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The Working People's Fight for Rights Holds Government
to Account
- Enver Villamizar -
 April 2, 2014 - The actions of the
Wynne
government on many fronts,
egged on by the anti-worker rhetoric of the PCs, show that it is
determined to steal more funds from workers in the public sector and
the services they provide in order to free up this money to pay the
moneylenders who hold Ontario's odious
debt. The stolen funds are also used to directly pay monopolies in
certain sectors who "promise"
to set up shop or remain in Ontario, while others who have benefited
from government largesse in the past leave with impunity. It is
determined to do this because it can see no alternative other than to
attack its own employees and the services
they provide in order to pay the rich.
The Wynne Liberals base
themselves on the narrow neo-liberal assumptions pushed on society by
the monopolies and their representatives in government, academia and
business. They refuse to discuss any alternative that might break
through these assumptions. They talk about
accountability and even table "accountability legislation" to hide that
the people are not the ones setting the agenda in the first place, much
less the ones being accounted to. In fact the bankruptcy of their
agenda is such that at the same time as they pass such legislation,
pretending they want to be more accountable
to the people and "restore public trust," they openly blackmail the
working people -- as Wynne did at the recent Liberal AGM -- pushing the
fraud that it is better to elect the bully you know (the Liberals) --
that bullies you with high-sounding ideals -- than one that bullies you
without any high-sounding ideals (the
PCs).
The problem for Wynne and the other champions of
austerity, the PCs, is that the working people refuse to submit to
their illegitimate agenda and the blackmail that comes with it and are
more and more clamouring for a new direction based on what is in the
general interests of the society. This expresses itself
in the refusal of workers to accept attacks on their rights in the name
of austerity, which takes the form of demands that government
negotiate, not dictate and
that workers' rights to a say over their wages and working conditions
be affirmed. This is significant given that the monopolies are
demanding the government dictate because
they want their pound of flesh and see the workers' resistance as a
block to their interests.
This clash between the interests of the working people
on the one hand and the monopolies and governments that defend them on
the other comes out in stark relief today. The working people have seen
that the agenda pursued by the government and its justifications for
attacking them are bogus. They are a fraud
to hide that the government has no intention of actually solving the
serious problems facing the economy and developing one that can provide
for the people. This can be seen in the fact
that the government is attacking the very public services that add
immense value to the economy, presenting
them as a drain on society, rather than an investment to be realized.
 The actions of the working
people to continue to affirm
their right to say No! to austerity, whether this takes the form of
strike votes or political actions and protests, is what has exposed the
austerity agenda as illegitimate and a fraud and given rise to public
opinion, which is necessary to hold government to
account. The defeat suffered by the Liberals and PCs in the 2012
Kitchener-Waterloo by-election was decisive in that it broke through
the monopoly on power of the Liberals and PCs and upset the apple cart
by winning over public opinion to defend the rights of all. The defeats
for both in following by-elections
further built public opinion that austerity and dictate are not in the
interest of the people.
The stand of the working people is that their rights are
not the problem or what is blocking society's path to progress. It is
the affirmation of their rights and the rights of all that opens the
path because it is based on the interests of
the majority in opposition to the tiny minority that has
seized power through the parties in the Legislature by means of
electoral coups. Taking political actions that affirm these rights,
such as those to defeat the Liberals and PCs, is what holds government
to account and creates the conditions to turn things around.
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