Sri Lanka’s public health services face breakdown

Tisara Senanayake & Kamal Mahagama

Sri Lankan public health services are facing a catastrophic breakdown caused by shortages of doctors and other employees, essential medicines, equipment and basic facilities. Doctors and health workers confront severe difficulties treating patients, with ward closures, surgery postponements and a lack of basic pharmaceuticals.

Part of health workers protest march in Colombo on July 7, 2022 [Photo: WSWS]

Increasing numbers of doctors are also leaving Sri Lanka in response to higher Pay as You Earn (PAYE) tax rates and skyrocketing inflation, exacerbated by brutal International Monetary Fund (IMF) austerity measures being imposed by President Ranil Wickremesinghe and his government.

A senior Health Department officer told the World Socialist Web Site that 1,000 of Sri Lanka’s 3,700 medical specialists had recently left the country. Applications to leave were increasing on a daily basis. In a brutal move to slash jobs and reduce government expenditure, the Wickremesinghe government has lowered the retirement age of state employees, including doctors, from 65 years to 60. Sri Lankan doctors currently receiving overseas training are fearful of returning home because of the country’s worsening economic crisis.

Emergency treatment and surgery procedures have stopped at the Embilipitiya District Hospital in the country’s south because the facility does not have any anesthetists. Both of the hospital’s anesthetists left and are now working overseas, and one doctor has gone abroad for further education. On April 16, the district hospital’s director appealed to other major hospitals in the south to accept patients from the Embilipitiya facility.

Last March, the professorial pediatric ward at the Anuradhapura Teaching Hospital was closed because four pediatricians resigned and left Sri Lanka. This has meant that medical students from Rajarata University cannot have any clinical training in this section of the hospital.

The surgery unit at Mullaitivu Hospital in the Northern Province has closed because it has no surgeon and there is only one specialist doctor available for its pediatric ward, seriously hampering the diagnosis and treatment of children.

At the Kandy General Hospital, 10 medical specialists and 21 senior doctors have left the country to work overseas since 2022, while emergency doctors, neurologists and endocrinologists from the Sirima Bandaranaike Children’s Hospital in Peradeniya have also migrated.

On February 13, Asia News reported that Sri Lanka, which imports 80 percent of all its pharmaceuticals, had no reserves of 160 essential medicines out of the 300 required, and existing supplies were only sufficient for two or three months.

These shortages are delaying surgeries and blowing out already existing waiting lists, with thousands of patients having to wait for months, and in some cases years. This is leading to further health complications and premature death.

The Government Medical Officers Association (GMOA) has revealed that there are shortages of pharmaceuticals to stop bleeding after birth, as well as a lack of anesthetics, antibiotics and even insulin and paracetamol.

Both of the CT scan machines at the Karapitiya Teaching Hospital in Galle are not working and need to be repaired. One of them stopped working a year ago and the other has not been functioning since April. One hospital worker told the media that patients have to pay for emergency scans, which are being done at private hospitals. Patients are also being forced to have other medical tests conducted in the private sector due to a lack of equipment in the public system.

The escalating breakdown of public health services is placing extreme pressure on doctors and health workers. As one Kandy hospital nurse explained: 

“Before the coronavirus pandemic, we carried out stent treatment to avoid the blockage of heart blood cells on only five patients a day. Now we have to do it for more than 20 patients. This may be because of an increase of heart diseases as an aftereffect of coronavirus infections, but we lack suitable stent equipment. This means that patients are compelled to buy this sort of equipment at very high prices from outside sources.

“There are about twenty nurses working at our unit. Six of them are undergoing physiotherapy because of their unbearable workloads. When we come home after work, we feel half-dead, and now even our salaries have been subject to tax, but we have no one to complain to about any of this. I am fed up with all of the trade unions,” she said.

A health worker from the hospital’s surgery unit said there was a severe lack of heart valves for patients, who were needlessly dying because they could not buy the devices from outside sources.

A doctor from the Peradeniya Hospital’s psychiatric clinic explained that health employees and the families of patients confronted extremely difficult conditions because of pharmaceutical shortages, and that many patients were being repeatedly hospitalised. “These psychiatric patients cannot afford to pay the high prices of these medicines,” he added.

A Kandy Hospital administrative worker said the facility was having to buy medicines from private pharmacies. “While the hospital is paying millions of rupees to buy medicines from these private pharmacies, it also has to buy diesel and petrol for its trucks and ambulances. This means the hospital has to try and find money from canteen rents and selling cardboard boxes,” he said.

Drastic falls in the numbers of doctors and health workers have led to huge workloads for the remaining workforce, who are already severely burdened with higher taxes, inflation and cuts in allowances and overtime.  

Kandy hospital workers protest against the Rajapakse government on 28 April 2022. The placard calls for the formation of workers' action committees. [Photo: WSWS]

The Sri Lankan public health system was once hailed as a “model” compared to other South Asian countries, but it has been in serious decline, even before the current unprecedented economic crisis, with only an average 1.5 percent of GDP allocated for health spending. “Open market economic reform” and private investment in the health industry saw the mushrooming of privately-owned hospitals and other health institutions.

