Sri Lankan president appoints a new cabinet, as IMF bailout talks begin

K. Ratnayake

Sri Lankan President Gotabhaya Rajapakse appointed a new cabinet of 17 ministers yesterday on the eve of talks over the terms of a bailout loan between the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and his government’s delegation headed by Finance Minister Ali Sabry. He also appointed 21 state ministers.

Gotabhaya Rajapakse (AP Photo/Eranga Jayawardena)

Rajapakse’s announcement is a desperate move, amid mass protests demanding his resignation, to demonstrate that Sri Lanka is politically stable. Sri Lanka’s Central Bank governor declared last week that there had to be “political and social stability” to prove to the IMF that the government could implement the austerity demands of international finance capital.

The protest movement is continuing and spreading throughout the country demanding that the president and his government step down and that measures are implemented to end the social calamity facing ordinary people. Broad sections of the population are facing rampant inflation, acute shortages of food, medicine and fuel, and lengthy power cuts every day.

In an attempt to give a new look to his crisis-ridden regime, Rajapakse reduced the size of the new ministry and exclude virtually all of the previous cabinet ministers and state ministers. At the same time, his speech to the new ministers, publicised widely through that media, declared that changes would be made to address the problems people are facing.

The president cynically claimed that he “deeply regretted” the immense pressure caused by the economic crisis. He declared that the “pain, discomfort and anger” displayed by people “for having to spend time in queues to get essential items at a high price... is justified.”

In response to the groundswell of opposition in rural areas, he said that the decision to ban chemical fertilizers was “wrong.” The ban on fertilizer imports implemented to save foreign exchange under the guise of a shift to organic agriculture has created immense hardship for farmers.

Rajapakse also said that he now believed “we should have gone for a program with the International Monetary Fund earlier.” This was a direct appeal to the opposition parties, investors and big business who have been demanding talks with the IMF for an economic rescue package that will inevitably mean greater hardships for working people.

The president again called for the collaboration of opposition parties and even offered to approve some of their limited constitutional amendments to curb the far-reaching, autocratic powers of the executive presidency.

Speaking about the protests, Rajapakse declared that youth were the most active in society, releasing their frustration in a way accustomed to them. The majority, he said, “love the country,” but they must not “allow opportunists to turn your protest into rioting.”

This remark is a menacing warning to the hundreds of thousands of people who have joined in the island-wide protests. It follows a speech last week by Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapakse who accused the protests of being a threat to democracy and recalled the way in which governments had brutally crushed previous so-called threats in the late 1980s and the country’s vicious civil war.

Over the past three years as it has implemented austerity policies, the Rajapakse regime has strengthened the autocratic powers of the executive presidency and militarised the administration through the appointment of military officers. It has ruthlessly suppressed freedom of expression including through the arrest of political opponents and journalists while whipping up anti-Muslim and anti-Tamil racism to try and divide the working class.

Confronted with mass opposition to the hardships already imposed on working people, the government is mired in deep political turmoil and an unprecedented economic crisis. The Central Bank governor and the finance ministry secretary on April 12 jointly declared a temporary default on the $US51 billion in foreign debts in order to promote the lie that there was no alternative but to beg the IMF for emergency assistance and accept its draconian terms.

The IMF talks in Washington begin today. Speaking to Bloomberg, Finance Ministry Sabry said Sri Lanka was appealing for $3 to $4 billion from the IMF Extended Fund Facility over three years. He said he was also looking for immediate funding to pay for essential imports. He pledged that Sri Lanka would repay creditors after the restructuring of loans. The finance ministry is also requesting $500 million from the World Bank to aid farmers.

At what price to the working class is this aid being sought?

Sabry said the government would review state-owned enterprises on a case-by-case basis to determine those that could be “salvaged” and which should be to “reformed”—that is, restructured, corporatised and privatised. Rajapakse’s economic advisors have already recommended Katunayake, Mattala and Ratmalana airports be leased, the Colombo North Port Development Project to be handed to private investors, and more shares in Sri Lanka Telecom and the Sri Lanka Insurance Corporation be sold off.

The IMF has also outlined further savage austerity measures, including increasing taxes and slashing the fiscal deficit through deep cuts to public sector jobs, wages, pensions and the remaining price subsidies.

The social catastrophe for working people that will result from these measures will dwarf what is already taking place. This program of relentless austerity is to service the needs of foreign creditors and the Sri Lankan corporate and financial elite at the expense of the vast majority of the population.

Over the past six months, the price of rice and wheat have doubled along with many other essentials. Diesel prices have shot up 60 percent. Yesterday, Sri Lankan oil companies increased all fuel prices for the third time. Last month the official inflation rate rose to 18 percent and it predicted to hit 28 percent this month.

As the crisis deepens, the capitalist opposition parties are all manoeuvring to take advantage of the disaster while trying to divert the mass protest movement into safe parliamentary channels and defend capitalist rule. The protests have largely erupted outside their direct control.

The main opposition party, Samagi Jana Balavegaya (SJB), is tabling a no-confidence motion against the government. The SJB is calculating it can get the support of the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) and win the backing of 40 MPs who recently deserted the ruling coalition.

SJB has also announced a “massive” march from Kandy to Colombo on April 26 in support of the anti-government protests. The JVP initiated its own three-day march beginning on Sunday and due to reach Colombo today.

Both parties, whatever their tactical differences, call for an interim government to replace the Rajapakse regime rule in preparations for new elections. Both have a track record of implementing the IMF’s austerity demands and will not hesitate to do so again.

At the same time, a trade union front has declared an island-wide protest day tomorrow, calling on its members to wear black attire and hold demonstrations around the country. The protests will culminate in a strike on April 28, accompanied by the threat of an indefinite stoppage if their demands for limited relief are not met.

