Peru: Indigenous Communities Mobilize, Occupy Oil Wells

Indigenous communities have mobilized to occupy 14 oil wells in Lot 192, the largest oil concession in Peru, which is operated by the Argentine company Pluspetrol. PlusPetrol’s contamination of the region since 2000, plus its predecessor Occidental Petroleum’s similar behavior since 1971, have led to devastating health and environmental impacts among the Indigenous Quechua, Quichua, and Achuar communities who live and depend on that land. It has been estimated that Pluspetrol is losing over 3,000 barrels of oil per day since the protest's start on January 24th and that to date it has lost over 2 million dollars.

Lot 192, formerly 1AB, is located in Loreto, Peru and is deep in the Amazon rainforest. Protesters have also blocked a nearby road, one of very few in the area, while yet another group has blocked a section of a river, impeding eight boats loaded with food and supplies bound for Pluspetrol’s encampment from traveling upriver. 

These simultaneous mobilizations are no coincidence; rather they are a result of careful community organizing, despite the complicated logistics of long distances between the communities of the Pastaza, Corrientes, Tigre, and Marañon river watersheds. Without good cell connected, personal visits from one village to another can take up to 30 days of traveling by boat.  This organizing is made possible by leadership structure in the form of an Indigenous federation for the communities of each river valley, plus a platform that unites the four federations, the Amazonian Indigenous Peoples United in Defense of their Territory (PUINAMUDT). The Apus, or traditional leaders, of the four federations, which represent over 100 communities and over 20,000 people, have said many times that they are not protesting oil development in and of itself; what they are fighting is "the abuse and indifference of the State over 43 years."

The president of the Loreto department of Peru, Fernando Meléndez, spent three days visiting communities in the region and meeting with their leadership. He has said, “The communities were abandoned, but now they have a president that will listen to them, that’s what I’m working on. I am taking the necessary time to resolve the communities’ problems.”

The Peruvian newspaper Nacional reports that PlusPetrol is inclined to maintain dialogue in “an environment of social peace, which is why they called upon community authorities to "give up their forceful measure that threatens the freedom of river transportation and the oil company’s activities.” Yet these communities have been suffering the impacts of oil contamination for over 40 years. Oil has invaded the water they drink and bathe in, the soil they grow their food in, and the plants and animals that comprise their diets. The Indigenous Federations have sought remedies in the national and international legal spheres and received little response; despite an Environmental State of Emergency  and a Health State of Emergency being declared in the area, no meaningful action has been taken to mitigate it. Most recently, the Peruvian government and interested oil companies have begun the bidding process for to renew the concession in August 2015, a process which the Indigenous federations have explicitly said they were not open to consulting on until they had been compensated for past use of their land and related damages. Thus, while the company might consider the communities' manifestations forceful, it is hardly realistic to imply they are unjustified.

Anthropologist and ally to the Amazonian communities Alberto Chirif says, “I have to say, this protest doesn’t surprise me; the Indigenous federations have been addressing a series of demands to the State for three years with the goal of making way for a prior consultation process before bidding on Lot 1AB begins again[.] The State has not addressed a single one of their demands and has instead sought to distract from the issue, which makes a mockery of the Indigenous populations because none of their demands, such as improving water service, health conditions, and schools, are addressed.”

The latest dialogue session on this issue, which was held on February 11 between Pluspetrol representatives and members of the Achuar Indigenous community of Pampa Hermosa in the Corrientes River Valley, was unsatisfactory to the Indigenous parties. For future mediated dialogues, the communities are demanding to speak with Pluspetrol North's Director of Operations for Peru, Rubén Ferrari, rather than the representative who has currently been made available to them, community relations representatives Alfredo Zuñiga. The next meeting will take place on February 13.

Carlos Sandi, president of the Federation of Native Communities of the Corrientes River Valley (FECONACO), has stated that the 16 wells will not be allowed to resume activity until the community's right to compensation is respected, and that Pluspetrol's claims that Pampa Hermosa is not within the area of influence of Pluspetrol's operations are false.

Meanwhile, the Peruvian government has joined Pluspetrol in urging the communities to give up their protests. But "[t]he community is still waiting for the company or the state to fulfill its responsibility, because we're talking about a historic debt to the Indigenous communities in this part of the Amazon," said Sandi.

Kichwa leader José Fachín says, "This is a protest by the whole Kichwa people. They're ready to die for it. The price of oil is low, but the pain caused is extremely high." 

Entrenched Corruption and Impunity Continues in Kenya

Ben Ole Koissaba

A senator and three members of parliament were arrested on January 29, 2015 by Criminal Investigation officials in Nairobi after being required to write detailed accounts regarding a peaceful demonstration that turned ugly when police opened fire, killing at least one person and injuring scores of others in Narok County. Interior Cabinet Secretary Joseph Nkaissery--himself a Maasai--has said punitive action will be taken against MPs Moitalel Kenta (Narok North), Korei Lemein (Narok South), Patrick Ntutu (Narok West) Johana Ngeno (Emurwa Dikir) and Senator Stephen ole Ntutu who led the demonstration to protest the manner in which Governor Samuel Tunai is running the affairs of the local county.

A memorandum the officials planned to submit to the Governor includes claims that the World famous Maasai Mara Game Reserve no longer serves the public because it is being exploited by the Governor and the Kenyan ruling elite. The memorandum contains an array of allegations ranging from the Governor using a private army to protect himself and the Oloololo Game ranch that he illegally acquired from the Siria Maasai, and misappropriation of billions of Kenya shillings through dubious contracts including one that was awarded to a firm that the governor and various other leading political elites in Kenyan are associated.

According to the Standard, Police fired shots and teargas as thousands of Maasai Peoples, clad in traditional red cloaks, marched to the governor's office in Narok town, the administrative center of the sprawling Maasai Mara Park, witnesses said. Narok County Commissioner Kassim Farah, an official appointed by the president, commented: "Only one protestor was killed by a bullet."

