How Has Bolivia’s de Facto Regime Taken Advantage of COVID-19 to Consolidate Its Power and Repress Political Rivals?

Lola Allen

On April 29, Bolivia’s de facto president, Jeanine Áñez, announced that the country would be moving into a “dynamic quarantine” phase on May 11. This decision was intended to alleviate the social and economic repercussions of the pandemic by loosening lockdown restrictions. However, the most heavily affected areas ― located primarily in poor communities ― were ordered to remain in full lockdown. This meant that many of those in greatest need of getting out and earning money were still unable to do so; emergency subsidies were insufficient and unevenly distributed, and many have been left on the verge of starvation, according to on-the-ground accounts. On June 1, the de facto government announced that it had lifted most of the remaining lockdown restrictions, and that it was handing over the responsibility for quarantine management to local authorities. This is a significant move in that it implies that the pandemic no longer constitutes a national emergency.

Jeanine Áñez has faced harsh national and international criticism for using the pandemic as a way of consolidating power and repressing political rivals. Protesters in Cochabamba have accused the government of leaving people without the means to feed their families. On May 10, the Confederation of Indigenous Peoples sent an open letter to Áñez calling on her to provide food supplies to the indigenous communities most affected by shortages. A week and a half later, in the midst of these appeals, Bolivia’s health minister was arrested in a corruption scandal in which he is accused of paying $4.7 million to acquire COVID-19 ventilators for a contract believed to be worth $1.2 million. The minister, Marcelo Navajas, had only assumed the post six weeks before. Protests have also recently broken out in El Alto and in Cochabamba demanding new elections and an end to the privatization of natural resources and of other state companies.

The Áñez government’s response to COVID-19 has involved strict military enforcement of restrictions on movement and a series of aggressive containment measures. Meanwhile, the government has used the pandemic as an excuse to mount a full-fledged offensive against its political rivals.

The early lockdown has meant that Bolivia appears not to have experienced the rapid spread of the virus seen in neighboring countries such as Brazil, Peru, or Ecuador. As of June 3, the Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center estimated Bolivia to have 10,531 confirmed cases and 343 deaths from the virus, although these numbers undoubtedly underrepresent the actual situation, given low testing rates. If in fact the government has had success in stemming the pandemic’s spread, it will have come at a high social cost, as we shall see.

Supreme Decree 4200 and Flagrant Violations of Freedom of Expression and Persecution of Political Rivals

The Bolivian government has used the pandemic as a pretext to impose decrees that criminalize dissent and severely curtail press freedom. Though international pressure forced the government to rescind some of the decrees’ most egregious measures, this was not until after a short period of harsh repression.

On April 30, The Washington Post reported that “a striking example of a crackdown during the pandemic comes from Bolivia,” and noted “the government has arrested dozens of opponents under a new decree passed last month.” José Miguel Vivanco, executive director of Human Rights Watch’s Americas Program, also condemned the decree, Tweeting: “The Bolivian government appears to be taking advantage of the pandemic to give itself the power to punish anyone who publishes information the government deems ‘incorrect.’”

The Post and Vivanco were both referring to Supreme Decree 4200, which the de facto government passed on March 25. Article 13.2 of this decree states: “individuals who incite non-compliance with this decree or misinform or cause uncertainly to the population will be subject to criminal charges for crimes against public health.” Those convicted of violating the decree can receive sentences of up to 10 years in prison. By mid-April, some 67 people had already been arrested for allegedly violating the decree, and, according to de facto interior minister Arturo Murillo, 37 people have already been tried, convicted, and sentenced for supposed involvement in “destabilization and disinformation movements.”

These measures drew criticism from a wide array of national and international actors, including Bolivian social organizations; international human rights organizations such as Amnesty International; the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR); Freedom House; and US Congressman Eliot Engel, chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

On May 7, just days after World Press Freedom Day, the de facto government announced another law intended to extend the scope of Supreme Decree 4200. Decree 4231 outlaws “disinformation” in print or through “artistic media.” On May 12, the IACHR sent a strongly worded warning to the Áñez government against the use of criminal law to police public expression. The most problematic provisions of Decree 4231 were removed on May 14.

Committee for the Protection of Journalists (CPJ) Central and South America Program Coordinator Natalie Southwick said:

The COVID-19 pandemic must be taken seriously, but vague regulations that criminalize ‘disinformation’ make Bolivia’s interim government look more concerned about its public image than about an effective response to the crisis. These overly broad provisions that criminalize speech open up the dangerous possibility of abuse against journalists reporting vital information and facts.

Following intense international pressure, Bolivia’s de facto government modified some of the most heavily criticized clauses of the decree in mid-May.

Áñez Overrules Bill that Would Have Ensured New Elections Within 90 Days

Bolivia’s 2020 snap elections, originally scheduled to take place May 3, were postponed indefinitely on March 22 by the country’s electoral authority as a result of the pandemic. Over a month later, former president Evo Morales’s Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS) shepherded a bill through the Bolivian Chamber of Deputies obliging the de facto government to organize general elections before August 2, 2020. The law, seeking to ensure that new elections are held within the constitutional time limits for an interim presidency, was ratified in an extraordinary session in Bolivia’s senate on April 30.

As expected, Áñez vehemently opposed the bill, claiming that elections should be postponed until the pandemic has passed, and Tweeting: “Any damage to people’s health and lives caused by the folly of calling elections will be the responsibility of the MAS.” Then she went further and announced that the pandemic justified postponing the elections indefinitely.

Deciding how to handle voting during a pandemic is inherently difficult, but indefinite postponement had raised fears that the post-coup administration had little interest in giving up power, especially considering the strong lead that MAS presidential candidate and former economy minister Luis Arce has had in the polls over other candidates, including Áñez herself. The agreement reached between TSE and key political parties on June 2, states that elections will be held on September 6; this can be seen as a positive step towards easing current political tensions in Boliva.

Áñez’s Border Crisis: Closing Land Borders to Bolivian Nationals

The Áñez regime has claimed that MAS and other political rivals, including 2019 opposition presidential candidate Carlos Mesa of Comunidad Ciudadana, are undermining its response to the pandemic, and attempting to politicize the country’s dire situation.

In the same vein, Áñez’s director of migration services, Marcel Rivas, blamed the MAS for social turmoil resulting from the government’s refusal to allow Bolivians stranded on the Chilean border to reenter the country, claiming “MAS sought to break the quarantine to generate riots and chaos.” This followed an incident during the first week of April in which several hundred Bolivian nationals trying to return to Bolivia clashed with armed forces near the Bolivian town of Pisiga. The camps were heavily militarized. Many have criticized Áñez for allowing in Bolivians fortunate enough to travel by air, but blocking those coming by land, including poorer Bolivian migrants trying to return from Chile.