The escalating crisis of Sri Lanka’s public health sector is occurring as hyperinflation, unemployment and poverty are escalating across the country. According to the World Food Program’s latest survey, 32 percent of Sri Lankan households are food insecure and face serious hunger. Poverty has risen from 13.1 percent of the population in 2019 to 25.6 percent in 2022. This means millions lack adequate nutritional food, which in turn worsens overall public health.

Health sector trade union officials issue statements about the breakdown of the public system, but instead of mobilising workers to fight this brutal social assault, they appeal to the very government which is responsible.  

On March 3, Health Professionals Association President Ravi Kumudesh openly declared: “Every health worker is unanimously calling (for strike action) but we have suppressed these people saying that we cannot do it this time.”

Three weeks later, on March 24, the Professionals Trade Union Front, which includes the GMOA, held discussions with the IMF, in which they politely asked for a “concession” on PAYE taxes, but did not oppose any of the other harsh social attacks being unleashed against the population.

In fact, Saman Ratnapriya, president of the Government Nursing Officers Association, has become an open advocate for IMF austerity. He declared in a press briefing in February 28: “Strikes lead to destabilisation of the country and generate unrest. Such a country will not be granted [IMF] loans.”

As the world economic crisis deepen, every government is unleashing major attacks on public health, education and other vital social services. This has produced an eruption of strikes and protests by health workers and other sections of the working class who have come forward to defend their jobs, wages and the health services.

Preparing for War: the Global Military Budget

Binoy Kampmark

Photo by Scott Rodgerson

$2.24 trillion in US dollars is a mighty amount. It’s also a sickening figure when considering the object of this exercise.  The flickering tease of war, the promise of bloodshed and an increasingly large butcher’s bill, are inevitable suggestions from such a figure.  The scenes are also clear: well-paid suits dazed by theories of the next war; policy wonks jabbering over mock war games.  A huge amount of money is being pushed into the venture, and the sceptics are being held at bay.

Much of this news comes from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute’s latest findings that countries are spending 2.2% of the world’s gross domestic product on armaments.  Of that amount, the United States, China and Russia accounted for 56% of the total.  Global military spending, the SIPRI report also notes, grew by 19% over 2013-2022, rising every year since 2015.

The amount is slightly more than the previous year, when SIPRI announced that total military expenditure had risen by 0.7% in real terms in 2021 “to reach $2113 billion.”  The largest contributors to the binge on that occasion were the United States, China, India, the United Kingdom and Russia.  In sum, the five countries accounted for 62% of expenditure.

This reads differently from the more optimistic International Monetary Institute’s assessment from 2021: “Worldwide military spending, when estimated on the basis of unweighted country averages, has declined by nearly half, from 3.6 percent GDP during the Cold War period (1970-90) to 1.9 percent of GDP in the years following the global financial crisis.”  When it comes to variations on the figures in this field, best stick with SIPRA.

2022 proved to be a boon for militarists the world over, though there were particular regions that saw more growth than others.  In Europe, levels of spending had reached levels unseen since the Cold War, up from 13% from the previous twelve months.  The reason commonly given: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.  In East Asia, the justification is the increasingly hostile US-Chinese rivalry, though those in Washington’s corner are ever pointing the finger to the Yellow Horde’s ambitions in Beijing.

The picture in Europe is an ugly one, with concerns being expressed in certain strategic circles that not enough is being done to move away from dependency on the US imperium.  The European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) has even posited that Europe is the victim of US “vassalisation”, notably in light of the Ukraine War.  Visions of strategic autonomy are more distant than ever.

Such sentiments, however, do little to discourage the militarists: whether Europe chooses to throw in its lot with Washington or not, the arms dealers and manufacturers will do a merry jig.  To prove that point, the ECFR advocates the deployment of “western European forces to the east in greater numbers, offering to replace US forces in some cases.”  The only difference here is the burden shared, rather than the amount spent.

In terms of individual countries, Finland’s military expenditure rose by 36% in 2022 to reach $4.8 billion, the largest in the country’s year-on-year increase since 1962.  Polish military expenditure grew by 11%, reaching $16.6 billion over the course in 2022.  The passage of the Homeland Defence Act, designed to reorganise the military and raise defence spending, promises to eventually push the levels to 4% of GDP.  Warsaw has made no secret of the fact that it wishes to have the continent’s largest army, a daft and distinctly draining exercise.

The figures are also significant given the increasingly proxy nature of the Ukraine War’s balance sheet.  Ukraine, for its part, rose from its position at 36 on the league of arms spenders to 11 in 2022, with a figure of $44 billion.  But SIPRI has a modest confession to make: it is unable to furnish us “an accurate assessment of the total amount of financial military aid to Ukraine”.  This is largely because the donor countries have, for the most part, not released disaggregated data.  A rough estimate of $30 billion is provided, which “includes financial contributions, training and operational costs, replacement costs of the military equipment stocks donated to Ukraine and payments to procure additional military equipment for the Ukrainian armed forces.”