Available investigative reports indicate that the Governor is not only accused of misappropriation of public funds but in order to cement his strength in one of the wealthiest counties in Kenya, he hires selected individuals in newly-created positions of employment--something that is unconstitutional--with the support of government officials who are said to receive huge monthly perks. These mafia-like activities have mostly been articulated by the Governor's former colleagues at the National Intelligence Service where he served before venturing into politics. The National Intelligence Service actively works on the Governor's behest and they are used by senior government officials to collect intelligence reports on possible threats and to plan how people can be framed by the police on trumped-up charges.

The most striking issue here is that, despite the Maasai members of parliament having raised serious issues affecting their county with the president, officials from the Ethics and Anti-corruption Commission opted to carry out a public audit rather than a forensic audit as requested by the Maasai. This is just one of the many cases where continued systemic marginalization, exploitation, intimidation and expropriation of Maasai resources by the political elites in cahoots with local gate-keepers has continued to deprive the Maasai of their democratic right to self-expression, association and assembly. It is also a blatant attack by the government on the basic rights of the citizens of Kenya contrary to both the Kenyan Constitution and international instruments on human rights.

The Maasai in Kenya are under siege due to the abundance of resources and land that the government has appropriated through unethical, inhuman and unconstitutional means--the act of killing an innocent protester and arresting a group of officials being a clear attempt to intimidate the Maasai to prevent them from continuing to demand justice and accountability at the highest levels of power.

In response to the allegations, the Maasai in Narok County are demanding that the Governor provide a satisfactory explanation to each of the issues raised and assume responsibility for his government's misdeeds. They are also demanding that the government live up to the standards of the constitution especially with regard to the proper management of public funds and resources--a cardinal requirement of the Constitution of Kenya. Calling for the government to promote constitutionalism, become accountable and transparent and ensure public participation, the Maasai are further demanding a formal response within the next 21 days; the failure to comply leaving the Maasai with no choice but to directly exercise the sovereign power of the people as bestowed upon them by the Constitution of Kenya.

Given that the Maasai Mara Game Reserve is a world-renowned tourist attraction, the Maasai are calling upon anyone who visits the Mara to help fight this corruption by either boycotting the Maasai Mara or by calling for a stringent corruption-free system that offers them value for their money. As things stand now, all tourist payments to the Maasai Mara are like a curse to the Maasai who not only conserve the region's flora and fauna but gave up their grazing land for the creation of the famous Game Reserve.

India and the APEC

Amita Batra

The foreign ministers of Russia, China and India at the end of their deliberations in Beijing last week issued a comprehensive joint communiqué that included a recommendation for India’s inclusion in the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) grouping. Earlier in January, a joint strategic vision document that was issued during US President Obama’s visit to India on its 66th Republic day also contained a line welcoming India’s interest in joining APEC. While this was the first formal statement of support by the US for India’s membership in APEC, the Chinese President Xi Jinping had extended an invitation to India in July last year to attend the Beijing APEC summit.

APEC is a twenty one member regional economic grouping that was established in 1989 with its main focus on trade and investment liberalisation and facilitation. The grouping follows the principle of ‘open regionalism’. There are no binding commitments and treaty obligations. Commitments are undertaken on a voluntary basis and capacity-building projects help members implement APEC initiatives. Representing 40 per cent of the world population, 47 per cent of global trade and 57 per cent of global GDP in 2012, the grouping aims at leveraging the economic strength of the 21 member economies for regional prosperity and economic integration. As the world’s third largest economy in PPP terms India would no doubt be a valuable addition to the economic grouping and announcements towards positive support for its inclusion in the APEC are therefore not surprising. What needs emphasis and due recognition is the fact that India’s application for membership to the regional body has been pending for long and even after the moratorium was lifted in 2010. Over this period India has undertaken systemic economic reforms including trade and investment, the positive outcome of which was amply reflected in close to a double digit rate of growth in India accompanied by stable macroeconomic fundamentals. During this period India has also made progress with its regional economic integration agenda participating in not just bilateral trade agreements across sub-regions but also as a member of regional groupings like the East Asia summit and RCEP alongside a plurilateral FTA with the ASEAN. 

It may be pertinent to ask therefore if membership of the APEC, for which India has waited for long, now holds any significance, particularly when there is an ongoing debate about the relevance of APEC in the process of regional economic integration.  

As discussed in some of the earlier columns in this series, the Asian region is witnessing a consolidation of competing mega regional trade agreements. The US led Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement with twelve members aimed at ‘WTO plus’ provisions is in the final stages of its negotiations. The RCEP, the other regional economic formulation that brings together the six FTA partners of the ASEAN, with the latter as its nucleus, is expected to be complete its negotiation process by end 2015. In the context, the APEC with its soft institutional structure and voluntary action programmes, having missed its first deadline towards achieving free trade and investment between the advanced economies of APEC by 2010 under the Bogor goals and no closer to achieving the second, of member-wide trade liberalisation agreement by 2020, is yet far from its declared objective of taking forward the idea of economic integration in the region through the ‘next generation’ free trade area of the Asia-Pacific (FTAAP). Slow progress of and internal weaknesses in the APEC appear to be clearing the way for alternative mechanisms like the RCEP and TPP to emerge as predominant formulations in the regional economic integration process. There is in fact a prevailing view that the slow moving APEC has pushed its more committed members to embark on the TPP. 

Notwithstanding the challenges that APEC is faced with, India can gain through what can be identified as a core objective and achievement of the APEC, that is, trade facilitation. According to official APEC data, the region’s total trade has increased seven times over the period 1989 to 2012, with two-thirds of this trade occurring between member economies. APEC’s Trade Facilitation Action plan that includes streamlining customs procedures led to a successive reduction of 5 per cent in region-wide costs at the border between 2004 and 2006 and 2007 and 2010. Since the launch of the single window clearance initiative APEC has been able to significantly accelerate the movement of goods across borders. The trade facilitation reforms of the APEC can thus be of great assistance to India now that it is required to ease out the customs procedures and other barriers ‘at’ and ‘behind the border’ as part of implementing the Trade Facilitation Agreement accomplished at the ninth ministerial meeting of the WTO in December 2013. According to the Asia Pacific Trade and Investment Report 2014, single window clearance is not just one of the most far reaching of trade facilitation reforms but also the most complex measures in the TFA. The APEC experience will thus help India design and monitor a national trade facilitation programme.