Evelyn Matthei, mayor of the Chilean municipality of Providencia, made a video appeal to Áñez on April 28 for the 400 Bolivians stranded on the Chilean side of the border to be allowed to return to Bolivia. Matthei pledged to meet the necessary conditions, including provision of food and shelter, to allow these Bolivians to fulfill quarantine requirements in government camps in Chile before being allowed to travel within Bolivia. On May 1, in the face of growing international pressure, Áñez finally allowed these Bolivians to return to their country.

The de facto government’s actions preventing Bolivians from returning home violated a number of national and international laws. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (and former president of Chile) Michelle Bachelet issued a statement on April 15 reminding Bolivia’s de facto president of her obligation to allow Bolivian citizens back into their own country: “Under international law, everyone has the right to return to their home country ― even during a pandemic.” Bachelet went on to say: “When migrants wish to return home voluntarily, Governments have an obligation to receive their own nationals, and to ensure that they have access to health care and other rights.”

The International Organization for Migration had been assisting other stranded Bolivians who were being held at the Tata Santiago quarantine camp in Pisiga, providing food and shelter in the absence of adequate support from Áñez’s government.

Blocking MAS Social Organizations from Providing Food Packages for Those Most in Need

During the last week of April, the military prevented MAS senate candidate Andrónico Rodríguez from distributing food in Cochabamba, accusing him of breaching government restrictions on political gatherings. Rodríguez declared that low-income Bolivians urgently need more access to food, as had Zenón Pizarro, mayor of Oruro, the first city in Bolivia to be put under lockdown. Pizarro had called for more flexible isolation measures, warning that hunger is a serious risk. With many people left without access to their savings or any kind of support, then “if the virus doesn’t kill them, hunger will,” Pizarro stated.

The Central Obrera Boliviana (COB), Bolivia’s main labor union federation, has also decried that around 80 percent of the population, largely informal workers and the unemployed, are not eligible for the subsidies the de facto government has offered to address the economic effects of the quarantine. COB leader Juan Carlos Huarachi proposed that the eight million people left without protection be paid 50 percent of the minimum wage for the next six months. Yet on April 29, the government suspended a one-off cash transfer (Bono Universal) intended to offer a lifeline to those on the brink of starvation, saying lines outside the banks were too long. This left many people without income or access to other support during the pandemic.

Territorial Isolation Policies in Chapare, Cochabamba

In some cases, the de facto government has opted for more sweeping and regionally focused repression, as in Chapare. This rural province in the department of Cochabamba has been a bastion of support for ousted president Evo Morales. It has also been the prime target for the Áñez government‘s anti-narcotics policy involving the criminalization of peasant coca growers. Áñez’s approach is reversing years of a successful counternarcotic strategy under Morales that had offered viable alternatives for small-scale coca growers to enter the formal economy. Under Áñez, these campesinos have been criminalized, labeled “narco-terrorists,” and blocked from selling certain legal and licensed coca-based goods such as shampoos, sweets, and creams on the local market. During the lockdown, security forces have arrested and detained farmers on broad, poorly defined charges, mostly tied to narcotrafficking. So far, little evidence has been provided to sustain such claims.

The US government has supported Añez’s counternarcotics policies and has kept silent about flagrant human rights violations carried out by her government. De facto interior minister Arturo Murillo, the key architect of the US-led anti-narcotics strategy, is publicly vocal about the support he has from the United States government.

On May 6, the human rights ombudsman of Cochabamba, Nelsón Cox, denounced that “detainees from the Chapare are singled out for beatings and abuse in prisons in Cochabamba.” The Andean Information Network calls this “the latest chapter in the stigmatization, discrimination and human rights violations against residents of that coca growing region.”

Cochabamba is also home to over 14,000 small fish farms, each holding around 1,500 fish. The Áñez government has restricted these farmers’ access to any fuel ― under the pretext that this could be used to fabricate cocaine ― putting the fish farms in jeopardy. Already some 11 million fish, around half the existing fish stock, have perished from lack of fuel needed to oxygenate pools. This is a tragic loss of a much-needed food stock. Observers point out that these fish could have supported campesino families during the lockdown.

Boomerang Accusations: Áñez, Not Her Political Rivals, Is Politicizing the Crisis

The widely held belief that the government’s quarantine restrictions have been unequally applied has been fueled by public scandals revealing the double standard for Áñez and other senior officials. Just in the first few weeks of May, it was revealed that Áñez had used a military plane to transport a family friend to a birthday party. During the same period, a government minister came under fire for using a state aircraft to transport a former beauty queen between cities.

Earlier in May, Áñez invited Bolivians to pray and fast together to combat COVID-19, and she has coordinated helicopter flights so that Catholic bishops can bless the Bolivian population from the sky. Áñez seems to have learned few lessons since she first marched into the Presidential Palace, having been sworn in without the required quorum in the Senate, to announce that the “Bible had returned to the Palace.” Her de facto government has repeatedly come under fire for its overtly racist policies, sparking a December 2019 OAS resolution in which 18 member states denounced its recurrent and overtly racist actions. Áñez’s response to the pandemic signals a continued uphill struggle for recognition of the basic rights of Bolivia’s massive indigenous population.

Ironically, Áñez claims that opposition to her government has politicized the pandemic, but the evidence suggests that it is Áñez’s de facto government that has been most guilty of extracting political gains ― including by repressing its critics ― in the context of the current health crisis. Beyond the controversial cultural and religious dimensions of the government’s response, there are deeper implications for civil and political rights. Áñez’s de facto government appears to be taking advantage of political opportunities afforded by COVID-19 to try to hold on to power at all costs.

Dialetics of Coronavirus

T. Vijayendra

The coronavirus pandemic has released an unprecedented level of actions and reactions that has shaken the world. In this article we will focus only on India and see what good can come out of this major shakeup. As you can see we are optimists!

We will consider the following aspects:

1. The lock down
2. The sufferings of migrant labour
3. Dependency versus self reliance
4. Global versus local

The Lock Down

We have had one of the biggest lock downs in the wake of coronavirus pandemic. Innumerable experts, journalists and ordinary people have said and ‘proved’ that the lock down did not achieve anything. The cases per day have been rising after the lock down. Everyone, including the industry is questioning the wisdom of the lock down. So let us conclude that the lock down did not help to control the pandemic.

But what did it achieve? Since all the fossil fuel based transport was stopped and the factories were closed, they did not emit foul gases and the air quality in the cities became very good. Also since the factories did not send their foul effluents to the rivers and lakes they got purified. Thus it achieved the cleaning of the environment – air and water bodies – lakes and rivers. Yamuna cleaned herself in 60 days. Dolphins were seen in Hooghly at Kolkata. Increase in type and number of birds in the cities occurred.

