Ecuador: For an Indefinite General Strike against the Neoliberal Austerity Pack!
Build democratic popular assemblies to defeat the government of Moreno – servant of the IMF! For a workers, indigenous, peasant and popular government!
Joint Statement of the Partido Revolucionario de las y los Trabajadores (Costa Rica) and the Revolutionary Communist International Tendency (RCIT), 06 October 2019
1. The Ecuadorian government of President Lenin Moreno has launched on 1 October a massive neo-liberal attack on the workers and popular masses. Complying with the brutal conditions of an IMF loan of US$4.2 billion, Moreno announced the elimination of gasoline subsidies, labor reforms, tax changes and other economic measures. As a result of this set of measures, known in Ecuador as “the package”, prices of diesel per gallon rose from US$1.00 to US$2.20 (an increase of 123%!) and the price of gasoline from US$1.80 to US$2.30 per gallon (an increase of 28%). Among other consequences are a price rise of 100% for basic services and the shortening of the holiday period by half. These neoliberal attacks will result in huge price increases and mass impoverishment.
2. In reaction, a wave of spontaneous mass protests has started. Various trade unions and popular organization – like the Federation of Urban Transportation of Ecuador (Fenatu), the Confederation of National Indigenous of Ecuador (CONAIE), the Popular Front, and the United Workers Front (FUT) – joined the protests. The movement has already reached the proportion of a popular insurrection. In order to smash the protests with brutal state repression, the government declared a state of emergency. About 370 people have already been arrested – among them several trade union and indigenous leaders. Shamefully, the leadership of the transport unions called off their participation in the mass protests after two days. However, other popular organizations continue to mobilize for a nationwide strike on 9 October.
3. The PRT and the RCIT declare their unconditional solidarity with the popular rebellion in Ecuador! There can be no doubt that the government, irrespective of its “progressive” credentials, is a servant of the capitalist class and the imperialist monopolies. The only solution lies in the expropriation of the big capitalists and multinational corporations, the overthrow of the bourgeois state and the creation of a workers and popular government in order to open the road to a socialist future in Ecuador, Latin America and globally!
4. It is urgent to apply the united front tactic and to demand from all trade unions and popular organization to fully support the mass protests. However, it would be foolish to put any trust in their bureaucratic leaderships. The capitulation of the Abel Gomez and other bureaucrats after only two days of protests is a warning that the masses cannot rely on them! In the face of these bureaucracies, revolutionary and popular organizations must apply a policy of demands and denunciations in order to force the bureaucrats to promote mass actions or to denounce them vigorously and unmask them when they try to hinder or betray the struggle movement.
5. It is crucial that the masses continue and deepen the struggle! In our opinion it is urgent that they organize themselves in workers assemblies in work places and in popular assemblies at neighborhoods, universities and villages. Delegates of such committees should build a nation-wide coordination to lead the struggle without any bureaucratic control. Likewise it is important to create self-defense committees defending the masses against the police and army. The chief task now is to organize a nation-wide general strike. Such a general strike should not be limited to one day only. It should be rather an indefinite general strike, i.e. it should continue until the government withdraws all its neo-liberal attacks. Such a general strike could also open the road to the overthrow of the regime and the creation of a workers and popular government based on popular committees of action.
6. The popular rebellion in Ecuador does not take place in isolation. It is part of a global wave of mass struggles against misery and tyranny as we currently see in the uprisings in Haiti, Honduras and Iraq, the mass protests in Egypt and the ongoing struggle of the Syrian people against the Assad dictatorship. It is crucial to build international solidarity with the popular insurrection in Ecuador and to advocate a perspective of internationalist unity with other struggles.
7. The current mass struggles in Ecuador as well as other countries demonstrate once more the urgency to replace the existing bureaucratic leaderships (social democracy, Stalinism, Bolivarism, petty-bourgeois nationalism, Islamism etc.). We commit ourselves to jointly work to overcome the present crisis of working class leadership. The central task for us as well as for all other authentic revolutionaries is to provide the workers and poor peasants with a revolutionary leadership, i.e. to build a Revolutionary World Party fighting for a socialist future!
Partido Revolucionario de las y los Trabajadores (Costa Rica), http://prtcostarica.blogspot.com/
Revolutionary Communist International Tendency (Brazil, Mexico, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, South Korea, Israel/Occupied Palestine, Yemen, Nigeria, Kenya, Russia, Britain, Germany and Austria), www.thecommunists.net