After days of silence, this a desperate attempt by the unions to retain control of their members who are being radicalised by the unbearable conditions they face. These same unions have sold out one struggle after another for higher wages and improved conditions over the past two years.

The Ceylon Teachers Union and the JVP-controlled Ceylon Teacher Services Union betrayed a 100-day pay campaign by teachers last year and accepted greatly reduced offer from the government. The Federation of Health Professionals sold out a strike last month and even admitted that its limited campaign was to “manage” their members’ anger.

Polls show deepening rejection of major parties in Australian election

Mike Head

The first week of the campaign for the May 21 federal election in Australia has only deepened the underlying crisis of the capitalist political establishment, which confronts a groundswell of hostility from ordinary people.

There is widespread disgust toward the two traditional ruling parties, Labor and the Liberal-National Coalition, because of their bipartisan commitment to the profit-driven policies demanded by the corporate elite and to Washington’s escalating confrontations with Russia and China, which raise the prospect of catastrophic US-instigated wars.

NSW nurses protesting during a one-day strike on March 31, 2022 (WSWS Media)

According to media opinion polls, the loathing for the major parties has reached record levels. That is being intensified because none of the burning issues facing working-class households—the soaring cost of living, growing poverty and social inequality, and the mounting toll of infections and deaths in the unchecked COVID-19 pandemic—are being addressed in the official and media election campaign.

Media polls provide only a muted and partial measure of the discontent, but they indicate that after the first week of the campaign, which was dominated by diversionary mud-slinging, the already-low voting support for both Labor and the Coalition slumped further.

The Murdoch media’s Newspoll, published in today’s Australian, showed Labor’s first preference support had fallen to 36 percent, down one point from the previous poll a week earlier, even though the Coalition’s primary vote also declined one point to 35 percent.

The combined voting support for the Coalition and Labor was at the lowest level on Newspoll’s record for an election campaign. At the same point in the 2019 election—which produced a debacle for Labor—Newspoll said the Coalition’s primary vote was 38 percent while Labor was on 36 percent.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s unpopular Coalition won that election, and clung to office with a bare majority of 77 seats in the 151-seat House of Representatives. That was only because Labor’s vote plunged to a near-record low of 33.3 percent on election day, with the biggest losses in working-class electorates, even as the Coalition vote fell too.

Labor responded to that defeat by installing Anthony Albanese as leader to execute a sharp shift to the right, junking its phony “fair go” election pitch to pledge pro-business policies to ensure “wealth creation.”

This week, as Albanese doubled down on his appeals for the backing of the financial elite, his approval rating, as measured by Newspoll, fell to its lowest level since he became Labor leader in 2019. His low of minus 14 percent pulled him below that of the widely detested Morrison, on minus 9.

According to Newspoll, 29 percent of voters indicated they would vote for a minor party or an independent. Significantly, this shift is not going in a right-wing direction. Rather, more people are trying to find anti-establishment alternatives.

The two most promoted far-right parties, billionaire Clive Palmer’s United Australia Party and Pauline Hanson’s One Nation, remained stuck on about 4 percent each. The Greens rose marginally to 12 percent, with the rest going to “independents,” many of whom are appealing, within the capitalist profit system itself, for action on climate change.

A Resolve Strategic poll published yesterday by Nine Media outlets had similar results. It estimated that Labor’s primary vote had fallen from 38 percent to 34 percent while the Coalition’s stayed at around 34 percent to 35 percent. It said 27 percent of voters described themselves as uncommitted, up from 21 percent two weeks ago.

The sinking support for Labor and the Coalition is producing visible fears in ruling circles of political instability. In the first place, there is concern about the prospect of another “hung” parliament, with neither party winning enough seats to form a majority government.

More profoundly, alarm is being sounded in the corporate media about the decaying base of the political system itself, particularly under conditions in which the next government, whichever party leads it, will be the most right-wing and militarist in Australia’s history.

The incoming government will quickly move to slash health, education and other essential social spending to make the working class pay for the $1.2 billion debt created by the handouts to big business during the pandemic, and impose sacrifices of living standards to spend billions on the military and other requirements of US-led war preparations.

Morrison yesterday raised the spectre of political “instability, chaos and uncertainty” if people voted for independents. At the same time, he was forced to express his readiness to horse-trade with independents to form a minority government.

The fragility of the political order began long before this election. It is the accumulating result of decades of successive governments, both Coalition and Labor, enforcing cuts to real wages and surging social inequality, which has spiraled further during the COVID-19 pandemic. This corporate-government offensive was set off by the Hawke and Keating Labor governments of 1983–1996, which inflicted pro-market restructuring on workers in close partnership with the trade unions.

As a result, the gulf between the political establishment and working people, and the fragility of the parliamentary order, has grown. Morrison was only the first prime minister to survive a full parliamentary term since the landslide defeat of the Howard Coalition government in 2007.

Australia’s last hung parliament was in 2010 when Labor’s Julia Gillard negotiated a supply-and-confidence arrangement with the Greens and three independents. Propped up by the Greens, that government signed up to the US military “pivot” to Asia targeting China, cut education and health spending and resumed the indefinite offshore detention of asylum seekers, paving the way for the return of the Coalition in 2013.

The Greens are again bidding for a power-sharing arrangement with Labor to try to hold the parliamentary order together, but the political crisis has escalated over the past decade of short-term prime ministers.

The depth of ruling class nervousness was indicated in a column today by Australian foreign editor Greg Sheridan, who reflects the views of the US-aligned military and intelligence apparatus. He warned of a “political culture crisis” generated by “the fatigue if not exhaustion of the Westminster [parliamentary] system.”

Sheridan tried to blame social media for the collapse of trust in the political elite. But he pointed to the fact that rifts in both Labor and the Coalition had led to party bosses selecting candidates. Labor in Victoria is under federal executive control, while Morrison hand-picked 12 Liberal candidates in New South Wales. “Unless they were seeking paid employment in politics, why would anyone bother being a member of the Victorian Labor Party or the NSW Liberal Party?” Sheridan asked.

This anxiety is that any government formed after the election may not be able to deliver the agenda required by big business and Washington. Sheridan complained that “fundamental issues,” such as “the giant structural deficit we’ve built into our budget, our shocking productivity performance” and “our dreadful failure to provide any meaningful defence capabilities,” were being neglected.

The increasingly frenzied demands for a “strong government” after the election are a warning to the working class.

They give a hint of the scale of the austerity offensive that is being prepared, under conditions of mounting global economic turbulence and demands from the financial elite for the national debt, approaching one trillion dollars, to be paid down through vicious cuts to social spending. As in every country, the already disastrous public healthcare, education and welfare systems are on the chopping block, with the ruling elite seeking a return to social conditions not seen since the 1930s Great Depression.

At the same time, the heated denunciations of an “unworkable parliament” point to the turn by the capitalist class towards more authoritarian forms of rule.

This found expression prior to the election, with Labor and the Coalition joining hands to pass anti-democratic laws aimed at deregistering alternative parties without parliamentary representation. In 2016, at a far earlier stage of the political crisis, multi-millionaire Gerry Harvey called for a dictatorship in response to the dysfunction of the parliamentary set-up.

While the ruling elite is lurching ever further to the right, the working class is moving to the left. Hostility to the major parties is intersecting with the first stages of a resurgence of the class struggle, spurred by opposition to inflation, wage suppression and the social crisis.

Bank of Canada hikes interest rates, as soaring inflation squeezes workers’ incomes

George Locke

The Bank of Canada hiked its benchmark interest rate by 0.5 percent last Wednesday, due to mounting fears within the ruling class that surging inflation could fuel class struggle as workers push for compensatory wage increases and the restoration of cost-of-living escalator (COLA) clauses.

The rate hike, the first since 2000, doubled the bank’s trend-setting rate to 1 percent. The bank indicated in policy guidance that additional rate increases will be needed if inflation is to be brought back within its official target range of between 2 and 3 percent. Analysts suggest this will almost certainly mean a further increase when the bank’s governing council next meets at the beginning of June, possibly by as much as 0.5 percent.

New Brunswick public sector workers' picket line from their 2021 strike. One sign reads “Essential work. Essential wage?”; another “Study to be not paid” (CUPE Facebook)

The rate hike has been applauded by Canada’s major banks and big business think-tanks. However, there are growing concerns in these circles over the overall state of the economy, with many economic commentators voicing fears the Bank of Canada’s efforts to curtail inflation will either push the economy into recession, leading to a wave of bankruptcies among high-leveraged businesses, or result in stagflation, with prices continuing to rise rapidly even as growth stalls.

Working people, who have already borne the brunt of the pandemic, meanwhile must contend with the fastest rise in prices in 30 years.

According to Statistics Canada, the annual inflation rate reached 5.1 and 5.7 percent, respectively, in January and February, the first time it has exceeded five percent since 1991. A quick look at the numbers for February reveal Canadian motorists paid 32.3 percent more at the pump, while prices for food rose by 7.4 percent and housing by 6.6 percent year over year, their fastest pace since August 1983.

A major factor driving inflation is the huge quantities of cash pumped into the financial markets by governments in Canada and around the world at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, so as to protect the investments of the rich and super-rich. The disruption of supply chains, including for basic necessities and key commodities, has also pushed prices higher. These developments had already fueled a surge in inflation prior to the outbreak of the US-NATO proxy war with Russia over Ukraine, confounding predictions by some economists that inflation would be short-lived as pandemic restrictions were lifted and monetary policy tightened. The economic war the imperialist powers are waging against Russia by sanctioning its exports and seizing its central bank-holdings have exacerbated the inflation spiral. Workers around the world are paying more for gas, food, energy, and other basic necessities, causing their real incomes to stagnate or, more commonly, fall.

A report released this week from the Canadian Center for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) found that two-thirds of Canadian workers had experienced a real-terms pay cut during the two years up to the end of February 2022. Annual wage growth during this period amounted to 2.7 percent, compared to average yearly inflation of 3.4 percent. Particularly sharp wage reductions were recorded in the education and health care sectors, where workers have been subject to various “wage restraint” programs, including under Ontario’s Bill 124.

“We’re just not seeing wage gains anywhere near the rate of inflation,” remarked the CCPA’s David Macdonald. “It may be that workers are yet to catch up to the fact that inflation is high, and that they should start asking for higher wage gains on a year-to-year basis.”

This complacent remark only goes to show that whilst institutes like the CCPA that are aligned with the trade unions and New Democratic Party can provide useful statistics and information documenting the social crisis, their political conclusions are utterly bankrupt. Privileged sections of the middle class like Macdonald and the well-heeled union bureaucrats may treat inflation as an afterthought that one can ignore or pay attention to as one pleases. But workers are confronted with it on a daily basis as they face the brutal realities of putting food on the table, while the price of other essentials, from heating and gasoline to rents, are rising sharply.

A series of militant struggles over the past year by workers across all sectors of the economy, from miners to New Brunswick public sector workers, grocery store employees and rail workers, demonstrate that workers are more than ready to fight for wage increases and to claw-back concessions the unions granted over the past four decades. The problem is that every struggle by workers is sabotaged and sold out by the unions, resulting in contracts that impose real-terms pay cuts.