It also gave paid holidays (sorry, coronavirus sabbatical!) to several liberal intellectuals to reflect deeply on fundamental questions. And they had an audience. Many people who lived in comfort zones thought deeply about the predicament, about the meaning of development, about the future of their children etc.

The sufferings of migrant labour

Everyone has condemned the suddenness of the lock out declaration. Only four hours between 8 pm and 12 midnight! Millions of the workers in the city woke up to find that they had no jobs, very little money and notices to leave their rented places. Within days hundreds of thousands of workers decided to go home to their villages. No trains or buses! So they started walking and some lucky ones had bicycles and at least one child carried his parents on a cycle rickshaw! It was an exodus and the poet Gulzar compared it to the partition exodus of 1947. Almost every one of them suffered and many died on the road.

But it also released the hidden goodness among hundreds of fellow citizens. They came out with community kitchens, shoes and chappals, dressed the wounded, arranged transport wherever they could. Others generously donated money and resources. And there was widespread anger against the government and against the capitalist system.

The workers themselves showed heroism. They walked enduring the hardships, they cycled breaking all kinds of endurance records – 1100 Km in 7 days carrying wife on pillion, a young girl carried her sick father on her ladies’ bicycle on pillion from Guragaon to Darbhanga and so on. They were given warm supports all along the road and back at home. Many workers resolved never to go back to the city.

Dependency versus self reliance

A large number of political parties, NGOs and individuals have been demanding from the government relief and long term effective action. The government too has released emergency ration and cash payments to many individuals. But as it happens in government schemes, many are left out and there is immense suffering among the poor in the city. Also millions have lost their jobs and there is no sign they will get them any time soon. The capitalist system has received the biggest jolt/recession/depression in its history. No one knows how much and when it will recover.

On the other hand a large number of communities have been self reliant and their case studies are coming up. Viklap Sangam has been and is advocating this for a long time and so are many other grass root organisations. With the collapse of the system this is gaining increasing significance. Many workers retuning home have started working on eco restoration projects – notably for recovering water bodies so that people can store water during the coming monsoon.

Global versus local

Almost everyone agrees that it is the globalisation that has spread the coronavirus. So today if we have to build an alternative to capitalism it will have to be some kind of local self sufficient economy and polity based on equality and sustainability. A polity of federalism – federating with the neighbouring community on the basis of ‘a fee association of free people’.

The future-which way to go?

Today we are standing at the cross roads. One road leads to, ‘nothing will change – we will go back to the old ways’. So we keep on criticising the government and demanding it to do something. In a sense this kind of politics also legitimises the system particularly when the government is losing its credibility among people. The other road leads to ‘give up on the capitalist system and build an alternative. Rebuild the community and restore the ecology. Build a self reliant local community.’ Once we decide, the path will open up.

Some people will say: ‘It is not a simple either/or situation but the important thing is our understanding and the priority we give to the kind the action we get involved in’. True, but in the final analysis the real choice is between chaos and transition because in my opinion capitalism is doomed anyway. So if we take one road it will lead to chaos and the other may take you to a possible ‘heaven on earth’!

“If I am not for me who will be? If I am only for me what am I? If not now when?”
– Rabbi Hillel (110 BC -10 AD)

Zambia’s bid for IMF rescue deal thwarted by Washington’s anti-China campaign

Jean Shaoul & Stephan McCoy

The International Monetary Fund has rebuffed Zambia’s appeal for an emergency loan as the country faces a deepening economic crisis amid the pandemic.

Zambia’s Finance Minister Dr. Bwalya Ngandu said the IMF would not grant his government’s request for a loan due to the country’s “unsustainable debt.” The US-dominated IMF said that countries with unsustainable debt levels before the pandemic must first discuss with their creditors—meaning China—how their loans can be managed.

Zambia is widely seen as a test case. It is due to make $1.5 billion in debt repayments this year, more than its foreign currency reserves in January.

President Edgar Lungu’s government has hired the financial management firm Lazard, which is also advising Argentina and Lebanon, to deal with its debt so as to access IMF loans and avert default—a move criticized by some within the ruling elite. Zambia could become the first African country to default on its sovereign debt.

Ethiopia, Angola and Ghana are also seen as likely to default, with most sub-Saharan African countries in talks with the IMF and World Bank for emergency loans. South Africa, the continent’s most advanced economy, is seeking a loan from a China-based development bank.

According to official figures, Zambia, Africa second largest copper exporter, had debts of $12 billion (51 percent of GDP) at the end of 2018, with about 30 percent owing to China, 25 percent to bondholders and 19 percent to foreign banks, with little owing to the World Bank, IMF and Western governments. The government also had domestic debt of approximately $5 billion and outstanding arrears of approximately $1.2 billion.

The Zambian government is heavily dependent on the multinational copper mining corporations, who are notorious for paying barely any taxes. It spends almost half its tax revenues on debt servicing, with the result that after paying the public sector wage bill there is little left, leading to a budget deficit of 10.9 percent of GDP in 2019.

The corrupt politicians and the Zambian elite whose interests they represent preside over growing levels of inequality, poverty and malnutrition. While the country recorded growth in the decade following debt relief in 2005 up to 2015, the IMF-dictated privatization of major state-owned companies, drastic cuts in government expenditure and social welfare programs meant that little of this growth resulted in changes to income, poverty levels or employment for the vast majority of Zambians. To cite some indicators of the terrible social conditions:

* 58 percent of Zambians live below the international poverty line.

* Rural poverty is 80 percent.

* Stunting is prevalent in 40 percent children and wasting in 5 percent.

* 4.8 million people live without access to clean water.

* At least 40 percent of children in the southern region of Zambia die from malnutrition.

* The UN’s Human Development Index (HDI) ranks the country 143 out of 189.

The government closed its borders, banned travel and large gatherings and closed schools and universities as the first COVID-19 cases were announced in mid-March. Zambia has recorded over 1,000 cases that have included two cabinet ministers, and just seven deaths. However, with little testing done, the number of confirmed cases is likely to be a gross underestimate.

The security forces have imposed the lockdown with violence, injuring several in Nakonde, near the border with Tanzania, that became an epicentre for the disease. Lungu has used the pandemic to introduce a bill that would give sweeping powers to the presidency, in effect creating a presidential dictatorship.

Zambia’s bonds are trading at half their price at the start of the year as investors expect the country to default. This fear intensified with the onset of the pandemic, which has seen copper prices fall by up to 16 percent as global demand plummets. The currency has fallen against the US dollar, while border closures have further impacted on the landlocked country.

