An (alternative) politics of the poor has been the political position of the Peoples Democratic Party (PRD) since it was established. This was a politics with the perspective that any changes and any victory to be won by the poor must be based on the people’s own strength, on the strength of the movement. This perspective has been abandoned by a section of the leadership of the PRD – those calling themselves the majority in the PRD – in accord with their interest in liquidating themselves (ideologically, politically, organizationally) into an electoral unity with a fake reformist party, an ally of the government, a government which is the agent of imperialism. All this in order have the opportunity to get into parliament.
Because of this, those of us who refuse to abandon this politics of the poor, and who reject the path of parliamentarist opportunism have taken the name the Political Committee of the Poor-PRD (KPRM-PRD). The formation of the KPRM-PRD began as a result of coercion when, using the position/authority of a majority, which then became the internal position of the PRD, forced a division/split of the party: either supporting parliamentarist opportunism or to build a peoples movement.
We now understand this undemocratic decision to split the party as the destructive consequence of their opportunist political perspective. For the KPRM-PRD the more important pressing need is to play a concrete role in the development of a politics of the poor together with other forces in the movement, building that kind of unity.
Yet, even so, this does not mean that the KPRM-PRD is washing its hands of the problem of the destruction of the politics of the poor perspective inside the PRD. While helping to build the peoples movement, we will continue the internal struggle to win back the PRD as an instrument of struggle for the politics of the poor.
In the current economic and political situation, the movement faces the challenge of evaluating the situation and taking responsibility [to lead]. The people day by day become clearer on the accumulating problems that they face. So the responsibility increases for the movement to show the links between these problems and the role of imperialist oppression. We must be able to go beyond and pierce through the thousands of illusions, that are always being strengthened, and which disguise the subservience of our rulers to imperialist interests.
Hopes for genuine change for the people will grow if the peoples own strength (with activists from the movement among them) are capable of creating a network of resistance among the people that is broad and united.
The concrete manifestation of the politics of the poor is the broadening and unifying of the peoples resistance, a unifying of the peoples mobilizations raising up demands and solutions to the socio-economic problems of the people. These mobilizations must grow and enter into every political arena of the poor, and the elections are just one of these. And indeed no matter whatever the political movement of the poor may expre3ss itself in, the primary thing that cannot be compromised is the refusal to suffer any interference, to suffer any subordination (so to remain free of the influence) and the refusal to fuse with the pro-imperialist government, the army, remnants of the New Order or fake reformists.
Yes, the politics of the poor is an alternative, a rival perspective based on the strength of the peoples own resistance, based non the principles of non-cooperation and non-cooptation with the enemies of the people. No matter how difficult, the building of the peoples own strength to resist must be carried out, the problems must be overcome; this task cannot be avoided. The method of three monthly mobilizations is just one method which we are putting forward, and can still be further developed, to extend the resistance of the people, to awaken political consciousness, while concretizing it in the struggle method of the people; to make their demands through mass mobilization.
In the name of an easy path to power (with the justification that revolution can be carried out from above). Including through parliamentarist opportunism, is truly an abandonment of the tru struggle of the people, is truly cutting oneself away from a politics in solidarity with the people.
PEMBEBASAN (Liberation) (published by KPRM-PRD), January, 2008