have dumped on the shoulders of the poor, increasing the cost of living and prices, making jobs precarious, plunging more and more people into poverty and misery and, also, by the constant disappointment that people fall into who once believed in the promises of a candidate, mayor or councilor and today see them almost daily involved in cases of corruption at the municipal, regional or national level.
Along with the above, we mention the growth of the tendency that it is impossible for the ruling classes to maintain their rule without any change, running out of “democratic” options and little by little they turn more to the use of fascism and violence against the people through the repression.
True revolutionaries and democrats must work for the interests of the people, especially the poorest. That is why it is vital to understand that elections are ultimately an instrument of the dominant classes to maintain their power and therefore oppression against the working masses.
What is the proposal, the solution to the stark exploitation and oppression?
We must work to form the three instruments of the Revolution: The Party, a new type of Communist Party that struggles and organizes, a party of the proletariat that is distinct and opposed to all electoral parties. We also need to form our own Revolutionary Armed Forces, an Army of the people that fights and defends the conquests. Finally, we need to form a great United Front, so that organizations of all kinds flourish, such as unions, neighborhoods, students, in the countryside and in the city, seeking to work to exercise a true and new democracy, deciding and executing the real interests of the people.
The old order must be destroyed and a new policy established and an advance in the seizure of Power from below through the mass organizations defended by its army and led by its new type Communist Party. Destroy the basis of the old society, semi-feudality and introduce new social relations of production by applying a new economy. Especially in the countryside, take into account the agrarian tactic of combating the evolution of semi-feudality by targeting associative property, neutralizing the rich peasantry, winning over the middle peasantry and relying on the poor peasantry.
Starting from the small to the biggest, gaining experience in struggles, no matter how modest they may be at first. Little by little sow the seed of the revolution so that we can soon apply the agrarian program of “Land to the Tiller” through confiscation and individual delivery through an entire process and through plans. In this area we have the example and experiences of various parties, especially the people’s wars, particularly that of Peru, and the peasant struggle in Brazil, which give us valuable insights into how to proceed.
Workers, peasants, seasonal workers, students, youth and people’s women:
Today they put the electoral ballot in your hand: Learn to organize yourself to beat your enemies and combat the electoral farce!
In times of elections, our path is and will be that of the Electoral Boycott!
Elections No, Revolution Yes!
Down with the circus and the electoral farce!
Long live the struggles of the people!
Revolutionary Front of the People – FRP
We share some images of the Electoral Boycott that takes place in peasant and rural areas of our Curicana Province carried out by the masses and by organized detachments: