Publication on December 2, 2024
In Argentina, the Workers’ Party is facing legal attacks from Javier Milei. His far-right government is falsely accusing the Workers’ Pole (an organization of the unemployed which organizes blockades in solidarity with the Workers’ Party) of extortion, even though it feeds tens of thousands of working families every day, while Milei has been striving to impoverish the population for almost a year in office. The NPA-Révolutionnaires (New Anticapitalist Party – Revolutionaries in France) offers its full support to our Argentinian comrades. We translate here and transcribe the press release issued by Polo Obrero and Partido Obrero.
Today’s ruling by the Federal Court of Appeal against the Polo Obrero activists is a blow to freedom of organization and mobilization, tailored to the needs of Bullrich, Milei and Pettovello, who are responsible for the massive de-supply of comedors (soup kitchens) across the country. It adds charges of extortion and coercion to Casanello’s original indictment, a point that prosecutor Pollicita demanded, arguing that without these charges, the defendants could “go free with probation”. The charge of real concurrence of offences aims to increase the penalties, adding those of each of them, in order to intimidate and strike at an organization whose hallmark has been to be at the forefront of the fight against hunger and austerity under all the country’s governments.
The judgment is based on a montage claiming that Polo Obrero was an organization that coerced and extorted its own rank and file, a direct line of incrimination that sets a very serious precedent for social and trade union organizations. The Chamber has decided to follow through on a policy which places the organization of mobilizations and the financing of struggle organizations in a virtual illegality, as the basic elements of any organization (membership fees, registration of participants in a mobilization, encouragement of participation) are considered coercive elements, for the simple reason that the people who mobilized were paid for a social program obtained on the basis of, precisely, countless plans of struggle. This is why the Ministry of Capital welcomes this antiworker decision.
The Chamber also decided to validate all the violations of defense rights committed by Judge Casanello and Prosecutor Pollicita. Thus, it allowed the indictment to stand without access to the evidence on which the accusation is based, it validated the judge’s refusal to extend the defendants’ statements, it validated the concealment of evidence in the case file, the use of protected witnesses without any control by the defense of these testimonies, the concealment of part of these testimonies, in short, all the elements implemented by the judge to manipulate the evidence and thus present the Polo Obrero as a criminal organization.
These same judges, on the other hand, annulled the prosecution of Macri government officials Guillermo Dietrich, Nicolás Dujovne and Javier Iguacel for toll concessions to companies linked to Mauricio Macri. It’s a judicial system tailor-made for its principals – remember that Bruglia and Bertuzzi were hand-picked by the Macri government.
Violations of the right to defense have reached such a point that last week, in a case involving Polo Obrero, the Casanello court rejected the presentation of witnesses proposed by the defense to testify to the internal workings of the organization. This is a very serious decision, which shows how the court is trampling on procedural guarantees.
The ruling once again ratifies the lies about the alleged fraud, ignoring the fact that Polo Obrero presented ample evidence of the materiality of the purchases made, the use of the equipment in training courses throughout the country, work in textiles, flocking, printing, construction, sport and vocational training under collective agreements, work in comedors, including the construction of 53 homes, and, ultimately, all the activities carried out under the Potenciar Trabajo program.
Symptomatically, the judgment leaves social development officials and program managers out of any possible indictment, thus exonerating the state of its responsibility for the management of its own funds, while offloading the full weight of persecution onto those responsible for organizing the fight for the most urgent demands of the country’s most exploited neighborhoods.
The defense of Polo Obrero, grouped within the Association of Professionals in Struggle and led by Liliana Alaniz and Eduardo Penello, will appeal this decision, and we will deepen the mobilization campaign against this persecution. Yesterday, Polo Obrero, in collaboration with Frente de Lucha Piquetero, led a major mobilization between Congress and the Ministry of Social Development to demand the return of foodstuffs to the comedors. Polo’s battle plan will continue with new actions, showing that persecution cannot break an organization that has been organizing the country’s most exploited neighborhoods for over two decades.
Monday, November 25 at 1 p.m., press conference at Serpaj
(Piedras 730, CABA)
