Why are we paying one million dollars an hour in interest?

Unlike what many fellow citizens think – and contrary to campaign speeches from more than one candidate – the financial Debt still claimed of Argentina is growing day after day, and we, the entire population, continue paying with high social, ecological, and political costs.

Lots of lenders are very happy to receive the million dollars we are now paying – every hour! –in interest alone. The proposed 2008 National Budget, sent to Congress for consideration, projects interest payments on the Debt for 19 billion pesos – more than the total to be invested in education (11 billion) and healthcare (6 billion). Even so, the total accrued interest will not be covered, such that new bonds will be issued to cover the remaining payments and the snowball will continue to grow. As if this were not enough, with the Paris Club negotiations and the judgments against Argentina by the ICSID, it becomes obvious that the debt that is being claimed of us will continue to increase with same results as ever: the more we pay, the more we owe, the less we have.

That is why as Argentine people we have the right and the need to know – as Alejandro Olmos said 25 years ago when he began one of the first legal actions against the debt accumulated by the dictatorship:

HOW MUCH IS OWED?
WHO DO WE OWE?
WHY IS IT OWED?

We ask all citizens, not only the candidates but also those who are going to vote, and all who want a country without hunger and with social justice: How is it possible that the country continues to invest more in a bottomless pit - a debt whose legitimacy and legality are deeply questioned, for whose contracting we were not consulted, nor was it used for our benefit – than in education, healthcare, and so many other areas of the national Budget?

In the face of this scandal and the deliberate misinformation that contributes to the invisibility of the problem’s very existence, as a people we also have the right to know:

FACED WITH THIS DEBT, WHAT POLICIES WILL THE NEXT GOVERNMENT,
THE NEXT PARLIAMENT, IMPLEMENT?

* Will you commission an integral and participatory Audit of the public debt claimed of Argentina, as Ecuador began three months ago and as the Federal Judicial ruling in the Olmos Case demanded of the Argentine Congress?

 Will you begin that audit revealing publicly what debt is being negotiated in the Paris Club? Who benefited from that debt of 7.000.000.000.000 dollars? Why should the Argentine people repay it? Why do you continue to acknowledge such an anachronic, undemocratic “Club” as a sphere for negotiations and decisions, with or without the IMF’s previous agreement?

 Do you intend to push the Argentine Congress to take action on the bill that a group of citizens presented in March, 2006, to declare null and void -on the basis of existing judicial resolutions- the debt accumulated between 1976 and 1983 by the IMF, the biggest international banks, and the civil-military dictatorship? This is the debt which first financed the disappearance of 30.000 men and women, and then proceeded to disappear the nation’s industry, science, education, healthcare, employment, and wages, and whose consequences up to today the bill also proposes to investigate, being as it is a continuing crime.

 Will you propose that Argentina withdraw from the ICSID (International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes, an organism of the World Bank), as Bolivia has done, or will you continue to plainly and simply accept the surrender of national sovereignty, and the heap of sentences and new debts against us?

 Will you support the global initiative to carry out an external audit of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the regional banks such as the IDB? This is an essential step in the struggle against Impunity, for Truth, Justice, and Reparation of the crimes against humanity perpetrated through the system of indebtedness, the processes of structural adjustment, and the conditionalities orchestrated by those institutions. We should all ask ourselves, how is it possible that Argentina has become over the last few years the best and most loyal payer to those same IFIs whose disastrous policies the country doesn’t miss an opportunity to censure – and rightly so. In this regard, Argentina could play an extremely important role in articulating an integrated force among the many countries in the South that also suffer the consequences of the same policies. What proposals do you intend to take to the Southern Cone Common Market (Mercosur), the Union of South American Nations (Unasur), to the Bolivarian Alliance of Latin American nations (ALBA), and other initiatives of South-South integration?

 What measures will you take to ensure not only Parliamentary control and management of Public Credit –something essential for any democracy – but also an active and informed social and political participation in such a vital matter for the country? Who will debate the new loans that will commit our sons, daughters and grandchildren to pay astronomical sums? How do you plan to respond to those who are fighting in every corner of our county, to stop Argentina from continuing to take out new loans that are used by companies and interests far from the public good to plunder our land, water, natural resources, the territories and culture of our indigenous peoples, native forests, hydrocarbons – in sum, our lives and future?

* Will you work for the creation of a true South Peoples’ Solidarity Bank, with egalitarian and social participation that breaks with the predominance of big interests and puts the riches that as peoples are ours, at the service of human and environmental rights?

 Will you promote nullification of the recently approved and so-called Antiterrorist Law, which has as one of its principal promoters the same International Monetary Fund whose intervention in the internal affairs of our country is rejected by everyone?

THIS IS WHAT WE WANT TO KNOW SO THAT ALL TOGETHER WE CAN
MAKE SOVEREIGNTY AND JUSTICE COME TRUE
STOP PAYMENT OF THE DEBT! AUDIT NOW! WE THE PEOPLE ARE THE CREDITORS!

-Buenos Aires, October 21, 2007

INITIAL SIGNATURES:

Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, Premio Nobel de la Paz, Fundación Servicio Paz y Justicia; Nora Cortiñas, Mirtha Baravalle y Elida Meidan, integrantes Madres de Plaza de Mayo-L.F.; Diálogo 2000; MOCASE; Museo Che Guevara; Convocatoria No al CIADI; ATTAC; Espacio Ecuménico; MoPaSSol; Federación Judicial Argentina; Programan de Incidencia Sobre Deuda ilegítima de la Federación Luterana Mundial; Espacio NO Deuda; Cátedra de Cultura de la Paz y los DDHH, Facultad de Cs. Soc.-UBA; Cátedra Cultura Indígena; Cátedra Nacional Arturo Jauretche

DIALOGUE 2000
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