Energy and commodity prices—including wheat and other grains—are surging. A core commodity index compiled by Thomson Reuters has risen more on a three-month basis than in any period since 1973. Global food prices rose 9 percent in 2020 and 11 percent in 2021, because of frantic buying during the pandemic, rising transport and fertilizer costs, and a number of poor harvests connected to the erratic weather caused by climate change. Stuart Smyth, an agriculture professor at the University of Saskatchewan, stated that if the farmland in Ukraine isn’t seeded this spring and Russian farmers can’t get their crops to market, a global wheat shortage could result, triggering a further price spiral.

According to a survey by the Angus Reid Institute conducted before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, seven in 10 Canadians reported being stressed about their finances and over half of Canadians said they couldn’t keep up with the cost of living.

“Canadians’ household budgets are becoming squeezed from all angles as the price of goods rises,” the report from Angus Reid noted. “The costs of food, gasoline, and energy in particular are adding to household bills.”

The survey went on to state that two in five (39 percent) Canadians report they are worse off now than they were last year, which is the highest in 13 years of tracking. Twenty-nine percent of Canadians expect their financial condition to worsen over the next 12 months.

Underscoring the devastating impact the ruling elite’s response to the pandemic has had on wide swathes of the population, a staggering three in five (57 percent) Canadians said that they were finding it difficult to put food on the table, which was up substantially from the 36 percent recorded in 2019.

Food Banks Canada’s HungerCount 2021 report shows that visits to food banks climbed 20 per cent nationally. A quarter of all locations experienced a 50 percent increase in demand.

Canada’s Food Price Report for 2022 forecasts the cost of food rising between 5 to 7 percent this year, resulting in a family of four spending approximately $960 more on food than they did in 2021. Kendra Sozinho, a manager at the Fiesta Farms grocery store in Toronto, told CBC, “We’re seeing almost every single supplier increasing their pricing which then increases our pricing. I’ve been here for 20 years, and I’ve never seen a jump like this.”

In another alarming report, The Farm Product Price Index (FPPI), which measures the change in prices Canadian farmers are receiving for their products, rose 25.9 percent in December 2021. The index thus reached its highest level in 40 years.

In partnership with insight start-up app Caddle, Dalhousie University’s Agro-Food Analytics Lab recently surveyed 10,000 Canadians to determine how consumers are responding to rising grocery bills. Nearly half of Canadians (49 percent) said they have reduced their purchases of meat products over the past six months due to higher prices. In Alberta, Canada’s biggest beef-supplier, a majority of consumers (57 percent) acknowledged cutting back on meat since the start of this year.

The survey found 42 percent of respondents were reading their weekly grocery store flyer more often and nearly as many (40 percent) said they were purchasing discounted products with expiry/best before dates within a few days of purchase. One in four Canadians (26.9 percent) said they are buying products with an “enjoy tonight” label more often this year than they did in 2020.

The study also identified the increased use of a strategy known as “shrinkflation,” whereby food producers sell products in packages with less items, reduced weight or smaller volume without reducing the price. Almost three quarters of respondents (73.5 percent) said they were aware of certain food products that have shrunk, despite prices either remaining the same or increasing.

In terms of the factors driving the trend of rising food prices, the study cites “unfavorable weather patterns in the northern hemisphere and logistical challenges due to the global pandemic.” This study was conducted late last year and does not, therefore, record the disastrous impact of the Russia-Ukraine war and the sweeping sanctions imposed by the Western powers. They will mean further misery for the growing numbers of working people scrambling to put food on the table.

Terrorist group planned to kidnap German health minister

Gregor Link

After a nationwide police raid conducted against members of the Telegram network of the far-right “United Patriots,” four people were arrested on Wednesday. They stand accused by the Koblenz Prosecutor General’s Office of preparing a “serious act of violence endangering the state.” As recounted on Report Mainz from broadcaster ARD, the charges involved plans for mounting attacks using explosives and the kidnapping of Federal Health Minister Karl Lauterbach (Social Democratic Party, SPD), whose bodyguards were to be “eliminated” beforehand.

Health Minister Karl Lauterbach (SPD) during a press conference on January 14 (AP Photo/Michael Sohn).

The group, which has been under investigation since October, allegedly planned to cause a nationwide blackout by sabotaging electricity substations and power lines, creating civil war-like conditions to “take over the government” in the ensuing chaos. In addition to Lauterbach, other kidnappings of “well-known public figures” were also planned. Although the searches took place simultaneously at 21 residential properties in nine federal states, another suspect could not be arrested. A total of 12 men and women are under investigation.

The arrests followed a weapons handover conducted between undercover investigators and members of the group—said to involve pistols, Kalashnikov machine guns and mines worth €12,000. The suspects are believed to belong to the “Reichsbürger, anti-vaxxer and prepper scene” and are said to have planned weapons purchases totaling “several tens of thousands of euros.” Lauterbach—as well as prominent virologists and epidemiologists—has been a declared bogeyman of the extreme right since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to media reports, the security agencies—the Rhineland-Palatinate state office and the federal office in Cologne—also played a role in “uncovering the group.” Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD) spoke to the press of a “serious terrorist threat” emanating from preparations for a violent uprising on a “Day X.” The coup plans of “armed Reichsbürger members and radicalised coronavirus deniers,” Faeser said, had reached a “new quality.”

In fact, the case is only the latest in a whole series of raids the security authorities have utilized to take action against fascist groups in recent weeks. The events leave no doubt that right-wing extremist forces are now permanently working on plans for an armed coup and other terrorist actions under the eyes of the authorities. However, the leaders of these groups often remain at large.

