Disgusted voters across Argentina dumped establishment politicians on the Oct. 27, 2013 ballot and chose instead some real-live socialist candidates from the Workers Left Front (FIT). FIT won three national deputies for the provinces of Mendoza, Salta, and Buenos Aires, and another eight deputies in different provincial parliaments.
Not surprisingly, the highest number of votes came out of working-class and poor neighborhoods. Clearly, Argentine working people are fed up with their pockets being emptied to save the banks and monopolies.
FIT is composed of three Trotskyist political organizations that came together to provide genuine electoral alternatives by running openly socialist candidates with an explicitly revolutionary platform.
For the first time ever, a leftist working-class slate successfully challenged Peronism, Argentina’s longstanding vehicle for maintaining the capitalist status quo. Peronist President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner’s machine took a major hit.
FSP’s former presidential candidate Stephen Durham reacted with enthusiasm.
“Argentina’s Left breakthrough is part of a global phenomenon, as is the recent win by socialist Kshama Sawant in her bid for Seattle City Council. It’s a fine time,” he urges, “for anti-capitalists everywhere to unite in the electoral arena and find ways to collaborate in militant action in the streets and in every struggle.”
