Fiji losing control of escalating COVID-19 outbreak

John Braddock

In a display of incompetence and indifference, Fiji’s Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama has rejected calls to declare a nationwide state of emergency as the Pacific island nation struggles with a rapidly escalating COVID-19 outbreak.

COVID-19 screening in Fiji [Credit: FBC News Fiji @FBC_News, Twitter]

While Suva’s Colonial War Memorial Hospital is now sealed off after becoming the centre of a major cluster, Bainimarama last week told parliament there was “no need” for a state of emergency. He said it was up to the ministry of health to decide whether it was necessary to “take that option,” and it had not done so.

New Zealand epidemiologist Michael Baker warned on Wednesday that with Fiji battling the infectious Delta variant from India, it could well “follow the path of countries that have lost control of the pandemic, with large numbers of cases and unfortunately large numbers of death as well.” In order to eliminate the virus, he said, a total and intensive lockdown is needed.

Authorities are losing their grip as the outbreak rapidly escalates. TVNZ Pacific correspondent Barbara Dreaver reported: “We don’t know what Fiji’s strategy is because we are not hearing from the leaders.” Bainimarama had not fronted the media for some time and there was “a lot of confusion on the ground,” she said.

Fiji’s Secretary of Health James Fong declared that the government would “fight this virus in a targeted way.” Echoing governments around the world that are prioritising business demands above public health, Fong said the current policy “allows Fijians to access essential services and allows the economy to function as normally and safely as possible.”

The government’s Incident Management Team has itself become a fast-growing cluster with 35 cases in the Ministry of Health. Fong, along with the head of health protection Aalisha Sahu Khan and chief medical advisor Jemesa Tudravu have been forced into isolation. On Tuesday, the parliamentary complex in Suva was shut down over fears for staff members.

As of Thursday, there have been 880 cases recorded since the pandemic began, with 234 recoveries and four deaths. For the entire year to March, there had been only 70 cases.

The origin of many cases remains unknown. Over the past week there have been record numbers of daily infections reported. On Monday night, health authorities logged 64 cases and highlighted one death. On Wednesday, another 94 new infections in 24 hours were confirmed. Of these, 28 were from the main hospital. People recently discharged had turned up as positive cases in other districts.

According to Fong, the escalation in daily case numbers, especially from the Central Division around Suva, signals “the increasing severity of this outbreak,” which has “an impact on our ability to respond.” More cases are expected.

On May 30, Suva, Nausori and Lami were placed in what is called the Lami-Nausori containment zone, which is under a 6 p.m. to 4 a.m. curfew with several villages locked down. Fong declared that with the escalating numbers, combined with the paucity of resources, authorities would shift into a “mitigation phase” to prioritise only those patients with “severe illness.”

There are currently 604 cases in managed isolation, which is now at capacity. The government has set up a field hospital in Suva, which has become the de facto emergency department and triage centre for the city of 300,000.

Outside the capital, 44 isolation communities have been established across the country. Food shortages are being reported, with vulnerable families living on a tin of fish or a packet of biscuits a day. In squatter settlements in the Nasinu district outside Suva many people already live hand-to-mouth. Usaia Moli from the Council of Social Services told Radio NZ thousands of people were not being reached and were “suffering in silence.”

The defence force has come under scrutiny after soldiers returning from overseas in April reportedly broke quarantine rules. The first cluster appeared after a soldier contracted the virus at a quarantine facility and transmitted it to his wife, who exposed up to 500 people at a funeral. A cluster of over 30 cases erupted when a naval officer contracted the virus at a funeral and spread it to his crew members.

Fiji can now test almost 2,000 people a day with the recent supply of four new machines by the World Health Organisation. Overall testing, however, remains low. Since testing began in 2020, 129,200 tests have been conducted among the population of 903,000.

So far 228,030 people have received at least one dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine, but supplies remain inadequate. This week, Australia is sending an additional 50,000 vaccine doses, and another 500,000 doses will reportedly arrive from New Zealand but not until July—all of which falls well short of what is required.

The response of the regional imperialist powers, Australia and New Zealand, has been paltry. New Zealand Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta said her officials were in contact with counterparts in Fiji and were “responding to their needs as they arise.” She then added: “However, Fiji is tasked with responding to an issue which we’ve all had to, and we’ve given our commitment in terms of PPE gear support and also some financing.”

The outbreak is certain to exacerbate the impoverished country’s social, economic and political crises. Tens of thousands of workers in the moribund tourism industry have already lost their jobs. Tourism normally contributes nearly 40 percent of Fiji’s GDP—about $FJ2 billion ($US980 million)—and employs over 150,000 people either directly or indirectly.

While Fiji was initially one of the more successful Pacific countries in containing an influx of COVID-19, its economy went into sharp decline. The government responded by looting $US454 million from workers’ pension savings in the National Provident Fund to provide relief to businesses.

The Minister for Economy Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum last month announced a $US930 million stimulus package, with $US690 million sourced offshore. Total debt will increase to $US4.1 billion by this July with gross borrowing for the 2020/2021 financial year at $US1.4 billion.

Across the region, the pandemic is heightening social tensions and political instability. Samoa remains in the grip of a constitutional crisis following April’s election which saw the defeat of the ruling Human Rights Protection Party that had been in power since 1982. Amid an escalating health disaster in Papua New Guinea, Prime Minister James Marape has adjourned parliament to avoid a no-confidence vote and his likely removal from office.