On the same day as the major operation against the Telegram network, the Federal Prosecutors Office brought charges against a suspected member of the far-right “Atomwaffen Division,” which has been linked to dozens of murders and maintains contacts with the notorious Azov battalion of the Ukrainian armed forces, among others. The accused, Marvin E., is said to have planned attacks in Germany using explosive devices and firearms but was arrested before carrying out these plans. Using components obtained online, he had manufactured several “unconventional explosive devices,” including 600 “small explosive devices,” according to the Federal Prosecutor’s Office. The profile of the accused is reminiscent of the Yom Kippur murderer in Halle, who also possessed propaganda material from the group.

The charges against Marvin E. are the result of the neo-Nazi raid that had taken place a week earlier, when 800 officers from the State Criminal Office (LKA) and Federal Criminal Office (BKA) had searched 61 homes in 11 federal states, arresting four people accused of setting up a criminal organisation. According to information from the newsweekly Der Spiegel, the 50 accused right-wing extremists include a leading cadre from the neo-Nazi scene in Eisenach, but also an active noncommissioned officer in the Bundeswehr (Armed Forces) who was under “observation” by the Military Counterintelligence Service (MAD).

As reported by Der Spiegel, however, “conflicts involving the MAD” had led to a situation in which the “Atomwaffen Division” supporter, who is said to have last served in the tank unit in Munster, Lower Saxony, could neither be suspended nor disarmed. The Bundeswehr intelligence service had wanted to inform the officer cadet about the terrorism investigations against him—allegedly to “deter” him. Since then, the relationship between law enforcement and the MAD has been considered “strained,” writes Der Spiegel. As a result, apart from the 20-year-old carpenter apprentice Marvin E., no one has been charged so far.

At the end of March, about 300 police officers had already searched several properties in Bavaria in a large-scale operation. In the process, 3,000 litres of diesel were found and 75 firearms seized, including many suspected illegal handguns and rifles. Although the police believed that the suspects had planned “attacks on overhead pylons of major power lines” to “interrupt the power supply in large parts of the Federal Republic,” a spokesperson played down the group as “preppers,” saying there were no indications of a “radical network.”

The fact that law enforcement authorities have felt compelled to carry out three large-scale raids against right-wing extremist subversives within just two weeks is proof of the extent of the fascist danger in Germany. In view of the ever more aggressive herd immunity policy, allowing the virus to rip through the community, and the aggressive war course against Russia, these forces sense the tide flowing in their direction.

Before the kidnapping plans against Lauterbach became known, unknown persons had, among other things, damaged his car and broken a window of his Bundestag (parliamentary) office in Cologne. In Switzerland, the president of the vaccination commission had been kidnapped by a German citizen at the beginning of April, who subsequently died in a gun battle with the police. In Austria, the Green Minister of Health, Wolfgang Mückstein, had to resign due to death threats at the beginning of March amidst discussions about compulsory vaccination.

The Frankfurter Rundschau reported on Wednesday that German neo-Nazi parties had shipped “donations of materiel for the front” to Kiev and that members had donated four-figure sums to the Azov regiment. The federal police officially assume that dozens of German right-wing extremists are “intending to travel to Ukraine,” after denying such a threat a month ago. The Atomwaffen Division, an international right-wing extremist and neo-Nazi terrorist network, is also recruited from the same neo-Nazi milieus.

The growing fascist danger is a result of the fact that the state apparatus systematically cultivates right-wing extremist tendencies and previous governments have undisguisedly put their policies into practice. This concerns especially those politicians who, like Lauterbach and federal politicians from the Green Party, are now in the crosshairs of the fascists.

While SPD politician Lauterbach is overseeing the worst COVID-19 infection levels since the beginning of the pandemic, Green Party politicians are agitating against Russia and demanding arms deliveries to the Nazi-infested Ukrainian military. The “traffic light” coalition of the SPD, Liberal Democrats (FDP) and Greens has removed all coronavirus protections and initiated the largest German arms buildup since the fall of the Nazi dictatorship.

As far as the state apparatus and the so-called “security agencies” are concerned, they are closely networked with the fascist forces they are supposed to combat. Both in the case of the neo-Nazi National Socialist Underground (NSU) complex and the so-called “ Hannibal ” network, it is now known that the central actors were undercover agents of the secret services or members of the police and the Bundeswehr. As in the times of the Weimar Republic in the 1920s and ’30s, these forces are being deliberately promoted to be used against the growing opposition to price increases, war and the policy of deliberate mass infection.

At the same time, the same state apparatus is cracking down on anyone who opposes the capitalist agenda of social inequality, pandemic and war.

Protests erupt throughout France against Macron and Le Pen

Samuel Tissot

Days after students occupied the Sorbonne and Sciences Po universities in Paris, as well as universities in Reims and Nancy, mass protests opposed to both right-wing presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron and neo-fascist candidate Marine Le Pen broke out across France.

Thousands marched in Paris, Lyon, Nantes, Rennes, Caen, Marseille, Nice, Bordeaux, Grenoble, Lille and other cities across France. There is explosive opposition to the April 24 second round between Macron and Le Pen.

Workers and youth marched under banners reading “Neither Macron nor Le Pen,” opposing a fraudulent election between these two reactionaries. The hash tag #NiMacronNiLePenAbstention was trending on Twitter throughout the weekend in France.

The Parti de l’égalité socialiste (PES), the International Committee of the Fourth International’s (ICFI) French section, has called for an active boycott of the April 24 election. An open rejection of both far-right candidates is the best way to arm the working class to oppose whichever of the two extreme-right candidates wins the election.

Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who placed third with 22 percent of the vote, is abdicating all political responsibility to give a lead to his voters. Though he won the youth and the working class suburbs of major cities, as well as 10 of France’s 16 largest urban areas, he made no effort to mobilize his vote. Even as police violently assaulted protesters marching Saturday, he was only organizing a “consultative” poll on what his voters plan to do in the second round.

Jean-Luc Melenchon in Marseille, May 11, 2019. (AP Photo/Claude Paris)

According to this poll of 310,000 Mélenchon voters , 37.65 percent intend to vote blank, 28.96 percent intend to abstain and the rest to vote Macron. That is, at least two-thirds of Mélenchon’s nearly 8 million voters oppose voting for either candidate on Sunday.

Nonetheless, Mélenchon and his Unsubmissive France (LFI) party are insisting that they do not have the authority to issue any political statements to their voters. They wrote “the results of this poll are not a voting instruction given to anyone. It indicates the views of the 215,292 people who took part in it. Each will conclude and will vote their conscience as they see fit.” Mélenchon for his part claimed that LFI’s “cohesion” was his primary concern.

That is, Mélenchon intends to tie those of his voters who are opposed to both candidates and are seeking a way to fight to the minority of LFI supporters who also back Macron. In this way, he is working to dissipate the political impact of the mass support his campaign received from millions of voters who looked to him to express left-wing opposition to Macron and Le Pen.

Mélenchon will speak on Tuesday night, the night before a televised debate between Macron and Le Pen. LFI official Mathilde Panot, the head of the party’s parliamentary group in the National Assembly, again made a veiled comment to indicate her party’s support for Macron, declaring that the threat posed by Le Pen is “not of the same nature” as that posed by Macron.

With Mélenchon is working to isolate protesting workers and youth and defuse mass opposition, this weekend’s protests against the election were met with sharp repression. In Rennes on Saturday, riot police used tear gas and water cannon to disperse protesters. The city prefecture defended this trampling on the population’s democratic right to assemble and protest because it had not authorized a protest.

In scenes reminiscent of the police violence used to suppress “Yellow Vest” protesters earlier in Macron’s presidency, in Paris police charged protesters on the Place de la République. A video showing the police pushing over a man on crutches and another showing police striking a protester on the floor with a baton were shared online.

Before the protest another video showed the police combing metro stops in Paris to intimidate people on their way to the protests and dissuade others from joining. In response, those on the metro car chanted “freedom to protest.”

Alongside an explosion of working class opposition to both candidates, the French ruling class is fearful of an expansion of recent student rebellions over the next week. Nanterre University just outside Paris, where the first occupation of May 1968 took place, has been moved completely online. Heightened security teams have been posted to all universities in the center of Paris, where additional measures such as bag searches are being imposed on students.

Nonetheless, students are planning general assemblies to organize continued opposition next week. Within the capital, students at Paris-8, in the working class suburb of St Denis, are organizing an open meeting on Tuesday, April 19.

Many of the weekend’s anti-Macron and Le Pen demonstrations took place alongside ecologist and anti-Russia protests calling for further arms and support for far-right Ukrainian militias, the expansion of NATO, and more sanctions against the Russian people. An Extinction Rebellion protest occupied the Boulevard St Denis overnight without any police interference. These forces are apparently being tolerated by the security forces in part because of Green candidate Yannick Jadot’s endorsement of Macron in the second round.

In response to growing anger at the election among millions of workers and youth, the union bureaucracies are scrambling to keep social anger contained within limits acceptable to the state. Ahead of the election of April 24, they are doing everything possible to channel anger against both Macron and Le Pen behind the incumbent.

On Sunday, Philippe Martinez and Laurent Berger, chiefs of the General Confederation of Labor (CGT) and French Democratic Confederation of Labour (CFDT) respectively, published a joint letter in the Journal de Dimanche all but calling for a Macron vote. They wrote: “The National Rally [Le Pen’s party] is a danger to the fundamental rights of citizens and workers. It cannot be considered as the republican parties, respectful and guarantors of our motto, liberty, equality, fraternity. Let us not entrust it with the keys to our democracy, at the risk of losing them.”

Martinez, whose union also endorsed the NATO war in Ukraine and backed trillion-euro bailouts for the rich during the pandemic, is claiming Macron defends democracy. However, this is a political fraud. His celebration of Nazi collaborationist dictator Philippe Pétain while riot police attacked “yellow vests” protesting for social equality, his deadly policy of “living with the virus” and his discriminatory laws targeting Muslims align him firmly with the tradition of extreme right politics in France.

Once again, as workers and youth enter into the streets to oppose Le Pen and Macron, the unions and allied pseudo-left parties like Mélenchon’s LFI are attempting to stifle this opposition and lead it into a dead end. Indeed, they consistently worked to suppress opposition of every one of Macron’s major social attacks against the working class over the last five years of his term.

This is diametrically opposed to the sentiment of millions of workers and youth in France, however, who find the prospect of another five years of austerity, attacks on Muslims and mass death from the pandemic under Macron just as unacceptable as Marine Le Pen.

Strike wave in Northern Ireland against below inflation pay offers

Steve James

A wave of strikes and strike ballots in Northern Ireland show workers’ determined efforts to combat falling living standards. As is the case internationally, the cost-of-living crisis, accelerated by the disastrous NATO-Russia conflict in Ukraine and coming on top of the pandemic, is driving an intensification of the class struggle which the trade unions are working to isolate, suppress and bury.

