Malaysian government suffers losses in six state elections

Kurt Brown

Six state elections were held in Malaysia on August 12. While the results did not alter the make-up of the national parliament, the election provided a measure of the rising opposition to Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim and his Pakatan Harapan coalition.

Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, centre with Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi, left, and other leaders at UMNO headquarters, Aug. 12, 2023. [AP Photo/Vincent Thian]

Superficially the status quo remains. The ruling coalition retained control of the three more urban and industrialised states of Selangor, Penang and Negeri Sembilan while the opposition Perikatan Nasional coalition consolidated its grip over the rural and largely ethnic Malay states of Kedah, Kelantan and Terengganu.

However, the opposition parties not only increased their seats in the states under their control but made significant inroads into the other three states. Across all six states, the total number of seats contested was 245, with the Perikatan opposition winning 146 seats or 60 percent. At dissolution, the Perikatan opposition held just 35 percent of all seats.

In Selangor, which surrounds the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur, the ruling coalition slumped from 45 to 34 seats while the opposition increased from five to 22 seats. In Penang, Pakatan Harapan went from 35 to 29 seats and in Negeri Sembilan from 35 to 31, while the Perikatan Nasional increased from one to 11 seats, and zero to 5 seats respectively.

Large segments of Malaysian workers and rural poor confront low wages, job insecurity and unemployment, and deteriorating living conditions. The significant swing against Anwar’s coalition points to mounting frustration over the lack of the relief touted in the lead up to last year’s federal election.

Instead, the central policies of the Pakatan Harapan government have been to open the Malaysian economy up to further capital investment, both local and international, and to curtail social spending in line with the demands of finance capital.

In the lead-up to the state election, Anwar unveiled a grandiose plan to restructure the economy to transform Malaysia into “a leader among Asian economies” while ensuring the benefits were shared equitably. In reality, the proposals, including the establishment of a special financial zone in Johor and cuts to the budget deficit, are aimed at attracting foreign investors, while a pittance in handouts was announced for civil servants and low paid workers.

Significantly, due to the lowering of the voting age from 21 to 18, the number of registered voters across all six states increased substantially from 6.9 million in 2018 to 9.8 million, an increase of 2.9 million voters, representing predominantly younger voters.

Young people, however, are among those hardest hit by unemployment and underemployment. Around 40 percent of degree and diploma holders are underemployed in semi-skilled and low-skilled jobs (mostly “sales and services”), according to 2022 job placements data released in June.

According to official statistics, there were 5.6 million graduates in Malaysia in 2021, up from 5.36 million in 2020. On Reddit, a typical comment was: “I didn’t slog my ass 3 years diploma, 4 years degree with RM50,000 student debt just to work minimum wage” at RM1,500 ($US323) per month.

The election campaign was marked by an increased pitch to ethnic Malay chauvinism and Islamic communalism promoted by the political establishment since independence from Britain in 1956. While some 70 percent of voters are ethnic Malays, predominantly Muslims, 23 percent are ethnic Chinese and 7 percent ethnic Indian. Since the 1970s, governments have established preferential policies for Malays in public education, public sector jobs and private businesses.

During the election campaign, the Islamist Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS), the largest member of the opposition coalition, ran a fear-mongering campaign warning that the government would further undermine the privileged position of Malays. It vilified the ethnic-Chinese Democratic Action Party (DAP) within the government coalition in particular.

The government coalition responded in kind. It is an unstable alliance between Anwar’s People’s Justice Party, DAP, and the PAS breakaway AMANAH, with what remains of the United Malays National Organization (UMNO). UMNO, which is steeped in pro-Malay chauvinism, ruled the country from 1956 until 2018 through electoral gerrymander and police state methods.

While Anwar has previously championed more egalitarian policies, he reacted to opposition criticism by doubling down on pro-Malay policies. When asked by an ethnic-Indian student about ending the Malay preferential quota system, he berated her for asking the question and stated that the system would not be abolished.

In reality, the pro-Malay preferences have most benefited the layers of crony Malay businesses and figures associated with UMNO. The widespread corruption was graphically exposed in the scandal related to money laundering and embezzlement of billions of ringgit from the national investment fund, 1MDB, by former UMNO prime minister Najib Razak.