Several reports have put the real debt figures as at least double the official statistics, mostly off-balance sheet loans from China for public-private partnership infrastructure deals that may include the underlying assets as collateral. This means that the debt repayments are secured by revenues such as commodity exports, and any debt restructuring could involve the transfer of roads, airports or even mines to China.

The IMF has refused to lend to Zambia since the US calculates that the real beneficiary would be China. Zambia has therefore been caught in the crosshairs of US President Donald Trump’s reckless campaign to undermine China, which he views as a threat to US global dominance.

While China’s growing role in global trade is well known, its role as a global lender is less so. According to research published in the Harvard Business Review, the world’s debt obligations to China rose from $500 billion in 2000 to $5 trillion in 2017, a sum equal to about 6 percent of global GDP. The Chinese government and its state-owned entities have lent $1.5 trillion in loans, portfolio debts (including the $1 trillion of US Treasury debt purchased by China’s central bank) or trade credits to more than 150 countries, making China the world’s largest creditor, overtaking the IMF and World Bank or all OECD creditor governments combined.

Despite the scale of China’s lending, no official statistics exist on the debt flows and stocks either in China or in the debtor nations that have largely financed large-scale investments in infrastructure, energy and mining. Of the 50 main recipients in the less advanced countries, Chinese debt constituted 15 percent of GDP in 2017, with 12 of these countries owing debt of at least 20 percent of GDP to China. The African countries include Djibouti, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Niger and Zambia. Many of these loans go unreported.

While these loans are incurred to build much needed infrastructure, many of the jobs go to Chinese nationals, with some 80,000 working in Zambia building airports, roads, schools, factories and police stations, which has fomented anti-Chinese sentiment.

Lungu’s government has found it increasingly difficult to balance between Washington and Beijing as the US’s anti-China drive reaches new heights, resulting in ever more erratic and authoritarian actions.

Michael Foote, the US ambassador to Zambia, was kicked out of the country after criticizing the government’s decision to sentence a gay couple to 15 years in jail. The government only retracted this decision recently, releasing the couple when it found itself in a diplomatic row with China after three Chinese businessmen were killed in xenophobic attacks, and using the pardon as a way to ingratiate itself with the US government once again.

The government also became involved in a fight with Glencore, the British multinational commodity trading and mining company headquartered in Switzerland, over the Mopani Copper Mines, one of Glencore’s copper mines in Zambia located in the Copperbelt province. Glencore is one of the last major western mining companies to control copper and cobalt operations in Congo and Zambia, as Chinese companies have gradually taken over the industry.

Around 11,000 miners found themselves in danger of being laid off as the company attempted to exploit the COVID-19 pandemic to undertake long planned retrenchments and temporarily mothball the mine. The government, which is heavily dependent on copper revenues, blocked the shutdown as illegal to bolster its own position in the Copperbelt province ahead of next year’s elections.

Richard Musukwa, the minister of Mines and Mineral Development, threatened to revoke Glencore’s licence. The government even arrested and detained Glencore’s local CEO Nathan Bullock. Glencore said it would resume production for three months.

Hundreds of jobs axed as News Corp Australia shuts regional and suburban newspapers

Richard Phillips

Last week, the Murdoch-owned News Corp Australia announced that it will stop printing its 112 regional and suburban newspapers at the end of this month. Thirty-six newspapers will be closed outright, with the remaining 76 only producing digital editions.

The company refused to reveal how many jobs will be axed, but the decision is likely to eliminate at least 900 positions. The newspapers—some in existence for over 150 years—previously employed up to 1,300 people. The closures constitute one fifth of the country’s regional and suburban newspapers and place a question mark over News Corp’s regional newspaper printing facilities.

The surviving papers, News Corp management declared, will be produced by 375 journalists. Most of the suburban digital publications, however, will not have separate websites but will only be available behind paywalls on the company’s capital city tabloids, such as Sydney’s Daily Telegraph or Melbourne’s Herald-Sun.

These moves will further restrict public access to news and information, especially for older and poorer working class people, and strike another blow to regional towns, on the back of similar closures of banks and retail chains.

News Corp’s attack on journalists and other media workers is not confined to its rural and regional publications. Pay cuts, along with increased part-time work, nine-day fortnights and calls for employees to take accumulated leave, initially imposed on suburban and regional media workers in April, have been imposed or demanded at the company’s metropolitan newspapers.

News Corp management claimed its decision to stop printing regional and suburban newspapers was solely in response to the COVID-19 crisis and sharp falls in advertising revenue. This is false.

While the pandemic has seen dramatic declines in advertising, News Corp CEO Mark Miller boasted in April that readership of the company’s publications over the previous 12 months had risen by 81 percent and that consumer subscription sales were are up 287 percent. The increase, he declared, “is the most dramatic we have ever seen.”

News Corp, like its local and international competitors and big businesses everywhere, has seized on the pandemic to speed up existing plans to drastically restructure its operations and drive up profits. The company is also seeking to further consolidate its domination of the Australian media. News Corp controls 70 percent of the country’s print media.

Last week’s announcement is part of an escalating wave of job destruction, wage cuts and increased productivity demands by Australian media corporations. Over the past decade more than 3,000 journalists, photographers and editorial jobs have been axed nationally. More than 210 newsrooms have been closed or temporarily suspended in the past 18 months alone.

Australian Associated Press (AAP) is set to close at the end of the month, destroying the jobs of about 600 journalists, photographers and other media workers, following the elimination of 10 percent of the news agency’s workforce in 2018.

The decision to axe AAP was made in March by its majority shareholders, News Corp and Nine Entertainment, in order to consolidate their joint hegemony over the media by denying other outlets access to the news agency’s material.

In April, Australian Community Media & Printing (ACM), the country’s largest owner of regional and rural publications, shuttered four newspaper printing facilities and suspended publication of 160 of its regional and agricultural newspapers. An unknown number of journalists and other staff were either stood down or had their working hours slashed.

ACM—previously part of Fairfax Media—was taken over by Nine Entertainment and sold in 2019 to Antony Catalano and Thorney Investments. No announcements have been made about when or if these newspapers will reopen.

Smaller regional publishers, including Cape and Torres News in Northern Queensland, the Elliott Newspaper Group in northwestern Victoria and others have also stopped printing their newspapers. While the owners claim they will resume production later this year, these pledges are worthless.

According to the Guardian, another round of job cuts is underway at the Sydney Morning Herald, which is owned by Nine Entertainment, and at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). The state-funded ABC has slashed an undisclosed number of casuals at news and current affairs in the network’s television and radio programs.

Adding to the devastation, Domain, a real estate platform, recently gave its journalist and production staff the “choice” of taking 20 percent of their salaries for six months in share rights, or working shorter hours.