Bainimarama, who has ruled Fiji with an iron fist since seizing power in a military coup in 2006 will, sooner rather than later, confront the eruption of mass opposition from the working class and rural poor.

Berlin workers face further rent hikes after Senate supports real estate merger

Markus Salzmann

The merger of the real estate concerns Vonovia and Deutsche Wohnen, announced in May, will create the largest real estate group in Europe. Vonovia owns 400,000 flats in Germany. Deutsche Wohnen has a portfolio of 150,000 flats, of which around 113,000 are situated in the greater Berlin area. The concerns and their shareholders expect higher profits from the merger, while tenants must reckon with even more rent increases.

The new mega-real estate company will exert enormous influence in greater Berlin, as the holder of just under 10 percent of the capital city’s nearly 1.63 million rental flats. This will give the corporation significantly more power to jack up rents. In addition, such major mergers are usually followed by other mergers; a company of this size can easily swallow up other smaller fish, while its competitors will also seek to merge in order to remain competitive.

“Expropriate Deutsche Wohnen” (Photo: Uwe Hicksch/CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

Vonovia is offering over €18 billion for its competitor. Including the dividend for 2020, shareholders would receive €53.03 per Deutsche Wohnen share. The stock market value of the merged company is currently reckoned to be around €48 billion.

This is the third attempt at such a merger. In 2016, the first effort failed after Deutsche Wohnen rejected Vonovia’s offer. Another unsuccessful attempt at a takeover was made at the beginning of 2020. The merger will most likely be approved by the Federal Cartel Office, which had already sanctioned the first effort to join the companies.

The timing of the merger announcement is not coincidental. A temporary cap on rents introduced by the Berlin Senate was recently overturned by the Federal Constitutional Court, opening the way for limitless profits on the part of real estate speculators. Although the rent cap introduced by the Berlin Senate was entirely incapable of stopping the dramatic explosion of rent prices in the capital, the constitutional court ruled that any encroachment on the profits made by real estate speculators was impermissible.

The rent cap decided by the Social Democratic Party (SPD)–Left Party–Green Party Senate in 2019 was deceptive from the outset. The measure did nothing to elevate the city’s acute housing shortage or curtail the profits of the real estate companies. Vonovia, for example, which owns and manages almost half a million flats (10 percent of the stock in Berlin), estimated that its total rental income would fall by less than 1 percent.

Nevertheless, the ruling overturning the rent cap threatens a new wave of rent increases for Berlin residents. In addition to the fact that tenants must repay the rents capped in February 2020, landlords can now increase rents again by up to 15 percent every three years. This is stipulated by the misnamed “Mietpreisbremse” (rent brake) introduced by the government in 2015. The constitutional ruling has been celebrated on stock markets, and the share prices of major real estate groups have skyrocketed.

Tenants of Vonovia and Deutsche Wohnen will face additional costs following the merger. “Somebody has to find the billions that are now being expended for the takeover. And then in the end, it’s quite possible they get this money from tenants after all,” declared Lukas Siebenkotten, president of the German Tenants’ Association.

There have been massive protests against the extortionate rent prices in the capital for years, with tens of thousands taking part. Immediately after the ruling against the rent cap was announced, more than 10,000 demonstrated and demanded the expropriation of the real estate sharks.

The initiative “Expropriate Deutsche Wohnen & Co.” has already collected well over 130,000 signatures for a petition calling for a referendum to nationalise all housing. Although the initiative has little to do with genuine expropriation and is far too limited in scope to solve the lack of affordable housing, it is an expression of the mass support for action to be taken against the unscrupulous real estate companies.

The initiative is opposed by the Berlin Senate—a coalition of SPD, Greens and Left Party. Berlin’s mayor Michael Müller (SPD) effusively welcomed the merger plans. Immediately after their announcement, Müller called a joint press conference with the CEOs of Vonovia and Deutsche Wohnen, declaring that it was a “very important day” and that the fusion marked a “step forward.”

His remark that there was a “new collaboration between politics and companies” that is “not confrontational but rather cooperative” made clear that the Berlin Senate supports the interests of Vonovia and Deutsche Wohnen. The senator for Urban Development and Housing, Sebastian Scheel (Left Party), also welcomed the merger, describing the cooperation between the corporations and the Senate as “progress.”

The governing parties justify their support by saying that the merged group is offering to sell the state 20,000 flats in the capital. In addition, Deutsche Wohnen and Vonovia have allegedly promised to cap rent increases for the next five years and made assurances that tenants will not have to pay the full cost of refurbishing housing stock to meet energy targets.

Apart from the fact that the vague promises made by the real estate sharks are worthless, their declarations of intent involve no real concessions. The leading DIW economist Claus Michelsen points out in Die Zeit that rents in existing contracts in Germany only increase by 1 to 2 percent a year on average anyway. Capping rents is therefore “not a particularly big concession.” The promise could be kept by the companies “without in anyway endangering their profits.”

“It would have been more interesting if they had said we will keep prices constant for new rentals,” Michelsen added. In this sphere, prices usually rise much faster. He was also critical of the offer to sell 20,000 flats to the state of Berlin. The price for the flats still has to be negotiated, and it is barely conceivable that a listed company would sell flats at special conditions, Michelsen told Die Zeit.

In fact, such a sale would be a good deal only for the corporations. From 2002 to 2011, the SPD and the Left Party sold off 150,000 out of the city’s 400,000 state-owned flats to real estate sharks under the pretext of “debt reduction.” In most cases, the flats were sold for less than 25 percent of their value, and since then, the average value of flats in Berlin has more than doubled. In an interview with the Tagesspiegel, Schell admits that the flats would now have to be “recovered for a sum far in excess of what was formerly accrued.”

In addition, the properties under discussion for sale are in an extremely bad condition. Due to costs, the flats have never been fully renovated by the corporations. Buildings are alleged to be contaminated with asbestos, and the necessary renovations would swallow up huge amounts of taxpayers’ money.

The SPD, Greens and Left Party are well aware that a merger of Vonovia and Deutsche Wohnen will worsen the situation for hundreds of thousands of households in Berlin and nationwide. With its shameless support for the deal, the Senate in Berlin is seeking to defuse public anger against rising rents and counter the calls for expropriation of the real estate sharks.

The Left Party plays a particularly repulsive role in this affair. While officially giving its support to the petition for a referendum to expropriate Deutsche Wohnen & Co., the Left Party actually supports the merger of Deutsche Wohnen and Vonovia into Europe’s largest real estate corporation and further rent increases to appease and satiate the new mega-concern’s shareholders.

More transmissible and deadly Delta variant surges in UK, threatens Europe and America

Thomas Scripps

The Delta variant of COVID-19 is exploding in the UK, in a surge which will soon overtake the rest of Europe.

Figures released yesterday by Public Health England (PHE) have torn apart the government’s attempts to downplay the threat posed.

According to PHE, the Delta variant now accounts for 96 percent of new cases in the UK. It is roughly 60 percent more transmissible than the previous Alpha variant. The figure of 60 percent was confirmed by Professor Neil Ferguson and the Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis at Imperial College London: “That’s firmed up. We think 60 percent is about the best estimate but ranging between 40 and 80 percent advantage.”

Passengers walking through London Underground tunnel at Green Park station this week (credit: WSWS media)

In the last week, partially due to a faster genome sequencing method, confirmed cases of the variant increased by 240 percent, from 12,431 to 42,323.

PHE analysis also shows that the Delta variant is twice as likely to hospitalise people as the Alpha variant.

The virus’s increased transmissibility is driving a surge in infections across the country. On Friday, 8,125 new COVID-19 cases were recorded, the highest total since February 26. More than 45,895 cases have been recorded in the last 7 days—a 58.1 percent increase on the week before.

According to the ZOE Covid Symptom Study App, run by King’s College London, in reality there are an average of 11,908 cases a day, more than double the figure recorded by the study last week.

The government’s advisers in the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) estimate that the reproduction (R) value is between 1.2 and 1.4 in the UK. Ferguson said on Thursday that the R for the UK ranged between 1.2 and 2.5 in different regions, with 1.5 the average.

PHE reports that the number of COVID-19 infections is doubling every 4.5 to 11.5 days in different parts of the country. Cases of COVID-19 are rising in every region of England, with the highest figures in the north-west where the infection rate is now 149.6 cases per 100,000—up from 89.4 last week. The region is home to five areas with the biggest week-on-week rises in the period up to June 6: Blackburn with Darwen (438.9 to 625.9), South Ribble (128.2 to 305.1), Burnley (135.0 to 303.6), Ribble Valley (149.5 to 310.4) and Salford (131.4 to 265.4).

One in 10 local areas in Britain are currently recording infection rates higher than 100 in 100,000.

Hospitalisations are beginning to rise along with infections. Nationally, the number has only climbed marginally in recent weeks to just above 1,000 but this obscures sharp rises in regions with the highest numbers of new cases. In the north-west, the number of patients in hospital with COVID-19 has increased from a low of 149 on May 16 to 271 on June 11. The number of COVID-19 patients in intensive care has increased from a low of 12 to 45 on June 6.

Vaccination undoubtedly offers substantial protection, but this is reduced by the Delta variant. After one dose, according to PHE analysis, vaccines are 15-20 percent less effective against symptomatic infection and there is a slight reduction even after two doses.

Of the 383 people in England admitted to hospital with the Delta variant between February and June 7, 251 were unvaccinated, 86 had received one dose of the jab and 42 both doses. Of the 42 who went on to die, 23 were unvaccinated, 7 had received one dose and 12 had received both.

Commenting on the risks of a third wave, Ferguson explained that the modelling “is saying there is a risk of a substantial third wave, (but) we cannot be definitive about the scale of that—it could be substantially lower than the second wave or it could be of the same order of magnitude.”

He stressed that there was “still a lot of uncertainty” about how the virus would spread and how that would translate into hospitalisations. Deaths would “probably be lower” given the vaccinations, “but it still might be quite worrying.”

Such is the right-wing climate of intimidation against any doctors or scientists who suggests the need for stricter public health measures that this dangerous situation is being met with an absurd debate over whether and how long to delay “Freedom Day”, scheduled for June 21. The removal in just over a week of the last vestiges of public health restrictions would undoubtedly be disastrous. But cases are already rising exponentially under the current regime, with the economy already largely reopened, along with schools, colleges and universities.

What is necessary to bring the surge under control is to reinforce protective measures so that the vaccination programme can be safely completed, and proper border and test and trace protocols established. But the government is not interested in rising infections and their consequences. The only number that concerns them is the 2.3 percent growth in the UK economy in April brought by the reopening of shops and hospitality—the fastest increase since last July. This growth in profits is all they intend to protect, whatever the cost in human lives.

The same process is underway in Europe, where governments are using the fact that cases have dropped markedly, as a result of public health measures employed in the last few months, as an excuse to end those measures, in the face of the Delta variant.

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), 36 of Europe's 53 countries are currently easing restrictions.

This week, France allowed cafes and restaurants to serve indoors, museums and cinemas to increase capacity, gyms to open and pushed back a curfew from 9 to 11pm. Belgium and Italy limited their curfews and reopened indoor service at bars and restaurants. Germany fully reopened schools, scrapping measures like split classes and part-time teaching, and relieved travel restrictions.

Just 35 percent of Europeans have been vaccinated and only 20 percent fully vaccinated. The Delta variant will therefore be able to spread through the population like wildfire, causing large numbers of hospitalisations and deaths. Clusters have already been reported in southwest France, and the new strain officially makes up to 2.5 percent of cases in Germany.

People queuing up to be vaccinated this week in the Whalley Range district of Manchester (credit: WSWS media)

The WHO’s regional director for Europe, Hans Kluge, warned this week that the variant was “poised to take hold in the region.” He explained, “We’ve been here before. Last summer, cases gradually rose in younger age groups, then moved into older age groups, leading to a devastating… loss of life in the autumn and winter of 2020. Let’s not make that mistake again.” Vaccine coverage, he added, is still “far from sufficient to protect the region from a resurgence… many among vulnerable populations above the age of 60 remain unprotected.”

These warnings mean nothing to the European ruling class, who are putting intense pressure on the population to line up behind the policy of “learning to live with the virus.”

This was summed up in the comments of Christian Drosten on Wednesday, a leading German virologist who has previously been critical of the government’s handling of the pandemic. Acknowledging the likelihood of a new wave, he downplayed its severity and said it would “likely be interpreted in future as having been the first endemic, normal winter effect” of a virus that must now be considered part of normal life and manageable by vaccination.

The dangers are even more advanced in America, where the Delta variant accounts for 6 percent of cases, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention—six times the rate a month ago. In some western US states, Delta accounts for 18 percent of cases. While the percentage of the population fully vaccinated is roughly the same as in the UK, the US is 10 percentage points behind on first doses, with vaccination rates slowing.

The only perspective for the eradication of COVID-19 is that of a global struggle for socialism carried out by the working class, who must fight for effective restrictions to bring down infections and a fully resourced public health system to keep the virus suppressed.

Schools reopen in Turkey amid COVID-19 deaths

Hasan Yıldırım

In Turkey, the country with the fifth-highest number of COVID-19 cases in the world, restrictions are being lifted and schools are reopening although the pandemic has not been brought under control. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan announced the decisions after a May 31 cabinet meeting.

Curfews, which previously lasted from 9 p.m. to 5 a.m. on weekdays and throughout the weekend, are to be applied between 10 p.m. and 5 a.m. on weekdays and Saturday and all day on Sunday. Places such as cafes, tea gardens, football field carpets, sports halls, and amusement parks will be open between 7 a.m. and 9 p.m., except on Sunday.

Children wearing face masks for protection against the coronavirus, walk in Kugulu public garden, in Ankara, Turkey, Wednesday, May 13, 2020. (AP Photo/Burhan Ozbilici)

Outdoor and indoor weddings and wedding ceremonies started from June 1. Restaurants will be open between 7 a.m. and 9 p.m. Sports clubs will be able to hold their general assemblies from June 1, and other organizations from the second half of June.

Education Minister Ziya Selçuk announced that schools will reopen. On June 1, in-person education restarted in primary schools, two days a week. Face-to-face education will be held five days a week in villages and sparsely-populated settlements.

On June 7, in-person education was also started in all secondary and high schools two days a week. The semester will end on June 21, but “remedial education” will continue until July 2, despite widespread opposition among educators.

Despite the so-called remedial education attempt, 4 million out of 18 million students could not attend online education at all, due to the lack of resources for distance education during the closure of schools in Turkey.

As these reopening measures come into effect the coronavirus continues to spread in Turkey. The Health Ministry announced 6,408 new cases and 96 deaths on Thursday. According to Worldometer data, Turkey ranks fifth in the world with more than 5.3 million cases.

Despite this high number of cases, the official death toll, which is around 48,000, including at least 436 health care workers, does not reflect the real losses. According to calculations by investigative filmmaker Güçlü Yaman, who examined excess deaths during the pandemic, the number of excess deaths in Turkey since the pandemic began is around 146,000.

Official counts on the number of COVID-19 cases and deaths are widely discredited, like the entire Erdoğan government. Thus, during a live broadcast with BioNTech CEO Uğur Şahin, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca announced that they had received 120 million doses of BioNTech vaccines, and said: “They [the people] don’t believe us, you tell them.” This was an admission that the government has lost all credibility during the pandemic with its herd immunity strategy boosting the profits of the investors and corporations.

The reopening of schools and the abolition of even inadequate restrictions is a policy of social murder. This was all but admitted in the previous government statements.

In early May, Koca said, “In the pre-school education, I think we should have fully vaccinated our citizens aged 18 and over. We have to see cases drop below 1,000 before schools reopen.”

Now, although the daily number of cases is over 5,000, schools are opening. Moreover, nearly 1 million students were forced to take the national High School Entrance Exam held in person in schools across Turkey on June 6.

Previous experience has amply demonstrated that the reopening of schools accelerates the pandemic. The previous opening of schools both in Turkey and in other countries caused the number of infections and of deaths to surge.

As a result of this deadly policy, implemented without any serious opposition from the unions, the pandemic in Turkey erupted out of control starting in March; 8,000 people died in April alone. At the peak, Turkey recorded 63,000 daily cases in the middle of April. Dozens of teachers have died since March 2021 after school reopenings. Again, there is no opposition from the four education unions in Turkey to the latest decision to reopen schools.