Some of this must be factored into the increased budgets of the UK (top European spender at 3.1%), with Germany and France coming in at 2.5% and 2.4% respectively.  Of the three, the UK has given the most military aid to Ukraine, and is second only behind the United States, which allocated $19.9 billion.

As for the US itself, the Biden administration has already mooted the idea that it will increase the number of troops deployed to Europe by 20,000 personnel to 100,000.  The measure is part of the European Deterrence Initiative (EDI), an effort to, according to the US Department of Defense, “enhance the US deterrence posture, increase the readiness and responsiveness of US forces in Europe, support the collective defense and security of NATO allies, and bolster the security and capacity of US allies and partners.”

While China, with a bill of $292 billion, is leant upon as an excuse for increased military expenditure by other powers, the United States remains the undisputed premier spender, making up a staggering 39% of the global total at $877 billion.  Hardly the sort of figure to be sported by a peacemaker.

Understanding the Controversy About and Legality of ‘Overseas Police Stations’

John P. Ruehl

Crossing Canal Street in Chinatown. Photograph Source: Chensiyuan – CC BY-SA 3.0

The apprehension of two men in New York on April 16, 2023, marked the first known U.S. arrests in connection with Chinese overseas police stations. Both men were working in a building in Manhattan’s Chinatown rented by the America ChangLe Association, a charity that had its tax-exempt status revoked in May 2022. More Chinese police stations are believed to be operating across the U.S.—though, like in other countries, not all their locations are known.

While foreign intelligence agencies conduct extensive espionage operations in other countries, domestic law enforcement agencies are also occasionally active abroad. The FBI trained many Latin American police units throughout the Cold War and has been covertly active in the region for decades. In 2020, Russia also offered to send a police force to Belarus during mass protests against Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, who blamed the West for trying to foment a color revolution.

However, the scale of China’s international program and the scope of its responsibilities is notable. Run primarily by ethnic Chinese residents, the main concern of these stations appears to be managing the more than 10.5 million Chinese citizens living overseas, and to a lesser extent the 35 to 60 million people in the Chinese diaspora. The considerable size of Chinese overseas communities has allowed Beijing to field an extensive global presence through these stations.

China’s first known use of these stations occurred in 2004 with the establishment of the Community and Police Cooperation Center in Johannesburg, following several attacks on Chinese citizens and businesses. The center opened with the blessing of the South African government, and more than a dozen have since opened in the country. As in other countries, they help Chinese citizens obtain documents, assist in criminal matters, integrate into the country, as well as offer “security, fire, and ambulance teams.” The Chinese government maintains that they are not police stations but instead function as “service centers.”

Two reports, released in September and December 2022 by the human rights organization Safeguard Defenders, indicated that there are now more than 100 overseas Chinese stations active in more than 50 countries. Managed by China’s Ministry of Public Security, the stations are operated by police agencies from three Chinese provinces (Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Fujian) and are divided into centers, which are greater in scale, and liaisons, which have a lower profile but are more numerous.

Though the stations had previously drawn little attention, the reports have made Western countries far more wary of them in the context of intensifying geopolitical tensions with China over the last few years. There are also fears that the stations act as part of China’s United Front system to build political, economic, and cultural connections to influence other countries.

The stations have also brought increased Western attention due to their role in convincing Chinese citizens to return to China to face legal charges. Now known as Operation Fox Hunt, Safeguard Defenders estimates that from April 2021 to July 2022, 230,000 Chinese citizens were persuaded or coerced into returning to China, with China’s Ministry of Public Security itself stating that 210,000 citizens returned in 2021. Western officials had already criticized China for abusing Interpol’s Red Notice system to arrest and extradite citizens abroad for political purposes, while Operation Fox Hunt has allowed Chinese officials to bypass Interpol and deal directly with its own citizens.

Interrupting the ability of China to carry out this program is increasingly becoming a domestic security priority for the U.S. But the two men who were arrested in New York appear to be both U.S. and Chinese citizens, and the incident has become the latest attempt by Chinese and Western authorities to exert authority over each other’s citizens, as well as dual citizens.

Several dual Chinese/U.S. citizens were prevented from leaving China in 2017 and 2018 in an apparent effort to convince their family members living in the U.S. to return to China. Meanwhile in 2018, Meng Wanzhou, a Chinese national and CFO of Huawei, was placed under house arrest in Canada to await extradition to the U.S. for fraud. In response, two Canadian businessmen in China were also detained and prevented from leaving, based on espionage allegations. All were released in 2021, with Chinese and U.S. authorities denying any connection between them.