Much, of course, will depend upon APEC’s ability to sort its long standing dilemma over expansion and appropriate representation of different sub-regions in the forum as also India’s ability to take advantage of possible future membership through prior domestic trade reform. 

Nepal: Political Rivalries Stymieing Constitution-making

Pramod Jaiswal

After the ruling alliance of the Nepali Congress (NC) and the Communist Party of Nepal-Unified Marxist Leninist (CPN-UML) wanted to draft the constitution with two-thirds majority, the opposition of Maoists and Madhesi parties boycotted all the Constituent Assembly (CA) proceedings. The ruling alliance and the Maoists were party to the Comprehensive Peace Agreement almost a decade ago but are now not even in talking terms. Though they had fought ‘war’ against each other in the past, they had never stopped talking to each other. However, Nepal’s Prime Minister Sushil Koirala has sent a formal letter asking them to return to the CA.

Nepal’s political parties could not deliver the draft of the constitution on their self-imposed 22 January 2015 deadline as they were stuck on issues such as federalism, like the previous CA.

Differences on Federalism 
In Nepal, federalism is a subject of most contentious and polarised debate that is approached through various perspectives, such as: change (pro-identity based federalism) vs. status quo forces (federalism on the basis of viability); pluralist vs. mono-culturalist; historically marginalised communities vs. upper caste hill dominance; and political de-centralisation vs. administrative de-centralisation. 

By and large, the new political forces that emerged in Nepal after the promulgation of the 1990 constitution – such as the Maoists and the various political parties that arose from social movements of Madhesis, Janjatis etc. – associate themselves with the former, while traditional parties such as the NC and CPN-UML associate themselves with latter categories. 

The newly-emerged political parties would like to prioritise identity recognition in the federal scheme, so that marginalised social groups can enjoy a degree of demographic dominance in the units. In Madhes, they demand two provinces in the Tarai, carved out on an east west horizontal axis. This will give political empowerment to Madhesis in the eastern plains and Thaurs in the western plains.

On the contrary, the NC and the UML want to create a federal scheme that prioritises administrative viability. It will give demographic dominance to hill Hindu upper castes who have exercised power for long. In Madhes, they also want to carve out provinces on a north-south vertical axis that connects the hills and the Tarai. Differences also exist in regard to boundary-demarcation of districts in the Tarai. The NC and the UML want it integrated in the hills while Madhesi wants to retain it in the plains.  

In order to get the constitution passed through their model of federalism with six federal provinces, the NC and the UML are prepared to use their two-third majority in the CA. The Maoists and the Madhesis demand that the constitution should reflect the spirit of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement and the aspirations of the Madhes movement rather than their number in the CA. Subhas Nemwang, Chairman, CA, acquiesced with the NC and the UML and initiated the process. The Maoists and the Madhesi parties boycotted the CA and announced an agitation. 

Emergence of KP OliAt present, K P Oli, Chairman, CPN-UML, has emerged as a powerful leader and he is solely responsible for the souring relationship between the ruling alliance and the opposition. His statements have polarised the Nepali society like never before while Prime Minister Sushil Koirala has no authority over the situation. 

Oli, who was once an armed revolutionary, inspired by the Indian Naxalbari movement in the late 1960s, left the path of violence and joined a mainstream party. He has strongly stood against the Maoists and their ideas of federalism and republic. Additionally, he was not pleased with the peace process aimed at mainstreaming the Maoists. 

Political analysts such as Prashant Jha state that Oli played a key role in mobilising non-Maoist forces to come together against the then Maoist PM Prachanda’s efforts to topple the army chief in 2009. He explains that one of Oli’s closest confidantes, Bidya Bhandari, was viscerally opposed to respectful integration of former Maoist combatants into the Nepal Army. Oli also believed that the first CA, where the Maoists had a majority, was not the best platform to promulgate a constitution and actively worked to subvert it. Experts believe that Oli’s strong hardline position is to weaken Maoists in the hills and the NC in the plains – to help UML to emerge as the single largest party in the next election.

Option for IndiaIndia, being a major stake holder of Nepal’s peace process should use its leverage, invest political capital in creating pressure on the ruling alliance and the opposition to return to the table and work out a consensus. Modi, during 2014 Nepal visit, reiterated that the constitution must be a product of consensus among all major political forces; it must not be a product of a numbers game for that will invite problems. He remarked that while a constitution is being drafted, it must be done in a manner that gives a sense of ownership to the Maoists, the Madhesis, and the pahadis. The constitution is the document of compromise and the debate to make Nepal inclusive must ensure the aspiration of historically marginalised peoples towards making all citizens equal, and simultaneously not making them unequal via federalism.

Australia: NSW electricity workers face more job losses

Terry Cook

Whichever party—Labor or Liberal—wins the March 28 election in New South Wales (NSW), workers in the state-owned electricity power distribution network face a deepening assault on their jobs and conditions.

The NSW Liberal-National Party Coalition government has pledged to sell off 49 percent of state’s multi-billion dollar “poles and wires” electricity network if returned to office.

The partial privatisation is to be initiated through a long-term leasing arrangement of two power distribution companies, Ausgrid and Endeavour Energy, that provide electricity for Sydney, Newcastle and Wollongong, the state’s main population areas.

The state-owned high voltage network company Transgrid will be fully privatised. However rural power distributor Essential Energy will remain government-owned for now in a move designed to placate opposition the National Party’s rural constituencies.

NSW Premier Mike Baird claims the proceeds from the sell-off are needed to partially fund a $20 billion state infrastructure program. An additional $2 billion will be provided by the federal Liberal-National Coalition government under its so-called “asset-recycling” scheme. The federal plan is aimed at encouraging state governments to privatise remaining state-owned enterprises and industries.

Last month Networks NSW, which operates the electricity distribution companies, met with power unions to inform them that it was sending out letters asking employees to consider accepting voluntary redundancy packages.

According to the Electrical Trade Union (ETU), Networks NSW head Vince Graham said that management was looking to shed up to 4,300 jobs across its operations. The job losses include 2,500 at Ausgrid and 700 at Endeavour. Graham also confirmed that 700 apprentices currently employed by the distribution companies would not be retained at end of their training.