Nor has the offensive been restricted to newspapers. In early May, Australia’s largest magazine publisher, Bauer Media, shut down seven fashion, lifestyle and celebrity magazines and sacked 200 journalists, editors and production workers, including 60 from Pacific Magazines, which had just been acquired from Seven West Media. In April, Bauer in New Zealand stopped publishing all magazines in that country and axed the jobs of over 230 journalists and other production staff.

Other media outlets closed in Australia in the past three weeks include BuzzFeed News, 10 Daily and News Corp’s With Her In Mind Network (Whimn). Job cuts have taken place at Vice Network’s Sydney and Melbourne offices.

The industry’s main trade union, the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA), reacted to News Corp’s announcement last week with a perfunctory statement about “the seriousness of the crisis” facing journalism, and appealed to the federal government to provide more funds to regional newspapers.

“We are determined to see proper consultation and fair treatment for any affected staff,” MEAA chief executive Paul Murphy cynically declared. The union’s officials had rubber-stamped previous deals that led to News Corp’s announcement last week.

Like other unions, the MEAA functions as an industrial police force. It operates as an arm of the corporate media, negotiating redundancy deals, imposing productivity demands, cuts in conditions and the increased casualisation of journalists, photographers and other production workers.

News Corp journalists, photographers and other production workers seeking to defend their jobs cannot leave their fate in the hands of the MEAA. The union will do whatever media employers require, as long as it is retained as their workplace enforcer.

Successive Labor and Liberal-National governments have helped create the conditions for this assault on journalism and public access to information. They have dismantled provisions limiting monopoly control over the media, allowing the corporate giants to accumulate enormous wealth and power.

To fight this assault, media workers need to establish genuine rank-and-file committees, completely independent of the MEAA, to unite and mobilise other journalists and media workers and broader sections of the working class. The struggle against the corporate destruction of jobs and journalism requires a socialist perspective, based on the needs of society, as well as media workers and their families, not the profits of the media proprietors and the financial elites.

NTEU helps Australian universities escalate job and wage cuts

Mike Head

With the federal Liberal-National government adamantly refusing to rescue the country’s public universities from the devastating impact of the global COVID-19 pandemic, managements are unveiling hundreds of job cuts, together with attacks on pay and conditions.

So far, the jobs destroyed include at least 400 at La Trobe University, about 300 at Deakin University, and nearly 300 at Central Queensland University, which plans to close its Sunshine Coast, Yeppoon and Biloela campuses, hitting these regional centres hard.

Threats of unspecified job losses, including forced redundancies, have been issued at Charles Sturt University, Wollongong University, the University of the Sunshine Coast, Swinburne University, the University of Tasmania, the Australian National University and the University of Canberra. At the University of Sydney, the arts faculty will eliminate 8 percent of its units.

Elsewhere, the employers are demanding pay freezes or cuts, on top of the destruction of thousands of casual academic and administrative jobs, either by variations to NTEU enterprise bargaining agreements (EBAs) or by exploiting existing EBA provisions. At the University of Melbourne, the measures include a pay cut of 2.2 percent, reductions in redundancy pay and no limits on involuntary redundancies

Education Minister Dan Tehan reiterated the government’s stand on Wednesday, bluntly telling the universities they needed “greater focus on domestic students, online education and greater alignment with industry needs.”

This means accelerating the pro-business transformation of the universities. They are being told to slash costs, service the training and research needs of the corporate elite and end their reliance on overseas students, especially from China.

The government is also demanding that the universities, like schools, physically reopen, despite the danger of COVID-19 outbreaks in crowded lecture theatres and classrooms. Tehan said the government’s priority was “the further reopening of campuses for face-to-face learning.”

In order to comply with these orders, university managements are exploiting the efforts of the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) to stifle university workers’ outrage and opposition. For two months, throughout April and May, the NTEU suppressed all resistance while it conducted backroom talks with the employers on a national “framework” to permit pay cuts of up to 15 percent, while still allowing at least 18,000 job losses.

Facing widespread rank-and-file hostility to the agreement, and with the employers losing confidence in the NTEU’s capacity to deliver it, the union finally abandoned the deal. Far from being deterred by this historic blow to its credibility, however, the union is now working intensely with individual managements to impose their requirements.

As at Western Sydney University, the NTEU is using anti-democratic methods to shut down debate and push through agreements to cut wages, with no more guarantees against redundancies than in its national “framework.”

At some universities, such as Monash, La Trobe and the University of Western Australia, the NTEU is still trying to ram through versions of its national sellout, even overriding rejection votes by its own members. At La Trobe, the NTEU backed management’s plan for a 10 percent wage cut for at least 12 months, which the vice chancellor said would save 225 jobs but would still leave result in around 400 redundancies.

On May 27, an NTEU branch meeting at La Trobe voted by 60 percent, 138 to 62, to reject the national framework. Determined to fight all job cuts, including those of casuals, the participants also voted by 74 percent, 110 to 22, to “condemn any sacking of casual staff or standing down of staff in relation to COVID-19.” They signalled that they would “refuse variations to the EBA to overload our teaching or professional responsibilities as a result of work being stripped from casuals.”

In an extraordinary exposure of the role of unions, the NTEU refused to accept these outcomes. It claimed the votes were “non-binding” and called a postal ballot of La Trobe’s NTEU members, which started on Thursday, in a bid to reverse the rejection of the national agreement.

Under a revised management “offer,” staff would receive a sliding pay cut, depending on their classification, their annual leave would be reduced to 10 days and they would receive no pay increases until 2022.

To back the union’s effort to intimidate staff members into dropping their opposition, vice-chancellor John Dewar this week revealed that the university was negotiating with banks for a loan to cover its debts. As part of these negotiations, “the banks are interested to see actions around balancing our books over time,” he said.

In other words, the NTEU is working with management to impose the requirements of the banks, as well as the federal government, on the university.

La Trobe workers should vote “no” to defeat this attack, but that is only the first step. The NTEU’s collaboration with the employers is not an aberration. It is part of a wider drive by the unions to enforce cuts to jobs, pay and conditions in partnership with employers across entire industries, such as retail, fast food, hospitality and the clerical sector. In the words of Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) secretary Sally McManus, the unions are giving employers “everything you want.”

These developments underscore the necessity for the call issued by the Committee for Public Education and the Socialist Equality Party for the formation of rank-and-file committees of tertiary education workers and students—completely independent of the pro-management NTEU.

Such committees, democratically elected, are essential to organise a nationwide, unified struggle to defend all jobs and basic rights, protect university staff from unsafe COVID-19 conditions and link up with workers internationally who are facing similar critical struggles against the impact of the worsening global crisis.

La Trobe’s crisis is typical of the plight of the public universities, which have turned to exploiting full fee-paying international students over the past decade to offset the slashing of billions of dollars in funding by successive federal governments, starting with the Greens-backed Labor government of Julia Gillard.

