…..for the humiliation of your choice: 
(cover of 1983 text: re-arrange to read “Labour, Tory, LibDem, DUP, SPGB etc.”)
Vote now for:
…the essential humiliation is to accept that others can do your struggling for you…even if “the better of 2 evils” wins, in first of all not fighting for yourself you learn nothing, never make your own mistakes and never increase your confidence…
see also “elections”
One of the best critiques of elections for a long time:
the anti-election movement in Mexico, June 2015
ballot boxes and papers burning in Guerrero
the movement against bourgeois democracy,
against the absolute dictatorship of the commodity
See also this: Mexico – a reader
And this Facebook page has lots of information, mainly in Spanish
short video against the elections
7/6/15:
Mexico, Tlapa: 12 minute video giving chronology of events from 1st to 7th June ….ballot boxes burn…election cancelled in Tixtla
“At least three polling stations were prevented from opening after masked protesters and the parents of 43 students allegedly killed by a police-backed drug gang last year seized and burned ballots in Tixtla, Guerrero, canceling the vote in the town of 40,000. “
Oaxaca: local mayor shot dead…whilst anti-election movement continues
“Teachers of Section 22 of the CNTE burnt electoral propaganda during their march against the FONAPAS gas station, as one of its measures of pressure against election day. In the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, they burned ballot boxes… while in Miahuatlán the situation is very tense as the army looks on”
Police forced to retreat in Tlaxiaco, Teotitlán and Miahuatlán
“Oaxaca…teachers refused to surrender the premises of INE [building of the electoral board overseeing the elections]…From the moment the Army, Gendarmerie, Federal Police and Navy, entered the state by air, land and sea, teachers from different regions armed themselves with Molotov cocktails, stones and rockets, to confront the national security forces…..Initially the teachers of Section 22 of the CNTE in the region of Tuxtepec… removed all the furniture and set it on fire in the street, and they seized several different gas stations, shops and, by Friday afternoon, they took the hydroelectric facilities of Temascal, a strategic facility for the state that supplies power to the southeast of Mexico….in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, Juchitan de Zaragoza, a group of 500 education workers from six sectors of Section 22 of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in Oaxaca, blocked the main entrance to the refinery “Jaime Antonio Dovalí” in Salina Cruz, preventing the exit and entry of Pemex petrol tankers, however, on Saturday the army and the gendarmerie managed to evict the teachers who’d been struggling with federal forces…In the Mixteca region, or more precisely in Huajuapan de Leon, where the District Board was besieged… they retained control of a gas pipe to reinforce the blockade. …the pipe was occupied as a barricade to prevent the police forcess coming….In Tlaxiaco grenadiers, evicting the teachers who were in possession of the local board of INE, had a heavy confrontation with teachers, who were supported by villagers …these, resulted in several federal forces being seriously …injured… In Miahuatlán …located in the southern highlands, teachers supported by members of the Revolutionary Popular Front RPF fought elements of the security forces, but also set fire to the premises of the local board of INE, besides burning a truck owned by the same federal electoral institute….In Tlaxiaco, a major contingent forced the federal police to retreat… setting fire to a vehicle, tires and … prevented the police from returning…. in the district of Pochutla in the Coast region, teachers were holding the gas station, where a group of people armed with stones, machetes and sticks, were evicted, several teachers being injured in addition to a number gone missing“
Jiutepec, Morelos State: ballot box and election officials burnt
“According to witnesses, a guy who pretended to come in order to vote threw gasoline on hundreds of ballot papers and at polling officials, then threw a lighter which caused the burning. Both the president of the ballot…. and the officer were taken to a hospital. The man who burned the box was not arrested”
6/6/15:
Mexico, Oaxaca: 6000 teachers mobilize in main square to boycott the elections “Among slogans such as “no to the farce”, “to vote is to lie”, the event is followed at a distance by army soldiers while helicopters carried the Mexican Air Force overhead in the area.” Video here
megabarricade in Teotitlan
Teachers were joined by locals who came to support them. They placed two buses, tires and metal structures across the road. At 1.40 pm about 200 federal agents aboard seven trucks and three buses tried to enter the town but they couldn’t
Guerrero: teachers’ leader beaten to death by cops (2 other teachers also brutally beaten)
5/6/15:
Mexico, Chiapas: teachers ransack offices of at least 6 political parties, burning papers
Vera Cruz, Xlapa: state forces savagely attack students opposed to elections
“At about 1 am today, Friday, June 5, 8 students from the Universidad Veracruzana were brutally attacked by a group of hooded thugs and police in tactical vests, with bats, batons and rifles, in a house during a birthday party …Approximately five minutes after they left police patrols arrived to photograph the wounded, some with serious skull fractures….We hold the government of the state of Veracruz responsible for this campaign of ruthless attacks and criminalization of youth and activists under the electoral process marked by uncertainty and violence generated by the government….Similarly we demand a statement and concrete actions by the rector of the Universidad Veracruzana, Sara Ladron de Guevara, related to the attack. We will not allow a witch hunt.”