Graham claimed that the jobs cuts were made necessary by draft decisions handed down by the Australian Energy Regulator (AER) in November last year. Established in 2005, the AER regulates energy markets and networks and sets prices, mainly in NSW, South Australia, Tasmania and the Australian Capital Territory.

The AER decision—determining what the NSW’s distribution network companies can charge customers to recoup network upgrade and maintenance costs—proposes retrospectively to reduce their revenue allowances by $6.5 billion or 27 percent over the five-year period to 2019.

The Baird government is opposing the AER draft decision because the fall in revenue could make the assets sale less attractive to potential buyers. However, it has no compunction about utilising the decision to justify its decision to slash thousands of jobs.

In a further move to cut costs and to facilitate privatisation, the Baird government is also insisting that wage rises under negotiation be kept below the public sector cap of 2.5 percent. Significantly, the management has also opposed the inclusion of a “no-forced redundancy” clause in the next work agreement, giving future private owners a free hand to slash jobs.

The opposition Labor Party and the trade unions are mounting a cynical campaign supposedly against privatisation in a bid to garner votes in next month’s state election. However, while Labor has pledged to oppose selling off the electricity “poles and wires”, newly-installed party leader Luke Foley is also signalling to big business that he is not opposed to privatisation as such.

Foley told the media recently that he “did not bring an ideological approach to privatisation.” As evidence, he explained that he had supported the current state Liberal government’s sale of port facilities in Sydney, Newcastle and Wollongong.

In an exclusive interview with Murdoch’s Australian last month headlined “Socialist? Not I, says new ALP boss,” Foley declared that if elected he would “champion an enterprising private sector” and retain only “an essential public sector.” He called for a ditching of the party’s 1921 socialisation clause, which was a dead letter from the inception, and for policies that “reflect modern circumstances.”

Addressing the issue of privatisation, Foley explained that “public ownership of industry, production, distribution and exchange is a policy, not a value. The policy, whether it is public ownership or anything else, is not set in stone forever.” When it comes to electricity privatisation, the pledge of opposition is unlikely to last beyond next month’s election day.

In fact, the former state Labor government only abandoned a plan to privatise the entire NSW power industry in the face of deep-seated opposition by working people, including power workers. Even so, on the eve of the last state election in 2011 it pushed through legislation for the sale of the state’s electricity distributors.

The partial sell-off was an “option” devised by the state’s peak union body in order to take the heat out of the privatisation issue in a bid to save Labor from an electoral rout. It was also designed to keep the door open for Labor to implement further asset sales if it was returned to office.

While the union’s plan failed to save Labor from a landslide electoral defeat, it paved the way for the incoming state Liberal O’Farrell government to sell off the state’s electricity generators Delta Energy, Macquarie Generation and Eraring Energy.

This sell-off could only proceed with the assistance of the unions that worked to block any action by power industry employees and other sections of the working class and ensure not a shot was fired in opposition.

The same trade unions are now mounting a bogus “anti-privatisation” campaign to try to harness widespread public opposition and boost Labor’s election campaign. The ETU and the United Services Union are currently balloting members to take limited industrial action timed to coincide with the lead-up to the election date on March 28. Unions NSW is preparing a wider campaign, including saturation phone calling and doorknocking.

One can be certain that the unions will remain completely silent on Labor’s record in office, including its sale of state assets, decades-long assault on the jobs and conditions of state sector workers and the systematic gutting of vital social services. The unions themselves actively collaborated in this relentless assault on the working class.

The record demonstrates that working people cannot oppose the assault on jobs and living standards by voting to replace one capitalist party with another, or through the unions whose interests are bound up with maintaining the profit system. Moreover, whether enterprises are publicly owned, partially privatised, corporatised or state-owned, workers confront an escalating assault on jobs and conditions as the crisis of capitalism deepens.

To defend its social rights, the working class must mobilise independently of all the parties of big business and fight for a workers’ governments on the basis of an internationalist and socialist program to reorganise society to meet the pressing social needs of the majority not the obscene profits of the wealthy few.

Political crisis in Jakarta over national police chief

John Roberts

As Indonesian President Joko Widodo finished his first 100 days in office, he has found himself in a vitriolic conflict over his nomination for the post of national police chief. The public wrangling is not so far with the parliamentary opposition, but with his own party, the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), and its leader and former president, Megawati Sukarnoputri.

Widodo announced the appointment of Police General Budi Gunawan to the powerful position of national police chief on January 9. The decision was clearly in line with Megawati’s wishes as Budi is politically close to her having served as her adjutant during her terms as vice president and president between 1999 and 2004.

Budi’s appointment was formally approved by the National Police Commission. However, within days, the country’s anti-corruption watchdog—the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK)—announced that Budi had been under investigation since July over suspicious bank accounts and money laundering. He has denied the charges and launched a court case to clear his name.

The Indonesian parliament endorsed Budi as national police chief on January 16 despite the corruption allegation and growing public criticism of the appointment. The lower house of parliament is dominated by a coalition led by former Suharto-era general Prabowo Subianto, who was Widodo’s main rival in last year’s bitterly contested presidential election. A number of media pundits have speculated that Prabowo was seeking to encourage a split between Widodo and Megawati.

The following day, Widodo temporarily suspended Budi’s appointment and established an 11-member panel to advise him on the question. Widodo faces a dilemma. If he proceeds with the appointment, his efforts to promote himself as an outsider intent on rooting out corruption in the widely despised Jakarta establishment will be tarnished. However, if he refuses to install Budi, he risks a widening rift with Megawati and the PDI-P undermining his political base of support.

The crisis has been compounded by what amounts to a contest of police against the KPK. On January 23, police arrested deputy KPK commissioner Bambang Widjojanto on a dubious charge of allegedly ordering a witness to commit perjury in a Constitutional Court case in 2010. Bambang subsequently resigned from the commission. The police then launched investigations against three more of the five-member commission. The allegations against the KPK officials appear to have originated from within the PDI-P or persons associated with the party.

The police, which functioned for three decades as one of the arms of repression of the Suharto dictatorship, are notorious for corruption and hostile to any attempt to curb their powers and hold them accountable. The KPK was established by Widodo’s predecessor Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono in 2002 in order to give some credibility to his claims to be fighting corruption. It has made no serious inroads into Indonesia’s ubiquitous corruption but its cases have previously brought it into conflict with the police.

