Alejandro Bodart presented this Wednesday in La Plata his candidacy for governor for the MST within the Left Front and Workers – Unity (FIT) and spoke with 0221.com.ar of his electoral proposals to carry out “structural changes” in the province as an agrarian reform, a judicial and security reform so that both judges and prosecutors as well as commissioners are elected by popular vote. He also explained the differences that today separate them from the other leftist parties and was in favor of seeking a list of unity, allowing the militancy to define the presidential candidate that the FIT will lead in “a great national conference.” The leader also analyzed the growth of the leader of La Libertad Avanza, Javier Mileyand the ruling of the Supreme Court of Justice that suspended the elections in the provinces of San Juan and Tucumán.
—What are the proposals for the Governorate?
—We believe that the big problem that the province has is that it is rich but has the highest numbers of poverty and indigence. We have 40% of the population but close to 60% of indigence. And this has to do with the fact that the wealth produced by the province ends up in a few hands or goes abroad as debt payment. And we believe that measures must be taken to affect the interests of those who have accumulated and continue to accumulate wealth. A comprehensive agrarian reform is needed to democratize land ownership that accumulates in a few hands; we believe that a judicial reform is needed to put an end to justice addicted to the power of the day. We want a comprehensive reform so that judges and prosecutors are elected by the people. We want a security reform, but if there is not a shock to remove the million and a half young people who do not study or work in the province, we are going to have more and more insecurity because the ones who come to them are the corrupt police or the drug traffickers. A reform is needed so that the commissioner is elected by the people and can be revoked when he does not do the right thing. We believe that structural changes are needed in the country: a serious political reform, ending the Senate and going to a single chamber, we believe that the salaries of civil servants have to be related to what a teacher earns, not because we want to lower wages but so that they worry about making them rise. We believe that there is a way out for inflation, but the problem is that we even have to apply tools that we have, such as the Supply Law. There are measures to end the problems but you have to touch interests and we are the only ones who propose to touch those interests but then the only ones that affect are the poor and the workers.
—How is the relationship with the other parties that make up the Front? Can they get to the unit?
—We are in a debate process within the FIT, we are presenting the candidates and aspiring to reach a single list and try not to reach the STEP. It is evident that within our force there is no debate about candidacies but about profiles, we believe that we have to have a much more aggressive profile with respect to the national and provincial government and the truth is that the government with a somewhat progressive discourse has finished with a policy that has nothing to be desired on the right because (Sergio) Massa in the national government, voting here for budgets that are lower in health and education, to pay debt, voting together Together for Change and the FdT, something that people don’t know, they think they are cat and dog, but they are “One hundred percent fight” because they pretend to fight and they vote for essential laws together. We believe that it is necessary to strengthen the left, not only to have more institutional representation in the different instances, but for what is to come, a very bad stage for the workers, with a lot of social confrontation because one looks at what the FdT is going to apply, JxC -and not to mention if a Javier Milei were to win- and they are very tough adjustments that do not go without repression and this can end up in a super 2001.
—At which points are they closest?
—We are talking with the people of the Partido Obrero and we have an important coincidence: we believe that it would be very good to choose the candidates with a large participation of the militancy. Possibly it is a starting point because we believe that the militancy has to participate, that is a point of internal differentiation. We believe that it cannot be that the leaders of four parties come together and resolve the lists, the program, the framework of alliances, the profile. We believe that the time has come to involve the militancy.
—What would that participation look like?
—We propose assemblies in all the provinces to elect the provincial candidates in those places where an election has not already been held and that, from there, representatives be sent to a national conference where we elect the candidates for president, governor, etc. . That is to say, that we incorporate the militancy as an active and not a passive factor, not that they only vote for us. That would allow us to add people from the left who do not feel represented by the parties but by the Left Front. There are people who feel on the left, who vote for us but who do not participate.
—And is there a principle of agreement around this proposal?
-We’re talking. We released that proposal, the colleagues of the PO are evaluating it and they find it interesting. We hope that the other forces will also evaluate it and if we do not agree, well, the PASO can be an option because there are nuances inside and it is not a bad thing that there are nuances on the left because we are not a party with a single thought, we are a front . We believe that there are comrades who are not very critical of the national government, who are influenced by the fact that they are progressivism and we believe that neither Axel Kicillof, nor Alberto Fernández nor Sergio Massa, a man from the United States embassy, have anything of progressism that he is going to apply the plan to the letter. They are applying it here, a Sergio Berni is not from Milei, he is from Kicillof. We believe that just the lack of a real progressivism, that takes measures in favor of the people is what has favored the growth of the right, That it is a PvC option again after the mess they made has to do with the disappointment these people have caused.
—How do you analyze Milei’s growth in the polls?
—I think that what there is here is a disappointment with the traditional party, with radicalism we already saw it in 2001 that has been reduced to a secondary actor but there is also a disappointment with what was the Macri government and with Alberto, with Cristina Kirchner, with Kicillof and from that disappointment there has been an intention to raise up a figure like Milei from some sectors of the most concentrated power, not so much for him to win, but to introduce debates that previously seemed not to have been raised. Now those who gave Milei a handle are worried because a government of his would cause a social outbreak the next day because if he tries to apply the measures that he says this will explode. Eliminate public education, eliminate public health, dollarize, it can only be done this way: bringing the dollar to 7,000 is nice for people who believe that they are going to have dollars in their pockets and they are going to have a dollar because they are going to go to 10 thousand or 15 thousand pesos, there will be salaries of 20 dollars. Now why do these phenomena grow? For the disappointment caused by the governments we have had. It is a worldwide phenomenon and from these crises some characters emerge like Milei who with an easy speech like dollarization, the caste! The breed is a man who leads Ricardo Bussi and Martín Menem, for example, in the provinces or who is an employee of financial power. I think that there is a tremendous disconnection of the traditional political class with reality. They live in a Tupperware store because they don’t go through a neighborhood, they don’t go through a college, that is, and many times when they go through them what happened to Berni happens to them, that’s why I think that the left is the only one that has a real x-ray of what pass down. If you really want to solve the problems, you have to touch interests in this country. In other words, the debt cannot continue… We cannot continue paying a debt that was never investigated. We believe that to stop this, the debt must be investigated, not paying a peso until we really know what it was. The only investigation that there was discovered 2000 illicit in relation to the debt. They do not investigate it because the entire traditional political class that has been complicit in this scam falls.
—What do you think of the ruling that suspended the elections in San Juan and Tucumán?
—I think it shows the debacle of justice and that there is no justice that is truly independent of political power. Those candidates should never have been candidates in their provinces because they violate the local constitution, neither in San Juan nor in Tucumán. They were authorized to be candidates, precisely because there is a justice system in the provinces that is addicted to the power of those fiefdoms, where they do what they want. If a candidate in those conditions were ours, they would have thrown him out, but since they are the candidates of power, they can pass. And then a Court that could have ruled long before so as not to blow up the electoral process and that it does so at the last minute to hit the ruling party because it works for the opposition, so they are two powers that do not really do justice or think about the people They are independent, but they are powers that work for the power of the moment. Hence our proposal to democratize justice. I have been a deputy: the deputies and the prosecutors are chosen in a give and take in the last session of the year, where between the two forces, it is not true that they have a majority, give me a prosecutor, I give you two judges, that is, like this It is how justice is conformed, that is why justice is addicted. Judges and prosecutors must be elected in a separate election from the general election, so that they have to answer to the people and that they can be revocable -as with any son of a neighbor- when they do not comply. In other words, we have to encourage it to be a trial by jury in all instances so as not to depend on the judge on duty.