On the other hand, Koca said in May that “We don't have a vaccine problem anymore,” claiming that in June, everyone over age 20 will be vaccinated. These unfounded allegations of the government, repeated over and over, aim to calm social anger and normalize death. A so-called vaccination campaign after the openings mean thousands more will die before the vaccines are administered and take effect.

Esin Davutoğlu Şenol, a Professor of Medicine and Infectious Diseases Specialist of Gazi University, said she did not agree with the views that the pandemic would be brought under control by the end of summer. Şenol added that she was not very hopeful with the vaccination rate of around 130,000 per day, and that a large-scale vaccination campaign was needed.

Boston College Biology Professor Emrah Altındiş also tweeted: “The fully vaccinated population in Turkey is currently less than 15 percent and 85 percent are the open target of the virus. Also, there is no vaccine, but a lot of empty talk. Only 30 million doses of vaccine have been administered in 5 months since February. To normalize, 80 percent of the population should be vaccinated, 140 million doses are needed. We must be realists.”

One and a half years of painful pandemic experience shows that, both in Turkey and around the world, the reopening of the economy in opposition to calls by scientists and health experts, when the circulation of the virus is not under control, leads to preventable mass deaths.

This social murder policy of the government is directed by the profit interests of the Turkish and international ruling class. The Erdoğan government is calling for tourism revenues to revive the struggling economy. For this reason, it implemented a so-called “full lockdown” in May to reduce the number of cases but not to contain the pandemic, and announced that people working in tourism would be given priority in vaccination.

However, the social conditions of the working class are worsening as the government, with the complicity of the bourgeois opposition and the trade unions, continues to prioritize capitalist profits over lives during the pandemic.

According to a recent DİSK trade union confederation report, the broad unemployment rate reached 27.4 percent or 9,837,000 people in April 2021. It was 9,187,000 in April 2020. The report states, “Only 18.8 million of the 63.5 million people of working age are registered full-time workers.” This includes only 16 percent for female workers.

Nonetheless, the compulsory “unpaid leave” subsidy that the government introduced at the beginning of the pandemic is set to end this month, unless it is extended again. The end of this programme, in which hundreds of thousands of workers receive only 1,500 Turkish lira (US$180) per month in social aid, could lead to mass layoffs.

Against the bourgeoisie’s policy of death and starvation, workers must organize to fight for a halt to all non-essential production and reopening of schools until the pandemic is contained, with full compensation to all affected workers, unemployed and small businesses. This and other scientific social distancing and contact tracing measures must be combined with a rapid, scientifically-guided international vaccination campaign.

Monarchist linked to France’s far-right Action française slaps Macron

Alex Lantier

On Thursday, a Valence court sentenced Damien Tarel to 18 months in prison, 14 of which were suspended, for having slapped French President Emmanuel Macron at Tain-l’Hermitage on Tuesday, June 8.

Macron was beginning a “tour of France” aiming to meet ordinary people and mayors. Just before 1.30pm, he was visiting a catering school to celebrate the reopening of restaurants and more generally his premature ending of social distancing measures to halt the spread of the virus. As Macron approached members of the public, Tarel struck him while shouting a medieval war cry of the French monarchy: “Montjoie Saint-Denis! Down with Macron’s regime!”

Screenshot from video captured showing Macron slapped by Damien Tarel

The cry “Montjoie Saint-Denis” used by the French Capetian dynasty’s armies from the 13th century onwards, is a slogan of the royalist far right, especially the Action française.

Shortly before Macron’s arrival, a TMC journalist had interviewed Tarel along with two other persons accompanying him who said they wanted to meet and talk to Macron. Police detained one of them, identified as Arthur C., who was with Tarel when Macron was slapped. AFP reported that the third, named Loïc, said that Tarel is not interested in politics and “doesn’t have those ideas.” This is obviously false.

Police searched the homes of Tarel and Arthur C, both of whom are aged 28, and investigated their online activity. They found medieval weapons, copies of Hitler’s Nazi tract Mein Kampf and firearms were found at Arthur C’s residence. Tarel, unemployed and suffering from dyslexia, followed on Facebook the Lyon section of the far-right royalist party Action française and, on YouTube, the far-right channel of Papacito, who has issued death threats against Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s voters.

In court, Tarel identified himself as a right-wing nationalist and said he was carried away by his anger when faced with Macron because “In chivalry, we don’t like lying.” He declared that “Macron represents the degeneration of our country,” and then explained the reason for the monarchist war cry: “It is a reference to the rallying cry of knights, a patriotic slogan. […] Knighthood is a voice. I doubt that if I had challenged Macron to a duel by sword at sunrise that he would have responded.”

Tarel minimized his fascist sympathies, claiming that a photo of himself wearing a Hitler mustache was “just funny” and downplayed the discovery of Mein Kampf at Arthur C’s home: “I gave Mein Kampf to my friend, he is an enthusiast about the Second World War.”

Tarel claimed he is “keen on the ‘Yellow Vests’ movement, whose voice is no longer heard” and angered by Macron’s policies. “When I saw his falsely friendly look”, he said, “[I understood that he] wanted to get me to vote for him.”

While the “Yellow Vest” movement was no doubt spontaneous and politically very heterogeneous, Tarel’s royalist actions have nothing to do with the aspirations to social equality and the improvement of workers’ conditions which motivated most “Yellow Vests.” This is reflected in the extraordinary reaction of the ruling class to a face slap that landed on its head of state.