Widodo is yet to make any decision on Budi’s appointment and initially at least attempted to keep out of the confrontation between the police and the KPK, saying only that they were both important state institutions. The president’s 11-person panel recommended on January 28 that Budi be dumped. A week later, Widodo left for state visits to Malaysia, Brunei and the Philippines and only arrived back in Jakarta on Monday.

Megawati and her close PDI-P supporters have reacted furiously to Widodo’s handling of the affair. The Jakarta Post reported on January 27 that Megawati had gathered her “inner circle” at her official residence in Central Jakarta and demanded they fight for the installation of Budi. She told the gathering that PDI-P parliamentarians might have to withdraw their support for the Widodo presidency.

On February 3, Megawati personally attended a meeting of leaders of the pro-government coalition parties. According to Widodo’s vice president Jusuf Kalla, the fate of Budi was discussed with a proposal to demand his immediate installation as police chief. Megawati has also given the green light for open political attacks on Widodo.

Most prominent is senior PDI-P parliamentarian Effendi Simbolon, who has threatened to impeach Widodo for failing to proceed with an appointment that has been approved by parliament. At this stage, an impeachment appears highly unlikely unless the Prabowo coalition were to support it.

The Jakarta Globe on February 2 reported that Effendi had accused three of Widodo’s close aides of isolating the president from the PDI-P. The newspaper reported that some of the president’s critics have blamed the same inner circle for undermining the PDI-P by pushing Widodo to carry out highly unpopular pro-market measures. Widodo’s ending of fuel price subsidies last year triggered widespread public opposition.

As the criticisms of economic policy demonstrate, the political instability in Jakarta in bound up with broader issues than Budi’s appointment as national police chief. The Indonesian economy is slowing with the latest figures showing a growth rate of 5.02 percent for 2014, the lowest level in five years and well below the government’s targets. Declining economic fortunes are contributing to the political factional infighting.

Widodo has secured some support from unusual quarters. On January 28, Prabowo met with Widodo for closed door talks. Prabowo later declared that any decision Widodo made in relation to the national police chief would be in the national interest. The opposition coalition stands to gain from the crisis whatever the outcome.

Last Friday the largest demonstration yet in support of the KPK took place outside its offices when it was rumoured that police were about to raid the KPK building as part of their hunt for evidence against its commissioners. This week Widodo ordered the national police to investigate death threats made against KPK officials.

Widodo has already been criticised by human rights organisations for not immediately dumping Budi and failing to adequately protect the KPK. Civil Society Coalition member Usman Hamid told the Jakarta Post: “In our opinion, there has never been a case where the credibility of a president has dropped to the level that he is at right now. His sluggishness in making any decision has turned all state institutions into laughing stocks.”

According to a Reuters report today, Widodo intends to choose another candidate for national police chief. “Budi Gunawan will not be police chief, the president has already decided,” one senior presidential palace official told the newsagency.

Whether that is the case or not, the affair has not only exposed Widodo’s political vulnerability as well as his posturing during the election campaign as a “man of the people” and anti-corruption fighter. Powerful political forces including Megawati and Prabowo plucked Widodo from obscurity and fashioned him into a convenient tool for interests of the country’s wealthy elites.

Quebec Liberals aim to level what remains of welfare state

Laurent Lafrance

Quebec’s 10-month-old Liberal government is mounting a sweeping assault on public and social services and on the wages and working conditions of the workers who administer them. Cuts and service-fee increases of more than $3 billion per year have already been announced.

The official pretext for this brutal austerity program is the need to eliminate Quebec’s annual budget deficit and keep the province’s creditors at bay. The real aim is to dismantle what little remains of the welfare state and speed up the privatization of key sectors of the economy, including public works and the health care system.

With these anti-working class measures, Philippe Couillard’s Liberals are following in the footsteps of Stephen Harper’s federal Conservative government. Since 2011, the Conservatives have cut billions from federal programs and eliminated more than 25,000 federal public sector jobs, raised the retirement age to 67, slashed unemployment benefits, boosted the role of the private sector in the development of infrastructure, and repeatedly used “emergency” laws to break strikes, including at Air Canada and Canada Post.

In the same way, the Liberals under Couillard plan to gore public services and public sector workers’ wages and benefits, so as to further slash taxes on big business and the economic elite and bolster big business’s drive to lower workers’ wages and benefits.

Premier Couillard has repeatedly vowed that his government will not back down in the face of opposition, adding that the steps his government is taking to “streamline” and “modernize” the Quebec state will “show investors how serious we are in what we are undertaking.”

Couillard has boasted that one of his main sources of inspiration (he reportedly keeps it on his bedside table) is the Fourth Revolution: The Global Race to Reinvent the State. Co-authored by the editor and a leading columnist at the Economist, the British weekly that speaks for the most powerful sections of world finance capital, the Fourth Revolution argues that the massive social spending and privatizations that were implemented by Margaret Thatcher in Great Britain and Ronald Reagan in the United States in the 1980s and then emulated by capitalist governments the world over were only “half-measures.” Governments, insist John Micklethwait and Adrian Woolridge, must today finish this “half-revolution” by levelling all that remains of the welfare state.

This is precisely what the Couillard government has set out to do. Since coming to power in April 2014, the Liberals have:

*Adopted legislation (Bill 3) that takes the axe to municipal employees’ pensions by eliminating inflation-indexing, making workers responsible for much of any pension-plan deficits, and dramatically raising workers’ pension contributions, thereby slashing their take-home pay by thousands of dollars per year.

*Demanded sweeping contract concessions from Quebec’s half-million public sector workers. This includes a two-year wage freeze starting this April and annual increases of just 1 percent per year in the subsequent three years; an increase in the retirement age; much greater penalties for workers who take early retirement; and reduced pensions.

*Announced cuts of $1 billion in education that are to be realized by slashing university and college (CEGEP) budgets by a further $200 million, raising student-teacher ratios in public schools, eliminating supports for students with “special needs,” and lengthening public school teachers’ work-week by 10 percent with no increase in pay.