The U.S. does not have an extradition treaty with China, while the few European countries that do have taken steps to reduce China’s ability to enforce it in recent months. While Chinese officials have demonstrated their willingness to detain dual citizens in China, the overseas stations allow Chinese officers to locate and contact citizens living abroad directly. Through harassment, intimidation, and coercion, Beijing has bypassed formal extradition methods and quietly convinced hundreds of thousands of Chinese citizens to return home.

Beijing’s approach to dealing with wanted citizens abroad contrasts with techniques employed by other countries. Many, including the U.S., Russia, and Iran, have used military, intelligence, or organized crime assets to assassinate citizens opposed to the governments. Iran is also known to have resorted to kidnapping to bring citizens back to the country, though this has also generated significant attention.

The role of these stations in advancing Chinese interests and extraditing Chinese citizens has naturally caused concern in the West. Yet until the 2022 Safeguard Defenders reports, the Western response had been somewhat slow. Only after the scale of the stations became public knowledge did Western officials take substantial steps to clamp down on them. FBI director Christopher Wray stated in September 2022 that he was “looking into the legal parameters” of the stations, and the Manhattan station was raided by the agency in October.

More than a dozen other countries have also launched probes against the stations in recent months, and other countries have significantly scaled back their cooperation with them. The growth in the number of Chinese tourists traveling abroad previously incentivized many governments to facilitate cooperation with Chinese police forces, for example, and Chinese police officers were formerly permitted to assist Chinese tourists visiting Italian cities. But this decision was reversed in December 2022, while Croatia is under similar pressure to restrict Chinese tourist assistance police patrols in its cities. Other restrictive measures in the U.S. and Europe are likely to be introduced.

Western officials, however, have so far refrained from bringing too much attention to the centers. Allegations of McCarthyism and racial profiling could cause social unrest and provide Beijing with evidence of hostile Western intent toward overseas Chinese communities. Additionally, acknowledging the existence of covert Chinese officials operating across the West would publicly undermine the sanctity of Western sovereignty and reinforce perceptions of China’s growing power in international affairs.

The stations, nonetheless, are destined to remain a sticking point in the Western-Chinese relationship. Operation Fox Hunt reveals that not even the U.S. has been able to protect dual citizens or those seeking asylum on its own soil. Though Chinese officials will likely have to act even more discreetly for some of their overseas operations, U.S. officials have yet to locate where all these stations are. And even if they are found, the Chinese government has traditionally cultivated close ties with overseas Chinese communities and has additional avenues to project influence.

Despite Western countries’ increasing concern with the stations, other countries which host them appear unperturbed and will continue to cooperate with China for a variety of reasons. In 2019, Chinese police officers began patrolling several Serbian cities alongside Serbian police forces to assist Chinese tourists. Additionally, Chinese police officers have worked out of an office in Cambodia’s national police headquarters since 2019 to manage Chinese citizens suspected of being involved in crime. Chinese police and security forces have also drastically increased their cooperation with their Latin American counterparts over the last decade to “speed up the signing process of treaties concerning judicial assistance in criminal matters, and expand cooperation in such areas as fighting crimes, fugitive repatriation and asset recovery,” according to the Chinese government.

In February 2023, China also unveiled its Global Security Initiative to enhance training and cooperation with developing countries’ security forces. And because Chinese stations do act as legitimate centers aimed to help Chinese citizens abroad, countries with good relations with China and existing and growing Chinese immigrant and worker communities will likely allow further expansion for Chinese overseas stations.

The stations will continue to evolve to suit the environment of their host countries. Their ongoing operations show the increasingly sophisticated ways China aims to aid its citizens abroad, convince others to return home, and extend its cooperation agreements and influence activities around the world.

Spain’s PSOE-Podemos government plots privatisation of public health care

Alice Summers

Spain’s Socialist Party (PSOE)-Podemos government has drawn up plans to massively expand the role of the private sector in Spain’s health care services. The draft proposal, if implemented, would be the most significant assault on Spain’s public health care system since it was implemented in the 1980s after the fall of the fascist regime of General Francisco Franco amid mass protests and strikes in the 1970s.

The 27-page document, dated December 7, 2022 but leaked to the press in late March this year by Basque trade union LAB, proposes to vastly increase the role played by mutual insurance companies in Spain’s health care system. Mutual societies would become the backbone of the health service and would be responsible for the medical care of 90 percent of Spain’s working population.

The model agreement, sent to the heads of Spain’s 17 autonomous regions for approval, was negotiated between Minister for Social Security José Luis Escrivá and the Association of Mutual Societies for Workplace Accidents (AMAT). AMAT is a nationwide umbrella organisation of mutual societies, private companies operating under the aegis of Spain’s Ministry of Social Security to provide health services to workers suffering from work-related injuries or conditions.

The proposed legislation would hand all medical care for workers and the self-employed to mutual societies. This includes treatment for common illnesses and mental health problems, as well as rehabilitation, medical discharge, surgical interventions, diagnostic tests and other procedures. The current public medical system would become accessible only to pensioners and children.

