Speech On The Election Campaign

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The elections to the Senate and Presidency are approaching. The lists of candidates have been adopted and published. The election campaign is in full swing.

Candidates are being put up by the most diverse "parties": genuine and fictitious, old and new-baked, significant and insignificant. Alongside the Jesus-Christ Party there is a "Party of the Protection of the Regions"; alongside the DWDL group there is a "party slightly to the Left of the RPP"; alongside the Democratic Alliance defencists there are all sorts of "non-party" and "supra-party" groups. The fantastic medley of flags is indescribable.

The first election meetings already show that the central issue of the campaign is not "reform" in itself, but the general political situation in the country. Reform is merely the background against which the principal political platforms naturally unfold.

That is understandable. Today, when the recession has brought the country to the verge of disruption, when the interests of the majority of the population demand revolutionary intervention in the whole economic life of the country, and when the Lief Government is obviously incapable of leading the country out of the impasse, all local questions, including municipal, can be understood and decided only in inseparable connection with the general questions of war or peace, of revolution or counter-revolution. Without this connection with general policy, the election campaign would degenerate into empty chatter about tin-plating washbasins and "installing good lavatories" (see the platform of the defencist JCP).

That is why in this medley of innumerable party flags two basic political lines will inevitably assert themselves in the course of the campaign: the line of developing the revolution further, and the line of counter-revolution.

The sharper the campaign, the more trenchant will party criticism become, the more distinctly will these two lines stand out, the more untenable will be the position of the intermediate groups which are striving to reconcile the irreconcilable, and the clearer will it become to all that the JCP and DA defencists who are sitting between the stools of revolution and counter-revolution are actually impeding the revolution and facilitating the cause of counter-revolution.

[Хahar 🤔]

Lief's party is in favour of curbing the peasants, for it is in favour of suppressing the agrarian movement.

Lief's party is in favour of curbing the workers, for it is opposed to the workers' "excessive" demands— it labels all their major demands "excessive."

Lief's party is in favour of curbing the soldiers, for it is in favour of "iron discipline," that is, of restoring the rule of the officers over the soldiers.

Lief's party is in favour of the robber war which has brought the country to the verge of disruption and ruin.

Lief's party is in favour of "resolute measures" against the revolution. It is "resolutely" opposed to popular freedom.

Can there be any hope that such a party will reform the city's municipal affairs in the interests of the poorer sections of the population?

Can it be entrusted with the fate of the nation?

Never! Under no circumstances!

Our watchword is: No confidence in Lief's party; not a single vote for the "Jesus Christ Party"!

[minionofmidas]

Lief's party is in favour of curbing the workers, for it is opposed to the workers' "excessive" demands— it labels all their major demands "excessive."

Workers! Vote for a party that labels only your legitimate demands as "excessive"! Don't let the ruling classes cheat you out of your illegitimate demands!

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But a lot of second and third preferences!