* Adopted legislation (Bill 10) that eliminates and merges local health authorities, centralizing power in the hands of the Health Minister and his appointees, with a view to eliminating nearly 1,000 health management positions and reducing health spending by more than $200 million per year.

* Slashed funding for social assistance (welfare and disability payments) by $211 million and eliminated 500 of the 1,200 “casual” jobs at the Ministry of Employment and Social Solidarity.

* Raised public day care and auto insurance fees, electricity rates, and taxes on gasoline and tobacco products.

* Transferred management of large infrastructure projects to the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec— a private investment fund set up by the provincial government to administer public pension plans—thereby tying such projects to investor returns and opening the door to their outright privatization.

The Liberal government knows full well that its austerity measures will provoke mass working-class opposition and is preparing to use emergency laws and the state repression to force them through. Couillard and his colleagues are fervent defenders of the police violence and draconian legislation the Liberal government of Jean Charest used against the 2012 Quebec student strike. One of the first actions taken by the Couillard Liberal government, in the face of a possible Quebec-wide construction strike, was to announce that it would tolerate no worker job action and illegalize any strike before even a single worker had walked off the job.

In implementing big business’s reactionary agenda, the Liberals, however, will above all rely on the trade unions to keep the working class in check. For decades, the union bureaucrats have suppressed the class struggle, torpedoing every major working class movement in the name of preserving “social peace.”

Significantly, the union bureaucrats have made a spate of statements in recent weeks expressing concern that they will not be able to control an explosion of working-class anger. “There is a groundswell in the population that we have not seen for many years,” admitted the secretary-general of theFédération des travailleurs et travaillueses du Québec (FTQ-Quebec Federation of Labour), Serge Cadieux. For his part, QFL president Daniel Boyer said, “I have been asked by members whether I’m prepared to go to prison; we have members who are ready to defy a government decree or emergency law.”

The corporate media has also expressed its fear of a return of the “Maple Spring,” a reference to the 2012 student strike, which shook the province for six months. But, as in 2012, the ruling class is banking on the unions to isolate and smother the opposition to austerity and to channel it behind Quebec nationalism and the big business Parti Quebecois (PQ).

In May 2012, when the student strike threatened to provoke a mass movement of the working class against the Charest Liberal government and its austerity program, the unions launched the slogan “After the street, the ballot box” in order to put an end to the strike and channel the opposition movement behind the election of a PQ government.

The alternate governing party of the Quebec elite, the PQ has imposed massive attacks on the working class in close collaboration with the trade unions, most infamously between 1996 and 1998, when the Bouchard-Landry PQ government implemented the greatest social spending cuts in Quebec history.

Elected to a minority government in September 2012 with support of the unions and the pseudo-left Quebec Solidaire, the PQ quickly defused the political crisis provoked by the student strike. Then, in a matter of weeks, it pivoted to the imposition of austerity measures, including university fee hikes—measures that went beyond those of Charest and foreshadowed those now being implemented by Couillard.

To prevent another, even bigger betrayal, workers in Quebec must break free of the political and organizational grip of the pro-capitalist unions and transform the struggle against the Couillard government into a Canada-wide mobilization of the working class against the destruction of jobs and the dismantling of public services. Such a mobilization must be based on the struggle for a workers’ government, which will resolve the capitalist crisis, not on the backs of the workers, but at the expense of big business and the profit system.

Britain’s GCHQ given free rein to continue mass surveillance

Paul Mitchell

Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) has been found guilty of carrying out seven years of illegal surveillance by the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT).

The case was brought by a number of human rights organisations, including Privacy International, Liberty and Bytes for All, which questioned whether surveillance data collected by GCHQ from the US National Security Agency (NSA) Prism intercept system, since it was created in 2007, was legal.

The complaint was brought after former NSA contractor Edward Snowden revealed that GCHQ infiltrates all the communications in and out of the British Isles by tapping transatlantic cables and has warrantless access to NSA databases, which include the data of all UK citizens. By using Prism (an external system), the intelligence services were able to circumvent the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) 2000 legislation, which requires intelligence officials to get a warrant from a minister before performing a wiretap in Britain.

However, the ruling makes no one in the intelligence services accountable for wrongdoing. More importantly, it declares the same sort of surveillance legalsince December 2014 on a technicality—that the government had revealed that hitherto secret “safeguards” existed.

The findings basically state that surveillance was okay, but the problem was the government hadn’t told anyone about the safeguards. The IPT has manipulated the court case to make the GCHQ-NSA data sharing lawful and made a mockery of the RIPA legislation.

The new ruling says that “prior to the disclosures made and referred to in the Tribunal’s Judgment of 5 December 2014 and this judgment the Prism and/or Upstream arrangements contravened Articles 8 or 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, but now comply.”

Article 8 concerns the right to private and family life and article 10 refers to freedom of expression.

A GCHQ spokesman welcomed the latest ruling, declaring, “We are pleased that the court has once again ruled that the UK’s bulk interception regime is fully lawful. It follows the court’s clear rejection of accusations of ‘mass surveillance’ in their December judgment.

“Today’s IPT ruling reaffirms that the processes and safeguards within the intelligence-sharing regime were fully adequate at all times—it is simply about the amount of detail about those processes and safeguards that needed to be in the public domain.”

A government spokesperson agreed, saying, “Overall, the judgment this morning is that the UK’s interception regime is fully lawful.… What they said was that there should be more about the rules that should be disclosed publicly.… They are not questioning in this judgment that the safeguarding of privacy was in any way jeopardised and the judgment will not require GCHQ to change in anyway what it does.”

The human rights organisations and the Guardian, which broke the Snowden revelations, have talked up the IPT decision. Since the IPT was set up in 2000, they say, it has dealt with about 1,500 complaints, but this is the first time a complaint has been upheld.

Privacy International deputy director Eric King said the IPT decision “confirms to the public what many have said all along—over the past decade, GCHQ and the NSA have been engaged in an illegal mass surveillance sharing program that has affected millions of people around the world.”

Privacy International and others are now calling for the deletion of data—but only that collected before December 2014—and an appeal to the European courts. Guardian journalist Trevor Timm called the IPT ruling “stunning” and wrote that the case “was just the first of potentially dozens of cases that will come before the court…and many of which will hopefully force the court to address the illegality of the actual mass spying conducted by GCHQ on a regular basis.”