The French political establishment, which raged against the “Yellow Vests,” has united around attempts to minimize the royalist sympathies of the individuals who attacked the head of state and hide their far-right connections.

Already on Thursday, Macron repeatedly said that Tarel’s gesture was nothing more than an “isolated act” committed by a few “ultra-violent individuals.”

On Thursday, he even claimed that “it is not so serious to get slapped when approaching a crowd,” adding that such violence permeates society: “It has to be said that this act is just an isolated one and there are people in society today who can be spontaneously violent.” He also launched an appeal to the right-wing feminist movement #MeToo, saying that “real violence isn’t that” but rather the violence suffered by “women who die at the hands of their partner and husband.”

This allowed Marine Le Pen, leader and presidential candidate of the neo-fascist National Rally party, to escape any political attacks linked to this extraordinary incident.

Le Pen felt obliged just after the Macron face slap to declare on BFM-TV and on Twitter: “It is inadmissible to physically attack the President of the Republic. I am the foremost opponent of Emmanuel Macron, but he is the President: he can be politically opposed, but no violence against him can be allowed. I consider this act inadmissible and one that must be roundly condemned in a democracy.”

On Thursday, however, Le Pen said she “agreed” with Macron that the slap was an “isolated act” based on an “ideological mishmash.” In fact, it is a political act motivated by the far-right traditions in which her party is rooted.

On CNews, the far-right commentator Eric Zemmour could declare that Macron only got “what he deserved.” Zemmour added: “He has undermined his own office […] In the French conception of institutions, he is the king, he does not need to get down and dialogue with just anybody in the streets.”

For the Unsubmissive France party, Jean-Luc Mélenchon posted a Tweet expressing the pious hope that this experience would push Macron to take a harder line against threats of neo-fascist violence: “This time are you starting to understand that violent people are in earnest? I am in solidarity with the President.”

In fact, while rejecting extreme right-wing monarchist violence targeting Macron, there is no reason at all to be in solidarity with the French President. It is illusory to expect Macron to fight far-right violence, since it is Macron who has acted throughout his mandate to cultivate far-right forces and use them against workers’ strikes and social protests.

The “republican salute” Macron addressed to Le Pen and her supporters on the evening of his election victory in 2017 set the tone for his entire term. Functionaries at his Ministry of Culture tried to publish the works of the 20th-century anti-Semitic leader of the Action française, Charles Maurras, a pillar of the Nazi-collaborationist Vichy regime convicted of treason at the Liberation. In 2018, while he was launching the riot police on the “Yellow Vests,” he hailed Nazi-collaborationist dictator Philippe Pétain as a “great soldier.”

Currently he has appointed a former sympathizer of the Action française, Gérald Darmanin, to the post of Interior Minister. Darmanin is pushing through parliament anti-democratic laws on “Global Security” and against Islamic “separatism,” claiming he was outraged every time he saw halal or kosher aisles in French grocery stores.

If Macron claims that it is “not serious” for him to be slapped by monarchists, it is because his government, and behind it the financial aristocracy, intend to mobilize far-right forces to defend their obscene fortunes and class privileges against the workers.

Amid French war, Malian military junta installs new interim government

Kumaran Ira

On Monday, Mali’s Supreme Court invested Colonel Assimi Goïta as president after Goïta’s junta arrested interim President Bah Ndaw and Prime Minister Moctar Ouane two weeks ago. Goïta named Choguel Kokalla Maïga interim prime minister.

Choguel Kokalla Maïga [Source: Wikipedia Commons]

Facing criticism from the United States and the European powers over the ouster of the president, the junta made clear that it will continue to work with Paris amid the bloody French war in Mali.

The NATO powers have combined empty criticisms of the junta, which has worked with the French occupation forces for over a year, with threats of sanctions aimed at ensuring that the junta remains in their geopolitical orbit. They also have demanded guarantees from the junta that elections will be held in February 2022, so they can demagogically present the Bamako junta as a “civilian” regime.

Goïta responded by pledging the imperialist powers that he would organize “credible, fair, transparent elections at the scheduled date.” He added, “I would like to reassure the subregional and regional organizations, as well as the international community in general that Mali will honor all of its commitments in the supreme interest of the nation.”

Goïta’s decision to select Choguel Kokalla Maïga as interim prime minister is also significant. Maïga, a longstanding tool of Malian military regimes, is president of the Patriotic Movement for Renewal and a leader of the June 5, 2020 Movement-Rally of Patriotic Forces (M5-RFP).

The M5-RFP backed the coup launched by Goïta’s junta last August that toppled President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta. Amid mounting opposition to the French war in Mali, the M5-RFP encouraged mass protests by youth in the capital, Bamako, into the dead end of supporting Goïta’s junta. Maïga is also reportedly close to imam Mahmoud Dicko, a central figure in the M5-RFP and the protests last year that led to Goïta’s coup toppling Keïta.

Both the M5-RPF and the National Committee for the Salvation of the People were heavily supported behind the scenes during last year’s coup by French imperialism, who backed the coup to block a broader movement of the working class and oppressed masses demanding French troops leave the Sahel.

Maïga studied telecommunications in the Soviet Union in the 1970s before returning to Mali. Over his more than 30-year political career, Maïga has supported French-backed dictator Moussa Traoré (1968–1991); President Amadou Toumani Touré (2002–2012), under whom he was Minister of Industry. In 2013, he supported Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta in the second round of voting, serving as his Minister of Communication from 2015 to 2016, before moving to the opposition. He ran in the 2002, 2013 and 2018 presidential elections.