A quarter of La Trobe’s 2019 revenue came from overseas students. Some universities depend even more on this revenue: 34 percent at Monash, 36 percent at RMIT and 35 percent at UTS.

Universities Australia this week said universities faced a combined revenue loss of up to $4.8 billion in 2020 and $16 billion by 2023. Even these estimates could be optimistic if the coronavirus pandemic continues to worsen globally.

All the causes of this crisis—the slashing of university funding, the pandemic itself and the profit-driven government responses to the pandemic—are products of global capitalism. That is why a socialist perspective, based on the total reorganisation of society in the interests of all, instead of the financial oligarchy, is necessary to fight this historic assault on universities and their workers. All those who want to take forward this struggle should contact the Committee for Public Education.

Philippines begins lifting lockdown despite rising infection rates

Owen Howell

On Monday, the Philippine government commenced its plans to reopen businesses by ending a three-month lockdown of Metro Manila, the country’s capital and COVID-19 epicentre. Millions of Filipino workers are being forced back on the job, despite a rapid rise in the number of infections.

Last week witnessed 4,051 new confirmed coronavirus cases, an increase of nearly 29 percent. Since May 28, there has been an unprecedented surge in the daily number of cases. A new record was set last Friday, with a spike of 1,046 cases, while the second highest number, 862, was reported on Sunday. The total number of infections now stands at 20,382, with 984 deaths.

In the face of these shocking figures, the government is recklessly pushing ahead with its premature reopening of the economy.

Social restrictions in Metro Manila and throughout the main island of Luzon, which is home to nearly 60 million people, are being downgraded to a “general community quarantine,” from the previous stage of “enhanced community quarantine.”

Transportation Secretary Arthur Tugade stated that public transport will return in a limited form, with shuttle buses and trains permitted to restart operations. Meanwhile, the Ninoy Aquino International Airport announced it will resume domestic flights.

Non-essential businesses, including restaurants, gyms, beauty salons, sports facilities and churches, are allowed to open at limited capacity, as are hotels and tourist spots. The changes are set to be in place until June 15, when restrictions will be further relaxed.

The return to work in the Philippines is part of an international campaign being waged by the ruling classes of every country, which are abandoning any serious attempt to contain and eradicate the coronavirus. This drive is not based on current scientific knowledge about the virus or its ability to spread, but is motivated solely by the economic interests of the financial elite.

The relaxing of restrictions follows increasingly strident appeals to the government from company executives, transnational corporations and investors.

Official gross domestic product (GDP) fell 0.2 percent in the first quarter of the year, the first contraction since 1998. The fears of big business over the pandemic’s impact on corporate profit-making have outweighed any public health considerations in the government response.

In order to justify meeting the demands of this financial oligarchy, and prepare the grounds for a return to work, President Rodrigo Duterte has publicly rejected known facts and proclaimed that the number of COVID-19 infections in the Philippines is negligible. Immediately after delivering a report of record-high infection figures in a press briefing last week, Duterte said: “All in all, for me, it’s not so bad.”

His remarks, completely out of touch with the horrific reality, sparked anger from health experts, along with workers and peasants, whose lives will be placed at risk due to the reopening.

The lack of significant lockdown measures could result in potentially catastrophic transmissions in Manila, the most densely populated city in the world. The capital region has been the source of more than 60 percent of the country’s confirmed cases. Any implementation of adequate social distancing on the reopened Manila transit system, which services around 300,000 commuters daily, will be impossible.

The Philippines’ testing rate is among the lowest in the world. While capacity has allegedly reached 32,100 tests per day, the actual number of tests performed is much lower. For example, only 8,496 tests were conducted on May 27, in a country of 109 million people.

Even this is an increase on rates up until early May, when testing was negligible. This serious delay in available testing led residents in provincial areas, where social restrictions were virtually non-existent, to worry that there may have been undetected outbreaks in their communities. The official records of cases and deaths are undoubtedly a gross underestimation of the real extent of the spread.

World Health Organisation (WHO) representative Dr Socorro Escalante recently highlighted the government’s failure to conduct contact tracing needed to combat the virus. She explained that tracing must begin once a suspect case visits a hospital, instead of upon confirmation of laboratory results, as is currently being practiced. “By that time, we have already spread the infection to many people and that’s really very, very late,” Escalante said.

The pandemic has had a catastrophic impact on the Philippine health care system, which was unprepared for a crisis of this scale. Due to a widespread shortage of protective equipment, at least 2,480 health workers have been infected, including 695 doctors, 905 nurses, 155 nursing assistants, 93 medical technologists, 46 radiologic technologists and 308 non-medical hospital staff. As of last week, 31 medical workers had died from the virus.

As is the case internationally, the pandemic and the pro-business government response is creating a social crisis of unprecedented dimensions. Labour Secretary Silvestre Bello has warned that the 2.6 million workers who lost their jobs after the pandemic began could be joined by 7 million more before the end of the year.

Unemployed workers, confronted with economic destitution at home, are offered no choice but to return to work under unsafe conditions. Cabusao, a young aviation firm worker, told Channel News Asia this week: “I have to go back to work… The fear of contracting the virus will always be there.”

The government has been slow in distributing the pitiful cash handouts that it promised to around 20 million impoverished families. The relief funds, just $US100 per person, have not yet reached all eligible recipients three months into the crisis. In the meantime, large numbers of low-income workers have stood all day in long queues to receive cash and food aid from charities.

Hunger has also surged during the pandemic. The Nikkei Asian Review cited a survey conducted in early May, which found that 16.7 percent of Filipinos residents, an estimated 4.2 million families, experienced hunger at least once in the previous three months, doubling from 8.8 percent in December.

President Duterte is well aware that growing social opposition among workers and the poor has been accelerated by the pandemic. Last week, the presidential Malacañang Palace announced it was “necessary” to extend Duterte’s special emergency powers, which were due to expire within weeks.

The measures will now be extended until September. They strengthen the powers of the executive branch— i.e., Duterte—placing hospitals and other public services under its direction. They also include provisions for the imprisonment for two months of anyone accused of spreading “fake news” online, along with fines ranging from 10,000 to 1 million pesos.

The government will attempt to use these measures to suppress opposition to the premature reopening, and the further corporate restructuring that will accompany it.

Duterte repeatedly threatened the population with martial law through the course of the lockdown, during which heavily-armed police officers and military troops arrested a total of 57,177 people for alleged quarantine violations. Police records show that nearly a quarter were arrested without a warrant.

Parliament approved a new “anti-terrorism bill” on Wednesday. It aims to provide a legal basis for the warrantless detention and wiretapping of anyone deemed by the government to be a “terrorist.”