Timm also called “for a re-examination of the British government’s deplorable actions against the Guardian and others “who have merely reported on the Snowden stories.”

By the end of his article, the sense of euphoria had died down. He stated, “It remains to be seen how the court will react, if at all, to future cases. But this should be a warning for both the UK government and the media: the law and even the most obsequious of courts are not on your side. Your citizens aren’t either.”

“[M]ore work needs to be done,” he added. “The only reason why the NSA-GCHQ sharing relationship is still legal today is because of a last-minute clean-up effort by the government to release previously secret ‘arrangements’.”

Liberty legal director James Welch said much the same thing, adding, “We now know that, by keeping the public in the dark about their secret dealings with the NSA, GCHQ acted unlawfully and violated our rights. That their activities are now deemed lawful is thanks only to the degree of disclosure Liberty and the other claimants were able to force from our secrecy-obsessed government.”

Despite the IPT case, the “secrecy-obsessed government” and intelligence services have declared their intention to press ahead with the clampdown on democratic rights. Following his appointment as the new director of GCHQ in November, one of the first acts of Robert Hannigan was to demand major technology companies including Facebook and Twitter deepen their cooperation with GCHQ or face legislation compelling them.

Following the terror assaults on the Charlie Hebdo office in Paris and a Jewish supermarket, in which 17 people were killed, demands have been made for yet more powers. The former head of Britain’s intelligence agency MI5, Lord Evans, claimed that existing anti-terror legislation was “no longer fit for purpose” and that new laws were “vital” to enable the state to monitor the Internet.

Prime Minister David Cameron has pledged that if the Conservatives return to power after the May General Election, they will speed up plans for a “snoopers’ charter” Communications Bill giving the intelligence agencies the power to access encrypted communications.

Britain’s Intelligence and Security Committee, consisting of nine senior members of parliament and peers, is also to announce “very radical” reforms of existing anti-terror provisions so as to grant the intelligence agencies new powers to intercept e-communications.

Widespread anger over killing of three Muslim students in North Carolina

Evan Blake

The killing of three Muslim-American college students in Chapel Hill, North Carolina has sparked an outpouring of anger and sympathy across the US and around the world, as police continue to investigate whether religious or ethnic hatred was a motive in the shootings. A crowd of more than 5,000 people gathered in Raleigh, North Carolina on Thursday for the funerals of the three youths.

On Tuesday evening, Deah Shaddy Barakat, 23, his wife Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha, 21, and her sister Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, 19, were found dead in the apartment of Deah and Yusor, who were married less than two months ago. Barakat was a second-year student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC-Chapel Hill) School of Dentistry, and his wife had recently been accepted to study there next year. Her sister, a freshman studying architecture at nearby North Carolina State University in Raleigh, had been visiting the couple. Barakat is of Syrian descent, while the two women are of Palestinian descent, and all three had lived in North Carolina their entire lives.

Officers were notified of gunshots at 5:11pm, at an apartment complex home to mostly students and young professionals in Chapel Hill. The three victims were found dead at the scene, with local WRAL News reporting that all three had been shot in the head. Police say that Craig Stephen Hicks, 46, initially fled and then turned himself in late Tuesday night. He has been arrested and charged on three counts of first-degree murder. The FBI has been brought in to help police investigate the killings.

After local police initially attributed the killings to an ongoing dispute between Hicks and the couple over a parking space at the condominium, the victims’ families appeared publicly to demand a hate crime investigation.

The women’s father, Dr. Mohammad Abu-Salha, is convinced that Hicks killed the three due to his hatred for their religion and culture. Abu-Salha told CNN, “It was execution style, a bullet in every head. This was not a dispute over a parking space; this was a hate crime. This man had picked on my daughter and her husband a couple of times before, and he talked with them with his gun in his belt. And they were uncomfortable with him, but they did not know he would go this far.”

The victims’ friends and family allege that Hicks had repeatedly gone to the couple’s apartment toting either a pistol or rifle, complaining about their guests parking in the condominium’s parking lot, and excess noise. Abu-Salha says that when Barakat lived in the condo by himself, Hicks would not bother him, but when his daughter, who wears a hijab, moved in with her husband, Hicks began to harass the couple. Abu-Salha told CNN that his daughter told him, “Daddy, I think he hates us for who we are and how we look.”

Neighbors have described Hicks as frequently angry, yelling at neighbors over parking spaces and minor noise violations. Samantha Maness, 25, who lives near the complex where the shooting took place, told the Los Angeles Times that Hicks “was very disgruntled, very aggressive. He would scream at people. He made everyone feel uncomfortable and unsafe.”

Hicks’ ex-wife has told reporters that he was obsessed with the misanthropic Joel Schumacher film Falling Down, and that he showed “no compassion at all” for other people. There are also unconfirmed reports that his alleged Facebook profile is filled with vitriolic denunciations of all religions, and that in the “About” section he describes himself as an “anti-theist.” Hicks is also a vocal advocate of gun rights. His Facebook profile also apparently states that he was studying at a local community college to begin working as a paralegal.

Whether or not Hicks is found guilty of the three killings, and whether he was driven by anti-Muslim bigotry, have yet to be determined. If this does turn out to be the case, he would of course be responsible for his own actions. But a much greater responsibility would have to be attributed to the actions of American imperialism and its subservient media apparatus that have played the central role in whipping up anti-Muslim sentiment as part of the “war on terror.”

FBI statistics indicate that in recent years anti-Muslim crimes have constituted roughly 13-14 percent of hate crimes committed with a religious bias, or nearly 100 anti-Muslim hate crimes each year between 2011-2013. In 2001, there were nearly 500 reported anti-Muslim hate crimes, whereas before 9/11 there was an average of 20-30 anti-Muslim hate crimes reported annually.

The war against ISIS and the overall escalation of American intervention in the Middle East serve as the backdrop for a recent upsurge of anti-Muslim crimes in the US, most notably last December’s hit-and-run killing of a 15-year-old boy in Kansas City.