Sections of workers involved in or preparing strikes include Translink bus workers, local authority classroom assistants, waste and recycling workers and school bus drivers, fast food delivery workers, university lecturers and construction machinery workers at Caterpillar. All are faced with finding a way to unify their struggles and take them out of the death grip of trade unions working to subordinate workers to the interests of the employers.

Caterpillar workers picket line in Belfast on day two of their strike (Credit: Unite the Union NI/Twitter)

Translink is Northern Ireland’s main bus company and is a private subsidiary of the state-owned Northern Ireland Transport Holding Company, which controls UlsterBus, Metro and Northern Ireland Railways, all of which trade as Translink. It employs around 2,000 bus workers who have on three occasions rejected the company’s 3 percent annual pay offer. With inflation running at between 7.8 and 8.2 percent, amid the massive price hikes imposed by the Johnson government, the offer, which a company spokesperson described as “fair and reasonable”, is a substantial pay cut.

On April 1, the GMB reported 82 percent of its Translink members had voted to strike, while Unite reported a simple majority. Despite the outcome, Unite and the GMB resorted to a further “consultation”. Unite’s Deputy Regional Secretary Davy Thompson wagged his finger at Translink, calling on the company to “realise the error of its ways, table an improved offer and return to the negotiating table.”

GMB organiser Peter Macklin took the same approach, hailing the fact that the unions had kept bus drivers working during the worst peaks of the COVID-19 crisis. He told the Belfast Telegraph, “Translink fails to recognise what workers went through during the pandemic. They kept transport running so other essential workers could get to and from workplaces to perform vital roles.”

The unions’ intention to organise a sellout as soon as possible is made clear by their own pay claim figure of 6 percent, also below inflation.

Although a strike date of April 25 has belatedly been set, opening a weeklong cessation of bus services, to be followed a one-day strike May 6, Translink issued a statement confirming they were “committed to working with the unions to avert this unprecedented industrial action”. Translink and the unions are also in discussion over efforts to neutralise the strike’s impact, even if they are unable in the meantime to prevent it. The company has been trying to extract promises to keep school bus and tourism related services open.

Local authority workers are preparing strike action over pay claims. Thousands of workers, members of the NIPSA, Unite and Unison unions, providing crucial frontline services were offered a miserable 1.75 percent, for 2021/22 which was roundly rejected late last year. A one-week strike was held last month by school meals staff, school bus drivers and cleansing and bin workers. Unite have conceded a further series of stoppages involving education authority and local government workers between April 25 and May 8. School meals, yellow bus school transport, and some non-teaching and housing executive work will again be impacted.

As with Translink, however, orchestrated and systematic foot dragging by the unions has led to a situation where workers are still pursuing last year’s pay claim. Early March, a joint statement from Unison, NIPSA, GMB and Siptu covered their refusal to take up any struggle. The statement claimed that despite the 50 percent membership turnout threshold for industrial action only being applicable in England and Wales and not in Northern Ireland, no action could be organised because of the “forthcoming end of mandate of the current Northern Ireland Executive and Ministers.” Elections to the Northern Ireland Assembly are due May 5.

In a separate dispute, 160 NIPSA education welfare officers took 16 days strike action in March. The strike, the longest ever pursued by the welfare officers who are qualified social workers, is in pursuit of pay parity with welfare officers working for the health services who are paid around £5,000 more annually.

University lecturers and support staff at Queens University and Ulster University are also involved in protracted struggles over pay and pensions.

Private sector workers are involved in major disputes. Workers employed by heavy construction machinery manufacturer Caterpillar held a four-day strike last week over pay. The strike followed a vote to reject a below inflation offer of 9 percent over two years along with compulsory overtime.

Workers struck the company’s sites in Belfast and Larne. Further four-day strikes will also take place on April 25, May 3 and May 9. Workers mounted well attended pickets at the Northern Ireland sites, which were widely respected. One striking worker was injured after being forced to jump out of the path of an HGV lorry driven recklessly at speed through the picket line.

Caterpillar, one of the world’s largest machinery manufacturers, has a cash pile of $9.3 billion. In defence of its loot, the company has been reported trying to recruit a scab workforce from its management staff in the UK to fill production roles at the Northern Ireland sites. Caterpillar employs as many as 10,000 workers at its UK facilities, including at its Perkins subsidiary sites in Peterborough and Stafford. Worldwide, the US based outfit employs as many as 107,700 people at 150 primary locations.

Unite General Secretary Sharon Graham demagogically denounced Caterpillar’s strike breaking as “utterly irresponsible and a disgraceful way to treat a workforce that has powered Caterpillar to huge profitability.” Graham, of course, took no steps to sound the alarm among or mobilise Unite’s Caterpillar members in the UK, let alone its 1.4 million overall membership, against the transnational company’s aggressive and dangerous actions.

In March, fast food delivery workers, members of the App Drivers and Couriers Union, took part in the first gig economy strike in the north of Ireland in pursuit of improved pay and conditions. One worker, with a child to support, told the Irish Times, “I’ve been working for Just Eat and Deliveroo since last August. The pay was quite good but last December Just Eat dropped our pay by 25 percent. I’m doing a minimum of 12 hours a day and working of two different apps which is more stressful.”

Taken together, transport, local authority, manufacturing and gig economy workers have enormous potential social power with which to combat their ruthless, wealthy, state-backed and frequently globally organised employers.

European Central Bank paints bleak picture of economy

Nick Beams

The European Central Bank decided to maintain its present ultra-low interest rate policy at its meeting last Thursday and sought to create the impression in its monetary policy statement that it had the increasingly turbulent economic and financial situation in the eurozone under control.

But the statement painted a bleak picture of the eurozone economy and the question-and-answer session with ECB President Christine Lagarde underscored that the central bank has no real idea on how to chart increasingly turbulent waters.