electoral boycott in Zacatecas (traditionally not one of the most combative)
4/6/15:
Mexico, Oaxaca: movement continues
“lack of gasoline…led members of the National Coordination of Education Workers (CNTE) to resort to…theft of vehicles belonging to government institutions and companies….In addition, the protesters stole and burned stationery from the PRI headquarters on Federal Highway 190 …”
Members of the National Coordinator of Education Workers (CNTE) burn Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) [ie the governing party] documents, as well as pictures of President Enrique Peña Nieto, on Federal Highway 190
Guerrero: confrontations with cops (video)
This video says that 60% of the population have said that they won’t vote
3/6/15:
Mexico, Oaxaca: 200 teachers block airport in movement against elections
“Teachers of the National Coordinator of Education Workers (CNTE) today blocked Oaxaca International Airport as part of its actions to boycott Sunday’s election to exert pressure [on the state] to respond to its demands. Having taken Route 175 leading to the air terminal just after sunrise, about 200 teachers came to the airport installations …After the blockade by the teachers, the airport suspended flights and closed its facilities…Teachers on Monday began an indefinite strike affecting more than one million students seeking to boycott the elections on June 7 and simultaneously press the government to respond to their requests, including….the appearance alive of the 43 students missing in Iguala, free education, wage increases and the cancellation of the educational reform enacted in 2013, among other things. “…However, teachers announced on Tuesday that, although the government is committed to meeting their demands, they’ll continue to boycott the electoral process which they consider a “farce”. On Sunday, more than 83 million Mexicans are called to the polls to elect 1,996 officials, including 500 federal deputies and governors of nine states.”…More here “… teachers, the National Coordinator of Educational Workers (CNTE)…occupied 11 electoral offices, oil company Pemex’s facilities and several commercial installations”
Guerrero: clash between Normalista School and cops – 10 cops injured Video in English here
Tixtla under state of siege as state aims to occupy the Ayotzinapa School
“The head of the Mexican National Electoral Institute, Lorenzo Cordova, admitted that actions in support of the election boycott in the state of Oaxaca have made it impossible for the institute to conduct its work in that state.”
2/6/15:
Mexico, Chiapas: teachers take over 14 gas stations, start distributing free gas; set fire to law library in the House of Culture, also burn Institute of Elections and Citizen Participation…Nayarit: general assembly of Council of the United Communities announce their refusal to allow the general elections of June 7th to be held in 4 villages…Guerrero: at least 17 armoured vehicles sent to Chilapa to prevent opposition to elections
1/6/15:
Mexico, Vera Cruz: molotov cocktails burn electoral building…
Teachers take over election board offices in Cordoba, Coatzacalcos and Orizaba in Veracruz…
Oaxaca: despite army protection, 18 ballot boxes are burnt in anti-election movement initiated by teachers’ organisation (in Juchitan) (more here, mentioning Tehuantepec, another town in Oaxaca state)…and this talks of teachers expelling soldiers from electoral building and the theft of a van carrying electoral packages in Gorge…
This report resumes some of the events, which include the “temporary” closure of 9 of the 11 electoral boards of Oaxaca; the assassination of several candidates and a possible boycott of the election in some states, especially Oaxaca, Guerrero and Michoacan; that in the Yucatan town of Peto there was a clash between rank and file members of the National Action Party (PAN) and a group attacking them that left a toll of two dead and at least six injured; that in Tehuantepec members of the teachers organisation set fire to the premises of the District Board 05; that in Guerrero 3 radio stations were taken over and broadcasters were forced to transmit a message from the Normalista School about the 43 disappeared students and a critique of the electoral process; that in Michoacan a car carrying the state president of the Social Encounter Party (PES), and his chauffeur was fired upon, though they were unharmed; and that in order to ensure the security and peaceful (ho ho) development of the elections of June 7, more than 12 thousand members of the Mexican Army, the Navy of Mexico and the Attorney General’s Office have already been deployed.
Poster from the February 1974 election:
“Parliamentarism appeared with the domination of the bourgeoisie. Political parties appeared with parliament.
In parliaments the bourgeois epoch found the historical arena of its first contentions with the crown and nobility. It organised itself politically and gave legislation a form corresponding to the needs of capitalism. But capitalism is not something homogeneous. The various strata and interest groups within the bourgeoisie each developed demands with differing natures. In order to bring these demands to a successful conclusion, the parties were created which sent their representatives and activists to the parliaments. Parliament became a forum, a place for all the struggles for economic and political power, at first for legislative power but then, within the framework of the parliamentary system, for governmental power. But the parliamentary struggles as struggles between parties, are only battles of words. Programmes, journalistic polemics, tracts, meeting reports, resolutions, parliamentary debates, decisions – nothing but words. Parliament degenerated into a talking shop (increasingly as time passed). But from the start parties were only mere machines for preparing for elections. It was no chance that they originally were called “electoral associations.”
The bourgeoisie, parliamentarism, and political parties mutually and reciprocally conditioned one another. Each is necessary for the others. None is conceivable without the others. They mark the political physiognomy of the bourgeois system, of the bourgeois-capitalist system.” – Otto Rühle , The Revolution Is Not A Party Affair, 1920.
This page was originally put up in May 2015
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