In a letter to the House Speaker, Duterte certified the bill as “urgent,” writing that its purpose was to “adequately and effectively contain the menace of terrorist acts for the preservation of national security and the promotion of general welfare.”

There is no doubt that Duterte, as with his “war on drugs,” will use the new law as a means of criminalising any opposition to the government and provide the military absolute impunity in targeting political opponents.

European Central Banks boosts support for financial markets

Nick Beams

The European Central Bank has ramped up its emergency bond-buying program—introduced in mid-March to counter the meltdown in financial markets as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic—to €1.35 trillion.

The decision to lift purchases under the Pandemic Emergency Purchase Program (PEPP) by €600 billion, from an initial amount of €750 billion, was warmly welcomed by financial markets. The euro reached its highest level against the US dollar since March and stock markets rose on the back of the decision as the ECB brought its policy response closer into line with that of the US Federal Reserve

Reflecting the favourable response to the decision to make still more money available through the PEPP, one London-based investment fund manager told the Wall Street Journal: “The ECB is very well known to be behind the curve, acting only at five minutes to midnight, but now they are ahead of the curve.”

In her review of the state of the euro zone economy delivered at the start of a news conference yesterday at which she announced the new move, ECB president Christine Lagarde said the latest data confirmed that the region “is experiencing an unprecedented contraction” and there had been an “abrupt drop” in economic activity as a result of the pandemic.

She said while real-time indicators showed some signs of a “bottoming-out” in the plunge “the improvement so far has been tepid compared with the speed at which indicators plummeted in the preceding two months.”

In her words, as in the rest of the world, there is no prospect of V-shaped recovery—a scenario widely promoted at the start of the pandemic.

Lagarde said June macro projections were for growth declining at “an unprecedented pace” in the second quarter before a rebound in the second half of the year. Overall annual euro area GDP was expected to fall by 8.7 percent in 2020 before rebounding in 2021. But Lagarde did not rule out an even deeper downturn and cautioned that “the overall scale and speed of the rebound remains highly uncertain.”

Press conferences following the meetings of the ECB’s governing council always have a certain air of unreality about them because of the central bank’s single mandate which is to maintain price stability and a level of inflation around 2 percent.

This means that decisions which have really nothing to do with price levels, and are directed to providing a boost to financial markets, have to be justified in official statements as if they did.

This type of shadow play was particularly in evidence at yesterday’s press conference because it was the first to be held after a decision by the German constitutional court on May 5 that called into question whether the Bundesbank, the German central bank, could continue to take part in the ECB’s bond buying program.

The decision reflected opposition in some sections of the German financial and political establishment to what they regard as ECB operations to bailout southern European countries and finance their governments’ budget deficits.

Lagarde was questioned about the decision of the German constitutional court a number of times during the press conference. In reply to one of those questions, she noted that the European Court of Justice had ruled that the ECB’s actions have been in line with its mandate.

“[A]ll of us, take note of the judgement passed by the Karlsruhe constitutional court, which is directed at two parties; the German government and the German parliament. We are confident that a good solution will be found… which will in no way comprise the independence of the ECB, primacy of European law and decision by the European Court of Justice.”

However, the fact that the question continues to be raised means this is by no means a settled issue.

One questioner pointed out that when the PEPP was first announced in March the word “inflation” did not appear in the statement and asked whether its inclusion in the announcement to expand it was in part aimed at providing the explicit rationale being insisted on by the German constitutional court.

In a number of answers about the operations of the PEPP Lagarde made clear that euro zone financial system was facing a severe crisis in the middle of March. She said its introduction on March 18 had “prevented the downward spirals to financial markets and reduced any tail risks at the time without which we would have been in a seriously different situation in terms of both growth and inflation outlook.”

She said it had been decided to increase the size of PEPP because financial conditions in the euro area had become “significantly tighter” in a situation where the economy needed easier conditions.

Commenting on reports that not all members of the governing council had been prepared to support an increase in the PEPP, Lagarde said “there was a unanimous view” that action had to be taken.

The latest ECB decision is significant, not only because the size of the intervention—an increase to €1.35 trillion in new asset purchases on top of the more than €2 trillion it already holds—but the broadening scope of those purchases.

Lagarde pointed out that the ECB had included a “significant amount of corporate bonds—almost €46 billion worth under the PEPP program up to May 29—and that it had decided to shift a large share of our purchases to commercial paper.”

This indicates that, like its counterpart in the US, the ECB, the world’s second most important central bank, has become the chief backstop and prop for all areas of the financial system—from long-term government debt to corporate debt and short-term commercial paper.

Protests spread in Chile as hospitals reach saturation point

Mauricio Saavedra

With almost 114,000 COVID-19 cases confirmed since March 4, Chile has the third highest number of cases after Brazil and Peru in Latin America, one of the epicenters of the virus. With a population of 19 million, Chile is reporting close to 5,000 new cases of COVID-19 a day, a rate comparable, in per capita terms, to Spain at the peak of the viral spread last March.

It is forecast that, at the present rate, within two months, the death toll may reach 10 times yesterday’s figure of 1,275. This loss of life is the inevitable outcome of decades of pro-corporate policies that have led to a chronically underfunded health system, now on the verge of collapse. They have also produced extreme poverty, overcrowding and a lack of infrastructure in working class neighborhoods that has led to continued hunger riots.

Youth, the working class and the lower-middle classes who demonstrated against capitalism in their millions last year, are today confronting the full brunt of the anti-social policies of the ultra-right government of President Sebastian Piñera and the entire parliamentary “left.”

In a statement made earlier in March, Health Minister Jaime Mañalich raised that the health system might not be able to handle coronavirus cases once they passed 100,000. But the ministry did nothing to contain the virus. It has not introduced strict quarantining measures, applied a countrywide lockdown, expanded testing, broadened contact tracing, or ordered the closure of non-essential work—all measures advised by the WHO. Nor did it significantly increase the health care budget to deal with decades of under-resourcing and under-staffing.

On the contrary, the government adopted a criminally reckless policy of “dynamic” quarantining, which meant letting the disease spread before reacting to the outbreak and only then placing in and out of quarantine a commune, province and now a region on the basis of unclear criteria. Mañalich’s homicidal “dynamic” quarantining policy, which has condemned untold thousands to disease and death, was a calculated maneuver to forestall for as long as possible forking out financial resources to the ailing health system and for emergency social measures to aid the poverty-stricken population.

To introduce the WHO recommendations would have required increasing by orders of magnitude public expenditure, something excluded under Chile’s much-lauded “free-market” system, which essentially works by pillaging the historically-accumulated social wealth collectively created by the working masses and placing it at the disposal of international finance capital. Hospital care, education, pensions and social security are not social rights but commodities bought and sold on the market.