In this Oct. 1, 2019, file photo people wait in line to inquire about job openings with Marshalls during a job fair at Dolphin Mall in Miami. On Friday, Dec. 6, the U.S. government issues the November jobs report. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky, File)

The ECB resisted pressure at the meeting to follow the lead of the US Federal Reserve, the Bank of England, as well as a number of other central banks, to lift interest rates in response to the global surge in inflation.

In her opening press conference statement Lagarde said the Ukraine war and the associated uncertainty was “weighing heavily on the confidence of businesses and consumers.”

“Surging energy and commodity prices are reducing demand and holding back production. How the economy develops will crucially depend on how the conflict evolves, on the impact of current sanctions [against Russia] and on possible further measures.”

Throughout most of last year the ECB maintained, along with the Fed, that inflation was “transitory.” That perspective has now been junked as Lagarde warned that inflation had increased “significantly” and would “remain high over the coming months, mainly because of the sharp rise in energy costs” with inflationary pressures intensifying “across many sectors.”

Growth was weak in the first quarter of this year and there would be “slow growth” in the period ahead both because of the uncertainty created by the war and the continued disruption to supply chains because of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

Lagarde noted that inflation in the eurozone had increased to 7.5 percent in March, up from 5.9 percent in February, and energy prices were now 45 percent higher than a year ago.

While the struggle by workers for wage increases in the eurozone still remains relatively subdued, that could change very quickly, as evidenced by the recent two-day strike in Greece.

Lagarde indicated that, like other central bankers, her eyes are firmly fixed on wages, saying “higher than anticipated wage rises” were an upside risk to inflation, together with a “worsening of supply-side conditions.”

In response to a question, she insisted the ECB would not move to lift interest rates until asset purchases by the bank were concluded sometime in the third quarter and that it would “deal with interest rates when we get there.”

One of the major factors affecting the ECB’s interest rate stand is the effect of a rise on the more indebted countries, such as Italy, with any increase exacerbating their financial problems.

A questioner from a German news organisation referred to the issue of “fragmentation”—a situation in which interest rates in Italy and other southern European countries begin to diverge markedly from those in northern countries.

The questioner then raised the issue of a wage-price spiral. “How far is the governing council worried about a wage-price spiral with inflation getting out of control? You have mentioned wages, and wage growth is muted but it is coming. We are in Germany, and I think we may be in for a hot autumn.”

The use of the term “hot autumn” was significant because it recalled the situation in the late 1960s and early 1970s when the struggles of the working class for wage rises unleashed by the last inflationary surge destabilised governments—the spectre that haunts the ruling class today.

On the issue of “fragmentation,” Lagarde offered the assurance that the ECB was prepared to be “flexible.”

As for wages and the so-called second round effect on inflation as workers push for increases, Lagarde responded somewhat testily: “I think I have told you at the last press conference we had that we were particularly attentive to wages, and we continue to do so, because that is a critically important component to assess [the] inflation outlook in the medium term.”

She returned to the issue in response to another questioner who asked how ending asset purchases in the third quarter was going to reduce inflation.

Dismissing any conception the ECB believed reducing asset purchases would affect the price of oil, she said: “Who would, in their right mind, think so? But it is also, obviously the case that we have to be attentive to the inflation shock, to the impact that it has on wages.”

In some countries, she said, unions and management had taken into account the risk of redundancy and the threat to the economy—that is, the unions had been successful, at least so far, in keeping wage demands “relatively muted.” But in others, there were much higher wage demands and we will “continually [to] look at that extremely carefully.”

Throughout her press conference, Lagarde maintained the ECB was on a path of “normalisation,” and it had started a journey that was “moving along as predicted.”

Of course, this raised the obvious question of what constituted “normalisation” under conditions of the highest inflation in 40 years, a major supply-shock to the economy, and the impact of the war in Ukraine.

These issues were raised, albeit somewhat obliquely, by a questioner who asked whether the ECB actually had an “idea of what normal is.” Lagarde provided no real answer, simply stating that when talking about normalisation of monetary policy “I think of the kind of instruments we are using.”

In response to another question, she was somewhat more informative about the real state of affairs in the ECB headquarters. Because of the war there were “major developments that are not predicted, that are not part of past patterns” and “who knows” what would be the impact of the development of the war on the European economies.

There was also something of an extraordinary admission. Given the push to impose a total European embargo on Russian oil and gas imports, one questioner asked whether there had been any consideration by the ECB about the potential impact of such a move.

She acknowledged that an abrupt boycott of oil and gas would have a “significant impact” but then continued: “But have we actually factored in exactly the net amount, the trade-off resulting from such a boycott? No.”

Some forecasts have been made. German chancellor Olaf Scholz said last month that an embargo on Russian oil and gas supplies “would mean plunging our country and the whole of Europe into a recession. Hundreds of thousands of jobs would be at risk. Entire branches of industry are on the brink.”

This assessment was endorsed by a forecast by five German economic institutes last week. It said a full embargo would trigger a major recession in Germany, result in a 2.2 percent fall in output and wipe out more than 400,000 jobs. The report said a full embargo, after slowing growth this year, would lead to a contraction of 2.2 percent in 2023 with the cumulative impact over two years greater than that of the pandemic.

Supporting Scholz’s comments on the effect of an embargo, the BDI, a major German business lobby group, said it would have “incalculable consequences,” including production disruptions, employment losses and “massive damage to production facilities” in some cases.

BDI president Sigfried Russwurm warned the European Union was not prepared for such a move. It would “jeopardise [EU] unity and [its] ability to act economically and politically” and a total boycott would “tear the EU apart.”