The document states that “both institutions [AMAT and the Ministry for Social Security] are interested in improving the efficiency of management and control of temporary disability benefits stemming from common contingencies, and as such believe it necessary that the [mutual societies] cooperate with the corresponding public health services, allowing them to act upon any type of pathology, anything which would result in alleviating the burden of care and the waiting lists for the public health services, as well as reducing the unnecessary duration of [sick leave processes].” (Emphasis added.)

While couched in terms of improving “efficiency” and reducing “waiting lists”—now at record levels due to systematic underfunding, austerity and the impact of COVID-19 pandemic—the draft plan would lead to the privatisation of the country’s public health care service through the back door, and the degradation of working conditions and medical care for the Spanish working class. The public system would be gutted, medical care for workers subjugated to private companies linked to their employer, and sick workers forced back to work before they are medically fit.

Sick workers treated by mutual societies receive substantially less time off than those given care by public health services. Figures from 2021 show an average temporary disability leave of 49 days under the public social security system, versus 45.9 days under mutual insurance companies.

The PSOE-Podemos government aims to reduce the “burden” that worker sickness poses to businesses and the capitalist state, with absenteeism due to sickness having increased dramatically over the last decade, due in part to the impact of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Expenditure on sickness benefits in 2021 increased by 15 percent on pre-pandemic figures, while costs more than doubled between 2013 and 2022—from €5 billion to €10.8 billion.

Over the last several decades, successive Spanish governments have gradually worked to undermine and roll back the social right to public health care, and increase the role of the private sector.

By 2017, agreements with private health centres made up 11.2 percent of total public expenditure on health care, with 27 percent of all hospitals in Spain being state-subsidised private entities by 2019. This equates to a total of 233 privately owned, state-funded hospitals in operation in 2019, compared to 220 in 1996.

In fact, despite the introduction of a publicly funded system in the 1980s, 53 percent of all hospitals in Spain remain in private hands, only a slight decrease from the 63 percent that were privately owned in 1970, during the last years of Franco’s rule.

The leaking document sheds more light on the PSOE-Podemos plans to impose mass austerity. Last Friday, Madrid told the European Commission of its intention to cut the 2023 deficit to 3.9 percent of the GDP from the current 4.8 percent and to 3 percent of GDP in 2024. This will mean cutting public expenditure or raising taxes by almost €24 billion.

A major driver of these attacks on the working class is NATO’s war against Russia in Ukraine. Spain, like all the countries involved in this war, is diverting billions of euros to remilitarise and turn Ukraine into a killing field.

Last year, the PSOE-Podemos government increased military expenditure by 26 percent to €27 billion, or €75 million daily. By conservative estimates, Madrid has also sent €700 million in weaponry, for training and for Ukraine’s public expenditure. On top of this it has implemented a reactionary labour and pension reform to pay for the COVID-19 EU bailout fund for corporations and banks. And with assistance of the trade unions, it maintained salary increases below inflation last year, at 2.9 percent salary increases amid 8.6 percent inflation levels.

These conditions are producing an international upsurge of the class struggle. Across Europe, millions of workers have been on strike against the impact of inflation and eroding wages, including in France, the UK and other European countries. Mass anti-government protests continue to take place in Sri Lanka, and over 100,000 civil service workers have been striking in Canada. In the US and Canada, opposition is building among more than 160,000 autoworkers.

In Spain, the leaking of the document comes amid the largest recorded wave of health care protests and strikes. Hundreds of thousands of nurses, doctors and other health workers have taken part in industrial action across Spain over the last year, including in Cantabria last November, Catalonia in January and Navarra in February.

In Valencia, 15,000 medical workers went on strike March 6 and April 3, while an indefinite health care strike is set to begin on May 8 in the Canary Islands. In Galicia, an indefinite strike of doctors began April 11, leading to the suspension of 163 operations on its first day.

In Madrid, numerous strikes and demonstrations have taken place across the city since late last year, including a strike by between 12,000 and 14,000 health care workers across 34 hospitals on March 1 and 2. This comes in the wake of a rally of up to 1 million people in Madrid in support of doctors and in defence of public health in mid-February.

On March 25, tens of thousands also joined protests across the southern Spanish region of Andalusia in defence of public health care, under the slogans “Public health is not for sale” and “Public health is in your hands.”

Thailand election to be held amid deepening political crisis

Robert Campion

Thailand’s general election, slated for May 14, is being held out under conditions of popular disaffection as well as the growing danger of a United States-instigated war with China. Regardless of which party forms the next government, it will be unable to address these and other serious issues facing the working masses.

Thai Prime Minister and United Thai Nation Party candidate Prayut Chan-o-cha in Bangkok, Thailand, Monday, April 3, 2023. [AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit]

Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha is deeply unpopular. The leader of a military coup in 2014, his government has overseen worsening conditions for the multi-million working class, attacks on democratic rights and a refusal to carry out any serious measures to address the COVID-19 pandemic. Mass protests erupted against the Prayut government in 2020 and 2021.