As the French war in Mali bogs down in a bloody debacle, Maïga has criticized the French-backed peace deal between northern Malian militias and the Bamako regime in 2015. He claimed that the accord is obsolete, arguing that the government should open negotiations with armed groups, including those affiliated to Al Qaeda.

Maïga is however working strenuously to signal his support for the French war and the NATO powers and his intention to work out a deal that secures their interests. He pledged to “respect our international commitments, which are not contrary to the fundamental interests of the Malian people.” Last Friday, he told a rally in Bamako that Mali needs support from its allies, but that “invective, sanctions, threats will only complicate the situation.”

Goïta’s latest coup came as working and toiling people in Mali and across the Sahel mount growing protests against France’s eight-year war and collapsing social conditions. Just before the coup, the National Workers’ Union of Mali (UNTM) had felt compelled by mounting working-class anger to call a nationwide strike against falling living standards. The UNTM bureaucracy called off the strike after the coup, cynically claiming that Goïta gave workers grounds for hope.

UNTM administrative Secretary Issa Bengaly said: “When Assimi Goïta took power by force, he notably mentioned the UNTM strike in his first public statement. He is paying attention to our demands, which were ignored by the previous prime minister and head of state. Anyway, we have taken note of this statement. But as workers’ representatives, what currently concerns us is whether our demands are taken into account.”

UNTM backing for the coup underscores its collaboration with the M5-RFP, the Goïta junta and its imperialist backers to suppress working-class opposition to the war and to falling living standards.

France’s eight-year war has devastated West Africa. “Almost 7,000 people were killed during 2020, making it the deadliest year in the Central Sahel since the conflict began,” the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect reported. Over 2.2 million people are internally displaced in the Sahel by the fighting, according to UN figures.

Opposition to the French war is mounting in particular due to a series of horrific massacres by French-backed militias, which have triggered protests calling for the withdrawal of French troops. At some of these demonstrations, protesters have waved Russian flags and called for Russia to expel French troops from Mali. “We want the French to leave and Russia to come in,” one said.

In recent years, Russia’s regional influence has increased. According to the US Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) think tank, from 2010 to 2018 it tripled its trade with Africa, from $6.6 billion to $18.9 billion. Since 2017, Moscow has increasingly supported President Faustin-Archange Touadéra of the Central African Republic (CAR), a former French colony, against France. Last December, it expanded its military intervention in the CAR, deploying 300 military instructors to the war-torn country.

Hopes that Moscow will help expel French occupation forces from Mali and end French imperialist oppression of Africa will be disappointed. Both in the era of the Soviet bureaucracy and after the Stalinist restoration of capitalism in 1991 and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the Kremlin has a long record of using Africa as a pawn in its dealings with the imperialist powers. Yet its influence is no doubt a subject of concern in Paris, amid growing anti-war sentiment in the region.

On Thursday, French President Emmanuel Macron announced a “profound transformation” of France’s military presence in the region. Speaking ahead of the G7 and NATO summits, he said, “the form of our presence, with external operations involving more than 5,000 troops for a number of years, is no longer appropriate to the combat situation.”

Macron indicated that France’s Operation Barkhane mission would be replaced by another, in which France would seek to obtain more troops from its regional and international allies. “We are transforming our operations to be coherent and supportive of our allies. This is not due to recent events, either in Chad or in Mali,” he said.

The recent death of Chadian dictator Idriss Déby, a longstanding tool of French imperialism providing Paris with cannon fodder for wars across the region, has unleashed a political crisis in N’Djamena amid rising social protests against falling living standards in Chad.

Macron intends to continue using all these corrupt political forces, including the Malian military junta and the M5-RFP, as proxies to assert French interests. The growing anger against the war must be converted into a conscious political movement, based on a revolutionary socialist strategy mobilizing the working class across the region, as well as in France and in the other NATO powers, against imperialist war and for the withdrawal of troops in Africa.

French neo-fascists issue death threats to Mélenchon voters

Alex Lantier

On Monday, Jean-Luc Mélenchon organized a press conference to denounce death threats made against his voters by the far-right YouTube video poster Papacito. Papacito had posted a video in which he kills the effigy of an Unsubmissive France (LFI) voter with an assault rifle, and then again repeatedly stabs it.

Jean-Luc Mélenchon (Wikimedia Commons)

Visibly shaken, Mélenchon said: “I warn, and I choose my words carefully, against the verbal violence around us, and which can sometimes lead to us being permanently designated as targets […] We cannot allow ourselves to arrive at the point, in this country, where we accept now or in the future, physical violence, to the intellectual terrorism which always precedes physical terrorism. I cannot nor wish to hide the effect this has had on me, nor that of all my friends.”

In effect, Papacito’s threats are not those of a neo-fascist video channel alone. They bear the mark of the police state and powerful sectors of the financial aristocracy. They follow on the heels of threats presented in the neo-fascist magazine Valeurs actuelles by thousands of active service and reservist French army officers to intervene in France in an operation that would kill thousands.

In the video, Papacito approaches a dummy wearing a shirt inscribed with racist and homophobic insults as well as the inscription: “I am a communist.”

Before proceeding to the simulated murder of the LFI voter, Papacito says: “Today we are going to test whether leftism is bulletproof. You know there six percent [sic] of people who vote for Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s party. Perhaps they will be defenseless if something untoward happens to them, and that could happen, in the coming years. We are going to see if the stuff that a guy who votes for Mélenchon’s party is made of, if it enables him to resist a potential terrorist attack on our country.”

