Version imprimableBar the road to Le Pen in the streets and in the elections!
On May 5, vote against Le Pen!
For a week now demonstrations against Le Pen and the Front National have continued. Hundreds of thousands of young people are expressing their anger against the far right.
– Le Pen is a fascist. He claims to be the defender of the ’small people’ but he is a millionaire demagogue who defends the rich and powerful. He wants to increase the givebacks to the bosses, liquidate social and democratic rights, send women back to the home and expel immigrants.
– Le Pen’s score is the result of the campaign around ’insecurity’ unleashed by Chirac and the right and accepted by Jospin, but it is also the consequence of the policies followed for 20 years by successive governments. The plural left, by adapting to neo-liberalism and capitulating to the Medef, has turned its back on popular aspirations.
The right prepares its attack
– Le Pen’s road must be barred by any means possible, through mobilisations and in the elections; but a radical political change is also needed in the country. Among wage earners, among the unemployed, in the popular neighbourhoods, among all those who feel themselves despised, laid off, without a decent income, without rights, too many setbacks have been suffered, and too many promises have not been fulfilled.
– Chirac is not a rampart against the far right. Already, he is preparing the recuperation of Le Pen’s voters by combinations with the ultra right, the likes of Millon, Soisson and company... He is preparing, from his election, attacks against wage earners, youth and immigrants.
For a new anti-capitalist force in the service of workers and youth!
The parties of the governmental left have been punished by the popular electorate. The leaders of the plural left cannot be relied upon to genuinely oppose neo-liberalism. It is necessary to rebuild a new hope for millions of young people and wage earners.
– A new anti-capitalist political force is needed. A force of combat, intransigent against the far right, the right and the bosses. A force which draws the lessons of the bankruptcy of the traditional left.
– Millions of electors have voted for the far left, notably for Olivier Besancenot, the LCR candidate, and Arlette Laguiller.
– We are ready to open a new road, with all those who occupy the street, with the new generation which is often getting involved in politics for the first time, with the activists in the social, trade union and community movements, with the Communists, Socialists and ecologists who seek an alternative to the governmental left. We want a new political force, 100% on the left.
– Yes, we must bar the road to Le Pen, through demonstrations against the Front National in the street, the neighbourhoods, and the workplaces. On May 1, hundreds of thousands of wage earners and youth will demonstrate against Le Pen and for their demands.
On May 5, vote against Le Pen!
Through this mobilisation, we prepare a huge social movement, as in the strikes of May 1968 or winter 1995, all together against unemployment, poverty, inequality, for the defence of social and democratic rights, for another division of wealth, an anti-capitalist policy which is radically opposed to the bosses, a politics which is 100% on the left.
Time for a general mobilisation!
Mobilise against the plans of the right
A huge popular mobilisation, in the streets and in the polling stations, has blocked Le Pen at the level of the far right votes of the first round.
This is not a plebiscite for Chirac’s anti-social, law and order policies. Starting this evening we must prepare a massive mobilisation against the proposals of the right and the bosses’ organisation, the MEDEF.
We cannot rely for this on the forces of the "pluralist left" whose governmental policies led us to this calamitous situation. Only a radical left with a social action programme can offer a perspective of social transformation in opposition to the plans of the right and making a balance sheet of the 5 years of the "pluralist left" in government. This is also the only alternative which could put a definitive stop to the rise of the far right.
Candidates defending these positions will be standing everywhere during the parliamentary elections in June.
Political Bureau LCR, 5th May 2002 at 8 pm
(Unofficial figures at 8pm: 81% Chirac, 19% Le Pen 19 % abstentions 4% spoilt and blank votes)