Prayut’s unpopularity led to a split in the ruling circles that are particularly close to the military and the monarchy. Prayut left the ruling Palang Pracharath Party (PPRP) at the end of 2022 to join the United Thai Nation Party (UTN). The PPRP chose to back retired general, Deputy Prime Minister Prawit Wongsuwon as its candidate to form a new government. Prawit also played a leading role in the 2014 coup.

Reflecting these divisions, Prayut’s eligibility to remain prime minister was brought before the Constitutional Court last September after he reached his eight-year term limit. The court ruled, however, that Prayut’s term did not begin in 2014 but in 2017 when a new constitution was promulgated, allowing Prayut to stay in office potentially until 2025.

A recent poll, conducted by Suan Dusit University in Bangkok, indicated an overall dearth of support for the two military-backed parties, with only 7.49 percent of people expressing approval for the PPRP and 8.48 percent for UTN.

By contrast, support for the main opposition Pheu Thai Party (PTP) reached 41.37 percent, with more than 60 percent support for the opposition bloc as a whole. The PTP, representing major sections of the Thai bourgeoisie, is backed by the wealthy Shinawatra family. It is the successor of the Thai Rak Thai Party, founded by Thaksin Shinawatra, who served as prime minister from 2001 to 2006, when he was ousted in a coup. His sister, Yingluck, served as prime minister from 2011 to 2014 before similarly being overthrown in a military coup.

Thaksin’s daughter, Paethongtarn, is the PTP’s lead candidate for prime minister. The PTP claims it will not form a coalition with any of the military-backed conservative parties and hopes to win 310 of the 500 available seats available in the bicameral National Assembly’s lower body, the House of Representatives.

The PTP is backed by the Move Forward Party (MFP), led by another wealthy businessman, Pita Limjaroenrat. The MFP postures as a “progressive” party that at times makes vaguely anti-capitalist statements in order to win support from left-leaning youth and workers. Its goal, however, is to block a genuine movement against the Thai ruling class by falsely holding up Pheu Thai as an alternative to the military-backed conservatives. In March, Pita stated: “The MFP is ready to work with any [prime minister] candidate from Pheu Thai.”

The PTP and its supporters will likely need to win at least 376 seats in order to form a government. The National Assembly’s Senate is comprised of 250 seats, all of whose members are appointed by the Thai military. Both houses will vote on a new government, giving a strong edge to the military-backed parties of Prayut and Prawit. This shows the dictatorial measures in place to ensure the ruling elite’s preferred candidate is chosen. Other state bodies controlled or influenced by the military could change the outcome of the election. They include the administrative court, the constitutional court and the Election Commission.

There is no guarantee another coup will not take place. Speaking in March in an interview with political activist Patsaravalee Tanakitvibulpon, Prawit stated: “There will be no more coups if the country is united and there are no conflicts that lead to casualties, but if the country is in turmoil, it [a coup] may be necessary.”

The entire process is thoroughly anti-democratic. Favouring the dominance of larger parties such as Pheu Thai and the military-backed ones, a change in the constitution last year decreased the number of party-list seats from 150 to 100, and they are to be filled by a separate ballot. The total list-seat votes will be divided by 100 and awarded proportionally. Only Pheu Thai and UTN have submitted a full party list of 100 candidates.

Another factor is the setting of election day on May 14, which is national examination day for students. This was undoubtedly decided in an effort to discourage young people from voting, many of whom would choose oppositional parties.

The last general election held in 2019 involved heavy interference from the military. Of the 350 contested constituency seats, Pheu Thai still won 137, with the PPRP winning 97. There were large discrepancies as opinion polls showed 45 percent in favour of Pheu Thai at the time, and 7 percent for the PPRP. There were widespread reports on social media of the military buying votes and other fraudulent activities.

Looming over the election is the growing danger of a US-instigated war with China, which none of the parties has acknowledged. On April 24, the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier strike group docked at Thailand’s Laem Chabang Port, near the capital Bangkok. The four-day visit by the USS Nimitz, one of the largest warships from the most powerful military in the world, underscores the pressure the United States is exerting on the Thai elections.

In the event of war, Washington would use Thailand as a base of operations for launching attacks and bombing runs on China, as it did throughout Indochina during the Vietnam War. The US is demanding that the next Thai government distance itself from Beijing. Bangkok is economically reliant on China and has attempted to balance between Beijing and Washington.

The USS Nimitz was involved in war games alongside Japan and South Korea before its arrival in Thailand. The strike group’s port visit was officially conducted to “strengthen the US-Thai security partnership” and “celebrate the 190th anniversary of US-Thai diplomatic relations.” For all Washington’s talk about defending democracy, the US is sending a clear message to both Bangkok and Beijing that it will use its military if necessary to ensure its interests are met.