News of Tuesday’s killings went viral on social media, with the hashtag #ChapelHillShooting being posted over 900,000 times on Twitter on Wednesday.

Many posts have emphasized that without the outpouring on social media, the killings would likely have been dropped altogether by the mainstream media, as the victims were Muslim. A typical posting reads “Muslims only newsworthy when behind a gun. Not in front [of] it.”

On Wednesday evening, at least 2,500 people attended a prayer vigil at UNC-Chapel Hill, to honor the victims. Concurrent vigils were held at dozens of campuses and cities across the US. Throughout Europe, many have also expressed their solidarity, as anti-Muslim sentiment has flared up in the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo shootings in Paris in early January. Around the world, people have shared condolences with the victims’ families.

Barakat and Mohammad were well known in their communities, as they regularly volunteered to help the homeless and also raised money to help Syrian refugees in Turkey. Last summer, Barakat and Yusor Mohammad went on a volunteer mission to help at a dentistry clinic for Syrian refugees in Turkey. They were scheduled to travel with other dentists this summer to Reyhanli, Turkey, to treat Syrian refugee children with urgent dental needs, distribute dental care supplies, and work with Turkish dental clinics.

Mariem Masmoudi, a friend of the Barakats, told CNN that the couple shared “so much love and so much joy and happiness.” She said the Barakats “were really an adorable young couple. I don’t know how to say it ... they really radiated this kind of light. They radiated humility, kindness, love. You couldn’t help but be inspired by them.”

Study says US jails have become “massive warehouses” for the poor

Tom Hall

A study released Wednesday by the Vera Institute of Justice, entitled “Incarceration's Front Door: The Misuse of Jails in America,” argues that American jails have become “massive warehouses” for the poor since the early 1980s.

The study exposes the onerous conditions that even a brief stay in jail imposes on the poorest and most vulnerable sections of American society. Jails have been transformed, according to the authors, from temporary detention facilities for those awaiting trial into a “a gateway to deeper and more lasting involvement in the criminal justice system.”

According to the study, American jails process nearly 12 million admissions in a typical year, nearly double the level in 1983 and equal to the combined populations of New York City and Los Angeles. The jail population at any given time has skyrocketed even more over the same period, more than tripling to 731,000, fueled by a more than 50 percent increase in the average length of stay in jail. The study notes that because the percentage of the jail population awaiting trial has ballooned from 40 percent to 62 percent, “it is highly likely that the increase in the average length of stay is largely driven by longer stays in jails by people who are unconvicted of any crime.”

Spending by local governments on jails have likewise exploded by 235 percent over the same period, reaching $22.2 billion in 2013. “Even this figure fails to capture the true costs of jails to local jurisdictions,” the study argues, because “money spent on jails … often comes out of the budget of non-correctional agencies. Cities and counties have to cover most costs themselves, drawing on the same pool of tax revenue that supports schools, transportation, and an array of other public services.”

Despite the explosive growth of the American prison system, which has resulted in the country having the highest prison population of any country on the planet, crime has actually plummeted during the same period. The study notes that the number violent crimes and property crimes, after peaking in 1991, have fallen by 49 and 44 percent, respectively.

Nearly three-quarters of the inmate population are in jail for “nonviolent traffic, property, drug, or public order offenses,” according to the report. Three fifths have not been convicted of a crime and are awaiting either trial or resolution of their cases. African Americans comprise a disproportionate share of the jail population, at 36 percent.

The report notes that a disproportionate number of inmates are repeat offenders struggling with mental illness or substance abuse. In New York City, only 473 people, almost all of whom struggled with substance abuse or a mental illness accounted for over 10,000 admissions and 300,000 days in jail, mainly for misdemeanors and violations. The authors state that jails have become “de facto mental hospitals” that “fill the vacuum created by the shuttering of state psychiatric hospitals.” However, over 83 percent of mentally ill inmates receive no mental health care while in jail. Mentally ill inmates also spend much lengthier periods in jail, for example 43 days on average in Los Angeles, compared to an average of 18 days amongst the general population.

Huge numbers of inmates are in jail simply because they are unable to pay the increasingly onerous bails set by judges. In New York City, over half of all jail inmates are in jail because they cannot afford to pay a bail of $2,500 or less. Nationwide, only 23 percent of suspects are released on their own recognizance, down from over half thirty years ago, and bail amounts in felony cases increased 43 percent between 1992 and 2009 to $55,400. For many people who cannot afford to post bail, according to the study, “a guilty plea may, paradoxically, be the fastest way to get out of jail.”

Regardless of whether they are actually convicted, spending even a few days in jail has a damaging effect on the lives of the incarcerated. The report found that among adult males, “hourly wages decreased by 11 percent, annual employment by nine weeks, and annual earnings by 40 percent as a result of time spent in jail or prison.”

Many jails charge inmates fees for various “services,” such as clothing and laundry, medical care, and “even core functions such as booking,” according to the report. Many people find themselves back in jail for failing to pay these fees, a situation that the authors compare to debtor's prisons. A lawsuit filed this week against the city government in Ferguson, Missouri alleges that the city has “built a municipal scheme designed to brutalize, to punish and to profit” by imprisoning people unable to pay fines and traffic tickets.

The explosion of incarcerations in local jails is bound up with the increasingly vindictive policing policies towards minor offenses, especially drug-related crimes. Nearly 75 percent of all inmates are in jail for “nonviolent traffic, property, drug, or public order offenses,” according to the report.

The study singles out the “broken windows” theory of policing, according to which a crackdown on minor “quality of life” offenses supposedly reduces the level of more serious crimes. It was infamously implemented in New York City by current police chief Bill Bratton in 1994, resulting in a staggering 2,760 percent increase in misdemeanor marijuana arrests and giving rise to the Department's infamous “vertical policing” and “stop-and-frisk” programs. The authors cite an “exhaustive review” by the National Research Council that found no strong evidence that aggressively policing minor offenses reduces or prevents more serious crimes.

The growth of mass incarceration and increasingly brutal policing in the United States is a reflection of the pervasive growth of social inequality in the United States. While the most vulnerable sections of society are brutalized and imprisoned under the flimsiest of pretenses, the financial oligarchs who run society are allowed to commit crimes with total impunity.