The explosion of anger and hunger that has shaken our country is a long expected response from the depths of the degradation and betrayal that the people have been suffering. We join in that mobilization and share the pain, the anguish, and the indignation, in the face of so much unjustifiable repression and death.

Dialogue 2000 demands the immediate halting of police repression and the repeal of the illegal state of siege. We call for the liberation and dropping of charges against all those detained for their participation in acts of social protest.

We reject all forms of violence against the people, whether it is caused by the forces of security or born from the economic measures that are applied and which manifest themselves through hunger, misery, unemployment, the lack of health and education, the disintegration of the social fabric, and the loss of popular participation and public liberties.

Today as always, we uphold the need to change the economic policies the benefits of which are received by a few, to the detriment of all the people. Among them, we call for a end to the repayment of an external debt which is illegitimate, illegal, and fraudulent. In its place the social debt, which harms the life of our sisters and brothers, must begin to be paid, as was expressed by the three and a half million people who participated in the Popular Consultation organized by the National Front against Poverty and demanded of the government the adoption of measures to distribute the wealth in order to insure that no household is left poor in Argentina.

The president's resignation this evening opens a new stage in which it will be necessary to strengthen the mobilization and organization of the citizenry in order to secure respect for the population's needs and rights. At the same time we wish to caution that the change of names in the exercise of the institutional functions of the State does not resolve the structural problem which our society suffers. On the contrary, these will become worse if the different powers of the State do not assume their responsibilities and change the neo-liberal program applied from the time of the dictatorship until now.

We thus call on all the country's organizations and movements, on all of the population, to maintain a state of alertness, to join together, and continue to pressure the Parliament and the Executive in favor of peace and social justice. We call as well on the support and solidarity of the entire world, conscious that the challenges which the people of Argentina face today are the same which the immense majority of the human family is confronting.

December 20, 2001.

[Source: wamani.apc.org]