Were China to conduct such exercises and dock an aircraft carrier in the port of any country on the eve of an election, one can only imagine the bellicose denunciations of Chinese coercion and authoritarianism that would ensue in the international press. But this is presented as “business as usual” for the US, regardless of its mounting confrontation with China.

Members of Zelensky’s party introduce internet censorship bill

Jason Melanovski

Members of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s Servant of the People party have introduced a bill to criminalize the spread of “false information” on the internet and through social media that violates Ukraine’s “national security.”

Ostensibly, the bill is targeted at “bot” accounts coordinated by “Russian special services” who, as the authors of the bill claim, are “conducting informational influence actions against the state interests of Ukraine.”

But in reality, the language of the bill is so encompassing that anyone could be arrested for posting information that the right-wing nationalist government in Kiev deems “misinformation.”

Under the proposed bill, lawmakers would have broad powers to arrest anyone who participates in the “creation, acquisition, use or sale of accounts, including those containing knowingly false information,” as well as the “posting and distribution of inaccurate information.” 

Anyone who spreads so called “misinformation” with the intention to “damage to the sovereignty, territorial integrity and inviolability, defense capability, national, state, economic or informational security of Ukraine, or to exert influence on decision-making or taking or not taking actions by state bodies or local self-government bodies, officials of these bodies,” would likewise face arrest and imprisonment of 5 to 7 years and the confiscation of personal property.

According to the five authors of the bill — all members of Zelensky’s ruling Servant of the People party — the law is necessary for the sake of “national security” and “to have as wide a legislative toolkit as possible to fight against persons who individually or collectively engage in information attacks, spreading false and/or manipulative information.”

While the measure has yet to become law, the bill is yet another example of the right-wing, authoritarian character of the Ukrainian government which seeks to hide the truth of its NATO-backed proxy war with Russia from both within and outside Ukraine. In this effort, the Ukrainian government works closely with its NATO backers and especially with American imperialism.

Last week, llia Vitiuk, head of the Department of Cyber Information Security in the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), admitted in an interview with journalist Lee Fang at a cyber security conference in San Francisco that the American FBI regularly targets supposed Russian “disinformation” on Facebook at the request of the Ukrainian government.

“Once we have a trace or evidence of disinformation campaigns via Facebook or other resources that are from the U.S., we pass this information to the FBI, along with writing directly to Facebook,” Vitiuk said.

When pressed on how he determined what was “fake,” Vitiuk replied that the truth of the information had no bearing on its status as “misinformation.” 

“When people ask me, ‘How do you differentiate whether it is fake or true?’ Indeed it is very difficult in such an informational flow,” said Vitiuk. “I say, ‘Everything that is against our country, consider it a fake, even if it's not.’ Right now, for our victory, it is important to have that kind of understanding, not to be fooled.”

Should the proposed bill by Zelensky’s party members become law, virtually anyone within Ukraine could be arrested and thrown in jail for 5-7 years as Vitiuk’s comments prove.

While Zelensky is regularly portrayed as a modern day George Washington standing up to “Russian imperialism” in the Western press, the truth is that he is the head of an oligarchical, right-wing government that regularly tramples on the most basic democratic rights.

Leading up to the war, Zelensky’s government regularly targeted pro-Russian media, banning three popular television stations associated with Opposition For Life Party leader Viktor Medvedchuk. According to Zelensky the stations “carried out anti-Ukrainian propaganda” and “interfered with the process of the country’s integration into the European Union.”

Medvedchuk, an associate of Russian President Vladimir Putin who previously served as an intermediary between the Ukrainian and Russian oligarchies, was later charged with treason and placed under house arrest.

With the outbreak of full-scale war, the Zelensky government, using the country’s security service (SBU) has accelerated the country’s crackdown on basic democratic rights amid a war that has already killed over 100,000 Ukrainian soldiers in a country of just 40 million people.

All anti-NATO political parties are now banned, restrictions on Russian language and culture have sharply increased, and any dissent from Kiev’s pro-war line is sharply punished.

Earlier in January of this year the Zelensky government passed a law that permits the country’s National Council of Broadcasting to censor television, print and online journalism, as well as social media and search engines such as Google. News sites that fail to officially “register as media” with the right-wing Ukrainian government may be shut down without a court ruling.

While such authoritarian measures have been dismissed by Zelensky’s backers in the West as temporary and necessary wartime decisions, the Ukrainian ruling class is preparing for a war that, by Zelensky’s own admission, might last dozens of years.

In a lengthy interview last week with Norwegian, Danish, Swedish and Finnish reporters, Zelensky, according to the BBC, did “not rule out that the war in Ukraine will last dozens of years. He noted that no Ukrainian territory, including Crimea, should remain under Russian occupation.”

While Zelensky—a multi-millionaire actor—ponders an endless NATO-backed war with Russia, working-class Ukrainians continue lose their lives and suffer from the joblessness as a result of the war. It is estimated that up to 200,000 Ukrainians have already lost their lives in just over a year of war, with many hundreds of thousands more wounded, out of a pre-war population of under 40 million. The increasingly repressive and ever more openly dictatorial measures taken by the government are no doubt motivated above all by growing popular opposition to the war.