Having left the dummy decapitated and shot through with holes, Papacito says: “Tolerance is good, very good, it is necessary in the world. But it is always good in addition to apply tolerance with a gun.”

Mélenchon said that not only had Papacito rejected his demand to withdraw the video from YouTube, but that the police had rejected his request to investigate. “The PHAROS system [Platform for analyzing and recovering notifications] had not reacted,” he said. In plain language the police-state is sending an unambiguous signal that it will protect those who issue death threats against Mélenchon or any other person labeled “communist.”

Eric Zemmour—the far-right polemicist, convicted inciter of racist hatreds and promoter of the Nazi-collaborationist Vichy regime who is a permanent host on CNews, the TV news channel owned by billionaire Vincent Bolloré—reacted by defending Papacito: “Jean-Luc Mélenchon says Papacito is my friend. I like Papacito a lot. He’s a nice, intelligent guy.”

Such comments constitute despicable death threats against 20 percent of the electorate who voted for Mélenchon in the 2017 presidential election. The International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) and its French section have documented their principled political differences with Mélenchon’s and LFI’s petty-bourgeois populism. The Socialist Equality Party (France) calls however for the defense of Mélenchon, the members of LFI and their electors against the threats and violence of fascists, the media and French police apparatus.

These threats are part of an international collapse of democratic norms following decades of austerity and war, and currently the murderous official handling of the pandemic. The ruling class is not only discredited because of unsustainable levels of social inequality, but criminalized by its underhand support for the Islamist militias in Libya and Syria, and its refusal to carry out a scientific policy to combat the coronavirus. Everywhere, factions of the state apparatus are mobilizing far-right forces against mounting working class anger.

In the USA, outgoing President Donald Trump launched an unprecedented attempted coup on January 6, launching a horde of neo-fascists on the Capitol in Washington to prevent the electoral certification of his rival, Joe Biden. In Spain, the party allied to Mélenchon, Podemos, is in power. But high ranking army neo-fascists, protected by Podemos ministers, have threatened to launch a coup and massacre “26 million” Spanish people for having left-wing views.

Against this menace, it is not enough, as Mélenchon claims, to piously hope that the far right will stop before public opinion. Nearly 90 years after Hitler was installed in power, a violent far-right movement is again being built, with the support of a police apparatus with vast powers. The only viable strategy against the installation of a fascistic police-state across Europe and America is the construction of an international political movement in the working class, the vast majority of the population, to defend social and democratic rights.

Significantly, Mélenchon, in his press conference Monday, briefly referred to Papacito’s threats as being a reaction to his interview on France Inter last Sunday. Mélenchon chose not to clarify this remark, but it is obvious that through Papacito, the ruling class is sending a message to Mélenchon that he has gone too far in certain criticisms of the police’s influence in French political life.

On France Inter, Mélenchon had warned of a repetition in 2022 of the 2017 election. He said that France’s “oligarchic system” could find “another little Macron” after which, “no one knows who it is, then bingo he gets elected. It is the system which invents him.” He then raised the issue of the state’s role in the murder of police officer Xavier Jugelé in 2017, just before the presidential election, by an Islamist known to the secret services, Karim Cheurfi.

Cheurfi had been arrested for threatening to kill police officers and had amassed a large collection of firearms. However, the police released him, claiming that he was not sufficiently “dangerous.” He then assassinated Jugelé on the Champs-Elysées, unleashing a law-and-order propaganda campaign in the press which forced the cancellation of the last presidential TV debate, stopped Mélenchon’s growth in the polls and pushed his voters towards Macron. The WSWS commented at the time:

“As facts emerge about the background of the alleged gunman, it is virtually impossible not to conclude that this shooting was a provocation involving elements of the security forces, over half of whom plan to vote for Marine Le Pen’s neo-fascist National Front (FN).”

Mélenchon, visibly unhappy with the circumstances of his defeat in 2017, told France Inter: “In the same way, you will see that in the last week of the presidential campaign, we will have some serious incident or a murder. There was Mérah in 2012 [the perpetrator of terrorist attacks in Toulouse and Montauban], then there was [in 2017] the attack in the last week on the Champs Elysées […] all that is written in advance.”

If nothing is “written in advance,” outside of the class struggle, Mélenchon had however by his fatalist remarks committed an unpardonable crime in the eyes of the French bourgeoisie: he had drawn attention to the anti-democratic role of the police-state.

Social-democratic and pseudo-left circles responded by launching a concerted campaign, not against the far right, but against Mélenchon. Libération denounced Mélenchon’s press conference Monday describing it as a “diversion” aiming to cover up his error on France Inter. Socialist Party (PS) First Secretary Olivier Faure insisted that in 2022, Mélenchon could not be “the one to unify the left and ecologists […] what Jean-Luc Mélenchon says is unacceptable, because the left has never been about populism, nor conspiracy theories.”

The Révolution Permanente web site of the New Anticapitalist Party (NPA) denounced the press conference, describing it as “an irresponsible and deliberate outburst by Mélenchon.” It said that he uses “some rhetorical aspects to directly feed conspiracy theories, which is not acceptable coming from a political leader who aspires to represent progressive ideas.”

The NPA is attacking Mélenchon not from the left, but from the right. Having covered for the collaboration between the French secret services and Islamist militias in Libya and Syria, by claiming these wars were “democratic revolutions,” the NPA is now covering for the threats posed by the police apparatus to democratic rights in France.