May 11, Bogota–Colombia’s ruling class is in the midst of a shameless electoral campaign as they bring more racist and sexist attacks against mostly Black workers living in the most remote and abandoned parts of the country. Every political party under capitalism works to trick the masses into joining their corrupt electoral circus by pushing lies, anti-communism, the farce of peace, and fake anti-corruption campaigns. Electoral politics is a desperate attempt to cover up the crisis created by the profit-driven system and furthermore legitimize its discredited bourgeois dictatorship and its rotten institutions.
Local bosses are consolidating their political, economic and cultural power over the great masses of alienated workers who seek leaders to save them from misery, hunger, unemployment and environmental destruction. All the while, capitalism’s destruction of the climate is making droughts, floods, avalanches, and earthquakes much more acute.
Regardless of the outcome of the election, the bosses in Colombia will continue their deal-making with U.S. imperialists,who are given free reign for the exploitation of markets and natural resources. Imperialist institutions such as the IMF, World Bank, UN, OECD, and NATO are the ones that really rule and dictate who and how they will oppress us. Still, the capitalists threaten the workers that if they do not vote “right” they will be left without a job because businesses will flee the country.
The real advance for the international working class is a unified struggle to win a communist system that is consistent with all our basic needs, including clean water, healthy food, sustainable housing, safe transportation, and pro-working class education, all without money, profits or borders. For that, we need to build a mass communist Progressive Labor Party (PLP) of millions of workers around the world.
Voting will never bring working class power
The international working class will never come to power by electoral means. To cite a few recent examples: the liberal fascist AMLO (Andrés Manuel López Obrador) government in Mexico; the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLM) class traitors in El Salvador, Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua, and Nelson Mandela in South Africa. Every former guerrilla and trade unionist who becomes a mayor, governor or president inevitably plays the capitalist role of oppressing and imprisoning those who elected them. Capitalism’s politicians deceive workers to follow down the path of nationalism and cross-class collaboration, causing great demoralization in the revolutionary struggle.
The capitalists need elections to sell us the myth that voting will help us reform the profit system to respond to the needs of working people. But that is not the only reason. They hope to find populist, or in other words ‘most efficient fascist’ candidates who can sidetrack and pacify millions of disaffected workers and youth. For the working class, it will not make much difference if the right-wing Gutiérrez, Hernández, Ingrid Betancur or the Social Democrat Gustavo Petro is elected. In any case, our class does not gain anything by electing one or another bosses' candidate. Only with the destruction of wage slavery and its bourgeois state through communist revolution will it allow the working class to free itself from exploitation, racism, sexism and imperialist wars. We do not need the bosses and their electoral farce.
With CHALLENGE in hand,PL’ers are present in anti-war protests, in rallies against unemployment, in electoral meetings and discussions presenting to the workers our sharpest ideas  of how to build working-class unity and communist organization. Many workers tell us they agree but understand it is a long-term struggle. We respond that no matter how long it takes, the problems of our class have no solution in capitalism. We need to fight for the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Time for communism is right now
At this moment the bosses and their military, paramilitaries and criminal gangs are assassinating us in all areas of the country and sexually assaulting working-class women. Right now they are slashing wages and jobs. Right now they are gutting social services and decimating hospitals, nursing homes, schools and nurseries servicing our relatives. It is today that the prices of food and basic services are rising non-stop. Right now they are killing and imprisoning hundreds of young people who fight against the misery to which capitalism subjects us. It is today when famines and droughts are destroying the lives and livelihoods of Black workers first and hardest.
It is for all this that we say to our class that the time for fightback and development of our revolutionary communist struggle is right now!Do not vote– join the PLP and fight to meet our needs. Don't vote–distribute CHALLENGE and organize study groups! Don't vote, let's fight for workers' power! Don't vote, let's organize for revolution and build communism!