Now with a contraction of up to 4.5 percent forecast for 2020 due to a deterioration in global demand for exports and a sharp reversal in capital inflows, Piñera was granted from the IMF a flexible credit line of US$24 billion over two years. It can be safely predicted that this will not be used to ease the hardships of the masses, but rather to save big business and guarantee liquidity.

The official unemployment rate for the February-April quarter reached 9 percent, the highest in 10 years. This was due to a drop in demand for the retail, agriculture, fishing and manufacturing industries.

Another estimate, however, found that if the totals of the a) unemployed but actively looking for work, b) not looking for work, and c) receiving severance insurance, are combined then the real unemployment figure is closer to 25 percent of the national labour force, the highest since the 1982 depression.

Whole layers of post graduates and the professional middle class have lost jobs or are having salaries cut in half. Rental properties have reduced prices by up to a quarter for up to six months in “Covid promotions” to try and attract tenants as vacated rental apartments proliferate across Santiago and other regional cities.

Many thousands are moving back with parents, extended families or into share arrangements. Families are moving in with other families to reduce costs of utilities and other expenses. Several families in San Pedro de La Paz near the southern city of Concepcion have sought refuge in abandoned buildings blocks declared uninhabitable after the 2010 earthquake caused structural damage.

The banks, meanwhile, continue to charge at full rates on credit card debts, student loan debts, and mortgages. Adding insult to injury the State Bank confiscated a risible 65,000 pesos (US$800) emergency fund from the government to pay off personal account debts, while the much vaunted food hampers promised by the government to 2.5 million indigent is expected to reach eligible families in an undefined “near future”, and not today when they need it most.

Two separate studies reported that in the poorer working class communes people are going to work despite being sick with coronavirus. A joint study by the University of Chile and the Medical Association found that 15.2 percent of people with COVID-19, 24 percent of those suspected of having the disease and 43.6 percent of those with symptoms were still going to work. To do otherwise would condemn their families to starve as the state has provided no substantive assistance in a country where the majority have been pushed into poverty.

The protests that erupted May 18 against rising unemployment, poverty, homelessness and hunger have continued throughout the country as working class communities confront the third month of the COVID-19 outbreak in Chile. Dozens of residents have continued to gather in El Bosque with barricades and hold protests along with Cerro Navia, San Bernardo in the Metropolitan Region and in outer regions.

The free-market reality is expressed just as sharply in health care. A survey conducted last month by the national Medical Association found that 75 percent of health teams lacked PPE: N95 masks (62.71 percent), visual covers (51 percent), breastplate (34.35 percent), surgical masks (33.39 percent) and gloves (15.78 percent).

The Nurses Association also released the results of a survey conducted earlier in the month which found that 39.2 percent of respondents reported nurses in quarantine in their facility, 60.5 percent of facilities did not provide replacement staff and 72 percent did not have staff access to PCR or other rapid tests.

Eighty-nine percent stated that they did not have access to one or more items of PPE during their daily work, among which were N95 mask (61.4 percent), boots (51.5 percent), face shields (37 percent), surgical mask (36.9 percent), disposable apron (35.4 percent) and alcohol gel (29.9 percent). Finally, and most damningly, 63.7 percent did not have at their establishment mental health support programs aimed exclusively at health personnel.

The health ministry reported that there are 3,707 health officials infected with coronavirus and are in quarantine today. Since March 3, 12,051 public health workers have either been infected with COVID-19 or have had to go into preventive quarantine. This breaks down to 4,882 infected personnel and 7,169 in quarantine. In the private clinics 1,958 staff have been infected, and 3,158 have had to go into preventive quarantine.

With current conditions, the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington estimates that 11,970 will die by the end of August. These calculations do not take into account, however, a viral spread and death rate in an environment where the country’s hospital system is on the verge of collapse. This is the situation today with 84 percent of the nation’s mechanical ventilators in use, even as the private clinics refuse to increase their share of critical beds and machines.

It was reported last week that the hospital system in Greater Santiago, with more than 7 million people, was saturated and patients were being transferred to outer regions. That is, the region with the most important and largest health system within the country has almost collapsed, reaching 95 percent occupancy. The southeast zone, under the most pressure, has already reached overcapacity, followed by the central and western zones with 97 percent, north with 95 percent, the south at 94 percent and the east with 92 percent.

This has created chaos in the hospital system. Ambulance drivers protested after they had to wait more than 15 hours with patients suspected of having COVID-19. Patients have had to wait for hours on stretchers. Staff have been instructed to suspend preventive quarantines for COVID-19 early and to return to work. Lunch breaks have been reduced to 15 minutes, and staff have been instructed to reuse masks for three days. Protests over lack of protective gear and insufficient ICU beds have broken out in several hospitals; patients in field tents are forced to wait three to four days before being admitted into an ICU ward.

No patients could be transferred to the second largest hospital system in the Valparaíso region as it, too, almost reached saturation point last week. Moreover, at least 1,100 staff at the Carlos Van Buren Hospital in Valparaíso have not received wages for the past two months.

Valparaíso has registered daily infections of between 100 and 150 cases for the last week, with a total of 3,164 cases, making it the second most infected area in the country. The medical profession has pleaded for weeks for stricter confinement measures in the region and especially in the communes of Valparaíso and Viña del Mar due to their large squatter settlements.

Rodrigo Cruz, director of the Infectious Disease Diagnosis and Research Center at the University of Valparaíso warned that if the virus spreads, the area “will live a tragedy of proportions.” There are “tens of thousands of houses stuck to each other, with reduced access to basic services and with a large number of older people, many of whom have mobility problems or are bedridden,” he said.

“I understand that quarantines generate additional problems, but it seems to me that the priority today is to prevent people from dying. And if we don’t act accordingly, deaths will continue to increase exponentially there,” said Dr. Cruz.

According to the last report of the Chilean Society of Intensive Medicine, 82 percent of ICU beds are today occupied in the Antofagasta region. While unlike many other regions it can double the number of critical beds in circulation, due to a cache held in storage at the old regional hospital, Medical Association spokesman Dr. Hugo Benitez warned that the health system could still collapse “if the quarantine is lifted and cases begin to rise.”

Antofagasta, one of the main mining regions of the country to the north of Santiago has the third highest number of confirmed cases. The number, 2,862, has more than tripled since a total quarantine was belatedly applied on May 3, when there were already 740 cases.

Despite this, Mañalich announced last week that he will lift the quarantine. This has nothing to do with health considerations, but rather the interests of the mining corporations, which want to resume several new copper mining projects suspended in March following the outbreak of the coronavirus in Chile. The regular open pit operations have continued throughout this period.