By A. Rodríguez
Times of more poverty for the workers and more wealth for the vultures are coming. The Wall Street junta will have absolute power over the colony as the law establishes:
“Article 4, Supremacy Clause – The dispositions of the Law will prevail over any special or general dispositions of territorial laws, state laws or norms that are incompatible with this law”.
The State is a repressive apparatus of the ruling class. In the colony, the dictatorial power of the State is identified with the PROMESA law that serves to increase the exploitation of the working class.
The United States government brags about being the one to spread “democracy” throughout the world yet it has a colony subjugated under the yoke of finance capital and workers paying the consequences of exploitation.
The State is an apparatus for repression in order to keep the ruling class in power and maintain the workers subjected to the exploitation of capital.
For capitalism to function in the interests of the rich, this ruling class uses all its institutions so that the “machine” runs well.
The government, the legislature, the courts and the police are just some of the institutions that favor capitalism in our society. They exist to defend the rich, not the working class.
In the meanwhile, the workers live in this farcical democracy trusting that problems will be resolved by voting every four years in colonial elections.
However, the democratic farce has shed its mask and shown its true dictatorial face with the imposition of the PROMESA law. The Wall Street junta is composed of seven people that will be in the service of finance capital. They are coming to ensure the payment of the debt and “fix” the colony’s credit so that it becomes even more indebted.
Why is this junta dictatorial? The junta will have absolute control over the colonial government and as much as the political hucksters try to hide it now Wall Street, through its operatives, will directly rule the country. The Law nakedly imposes this the Article 108, the Autonomy of the Control Board Clause, “Neither the Governor, or the Legislature, will 1) exercise any control, supervision, oversight control or review of the activities of the control board or its activities.”
The junta, with seven Wall Street operatives, does not have to render accounts to anyone in the Government of Puerto Rico. The politicians elected by means of the vote will only be puppets with the implementation of this law. With the crisis the Wall Street vultures want to have the path clear to ensure the payment of $73 billion and they don’t want the state bureaucracy, politicians or even the Commonwealth’s Constitution to get in the way.
With the PROMESA law the capitalists are saying not only to the colonial government but also the working class, “get out of the way” because we alone run things.
Is that not a dictatorship? Whatever happened to the Free Associated State?
All of this democratic charade has been cast aside so the ruling class could impose its power upon the backs of the workers in Puerto Rico. And while it is certain that under capitalism the State serves the rich, in the class struggle the workers have wrestled rights to improve our quality of life. A minimum wage and collective bargaining agreements are but some of the rights that the working class has won in direct confrontation with the State in the service of the rich.
Now with PROMESA, all that has been achieved to improve just a little the quality of life of the workers, these rights, will be cast aside with one simple pencil erasure to impoverish us more.
Against this new reality faced by the working class in Puerto Rico the only alternative that remains is to organize against the Wall Street junta, which is but one more manifestation of colonialism and capitalism. Communists affirm that against the dictatorial character of the PROMESA law, the call on the workers to participate in the electoral farce will not translate into any advances for the working class. Precisely for this we propose an active boycott, in which we call not only for abstention but that the working class urgently organizes workers councils and convokes workers’ assemblies in which we begin to develop the political power to confront the junta, colonialism and capitalism.