As a recent report from the Ukrainian news outlet Strana demonstrated, with the government requiring Ukrainian men to register with the military in order to obtain a job, many are now torn between being unemployed and the risk of being handed a military summons and sent to the front.

Rostislav Kravetz, a lawyer representing those seeking to avoid conscription, told Strana that, before the war, proof of military registration was a “mere formality,” as it is in many other countries.

“Now it has become mandatory. And many are afraid that as soon as they appear at the military registration and enlistment office, they will immediately be handed a summons. But one of the horror stories is ‘It’s easier for military commissars to get you.’ In fact, it is. After all, the heads of enterprises and organizations are one of the official channels for sending subpoenas. By transmitting a subpoena through an employer, it is easy to prove the fact of proper delivery, which means that a person liable for military service will not be able to evade it by claiming, ‘I did not receive a summons at all.’ Moreover, several fines for non-appearance with proven delivery of the summons may become the basis for initiating an already severe criminal sentence, resulting in up to three years in prison,” Kravetz said.

Schwarzman Scholars 2024/2025

Application Deadline: 19th September 2023 at 11:59 PM, Eastern Daylight Time (EDT).

Eligible Countries: All (except Mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Macao)

To be taken at (country): Tsinghua University, Beijing, China (students live and study together on the campus of Schwarzman College, a newly-built, state-of-the-art facility, where all classes will be taught in English.)

Fields of Study: Masters degree programmes in one of these three disciplines:

• Public Policy
• Economics and Business
• International Studies

What will be taught: Business, Social sciences, Leadership skills

About the Award: The Schwarzman Scholars program will give the world’s best and brightest students the opportunity to develop their leadership skills and professional networks through a one-year Master’s Degree at Tsinghua University in Beijing – one of China’s most prestigious universities.

With a $350 million endowment, Schwarzman Scholars will be the single largest philanthropic effort ever undertaken in China by largely international donors. The extraordinary students selected to become Schwarzman Scholars will receive a comprehensive scholarship.

Schwarzman Scholars was inspired by the Rhodes Scholarship, which was founded in 1902 to promote international understanding and peace, and is designed to meet the challenges of the 21st century and beyond. Blackstone Co-Founder Stephen A. Schwarzman personally contributed $100 million to the program and is leading a fundraising campaign to raise an additional $350 million from private sources to endow the program in perpetuity. The $450 million endowment will support up to 200 scholars annually from the U.S., China and around the world for a one-year Master’s Degree program at Tsinghua University in Beijing, one of China’s most prestigious universities and an indispensable base for the country’s scientific and technological research. Scholars chosen for this highly selective program will live in Beijing for a year of study and cultural immersion, attending lectures, traveling, and developing a better understanding of China.

Type: Masters Degree

Offered Since: 2015

Eligibility: The following criteria must be met by all candidates:

• Undergraduate degree or first degree from an accredited college or university or its equivalent. Applicants who are currently enrolled in undergraduate degree programs must be on track to successfully complete all degree requirements before orientation begins in 1 August 2023. There are no requirements for a specific field of undergraduate study; all fields are welcome, but it will be important for applicants, regardless of undergraduate major, to articulate how participating in Schwarzman Scholars will help develop their leadership potential within their field.
• Age. Applicants must be at least 18 but not yet 29 years of age as of 1 August 2023
• Citizenship. There are no citizenship or nationality requirements
• English language proficiency. Applicants must demonstrate strong English Language skills, as all teaching will be conducted in English. If the applicant’s native language is not English, official English proficiency test scores must be submitted with the application. Acceptable test options are:
  • Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL PBT)
  • Internet-based Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL iBT)
  • International English Language Testing System (IELTS)
  This requirement is waived for applicants who graduated from an undergraduate institution where the primary language of instruction was English for at least three years of the applicant’s academic program.

Number of Awardees: Up to 200 exceptional men and women will be accepted into the program each year.

Value of Schwarzman Scholars: 

• Semi-finalist interview expenses, such as economy class air or train travel, group meals and one night in a hotel if needed, will be arranged and covered by the program.
• Expenses for successful Schwarzman Scholars are also FULLY covered by the program.
• It will include Tuition and fees, Room and board, Travel to and from Beijing at the beginning and end of the academic year, An in-country study tour,
• Required course books and supplies, Lenovo laptop and smartphone, Health insurance, and
• A modest personal stipend.

Duration of Scholarship: 1 year

How to Apply for Schwarzman Scholars: There is no fee associated with applying to the Schwarzman Scholars program. To apply, you will need to complete and successfully submit an online application form, including all required documents and essays before the deadline date.

Visit the official website (link below) for complete information on how to apply to this scholarship programme.

Visit Schwarzman Scholars Webpage for details