The state elections led to a further rout for UMNO, which went from 41 seats across all six states to just 19. Anwar’s largely ethnic Malay People’s Justice Party (PKR) fell 42 seats to 26, while DAP retained all but one of its seats.

PAS made the greatest gains increasing its seats from 75 to 106 while the other major coalition partner Bersatu, an UMNO breakaway, went from 11 seats to 39. Both PAS and Bersatu made their greatest gains in Selangor, the most populous and industrialised state, contributing a quarter of the country’s GDP. Selangor is also characterised by glaring inequality.

Poverty-level wages are a prominent topic on social media. In May 2022 the minimum monthly wage was raised to RM1,500 but this is far removed from the living wage for a single person of RM2,700 recommended by Bank Negara, the country’s central bank, in 2018 before prices soared.

While average annualised inflation in June decreased to 2.4 percent from 4 percent and higher in 2021 and 2022, food inflation, which hits poorer households, is still elevated at 4.7 percent.

Confronting a deteriorating global economy, the government will impose new burdens on working people. Spelling out his economic plans in July, Anwar declared, “my utmost priority in the near term is to rebuild the country’s fiscal capacity. We are all aware of the national debt situation.” Government debt is more than 60 percent of GDP.

Anwar, who is also finance minister, warned that “without any reforms, we will face a very serious crisis that would undoubtedly affect the country’s structure.” These reforms include scaling back cost-of-living benefits, including through price controls on the cost of electricity and petrol, in favor of a so-called targeted scheme. As part of the government’s first budget, subsidies are capped this year at RM64 billion, significantly lower than the RM80 billion figure in 2022.

In a distorted fashion, the election results not only reflect a growing disaffection with the government but rising social tensions being generated by worsening living conditions for most working people. While the opposition coalition has capitalised by whipping up reactionary communalism, like the government it has nothing to offer the vast majority of the population other than empty promises.

Deepening problems in the global economy

Nick Beams

The four largest economies in the world—the US, China, Japan and Germany—are expressing, in their different ways, the deepening problems developing in the global capitalist economy.

Pedestrians walk past Hong Kong Stock Exchange electronic screen in Hong Kong, Thursday, June 29, 2023. [AP Photo/Louise Delmotte]

At present, attention is mainly focused on China where deflation, lower growth, a growing slump in the property market, a weakening currency, and problems in the shadow banking system have led to increased pressure on the Xi Jinping government to provide some kind of stimulus package.

However, moves by the People’s Bank of China (PBoC) over the past few days to ease financial conditions and provide a boost to the real economy have been generally dismissed as falling far short of what is needed.

Yesterday, the PBoC lowered the one-year prime loan rate by 10 basis points to 3.45 percent. However, in a surprise move, the equivalent five-year rate was kept at 4.2 percent, after projections that both would be cut in a bid to stimulate the housing market.

The chief China economist at Goldman Sachs described the limited move as “quite surprising and frankly it’s a bit puzzling.”

More was expected because of the latest data on the economy which showed that growth in the June quarter was only 0.8 percent compared to the previous three months, under conditions where a deflationary environment seems to be setting in.

Julian Evans-Pritchard chief China economist at Capital Economics, told the Financial Times (FT) the “underwhelming” move by the PBoC meant it was “unlikely to embrace the much larger rate cuts that would be required to revive credit demand.”

Immediately after the decision, Citigroup cut its forecast for Chinese growth this year to 4.7 percent, compared to the official government target of 5 percent. Two other major banks have also cut their growth projections to below 5 percent.

The present marked downturn in the Chinese economy is increasingly being characterised as signifying the end of an era. As the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) put in a recent headline “China’s 40-year Boom is Over. What Comes Next?”

“Economists now believe China is entering an era of much slower growth, made worse by unfavourable demographics and a widening divide with the US and its allies which is jeopardizing foreign investment and trade. Rather than just a period of economic weakness, this could the dimming of a long era,” it said.

Summing up present conditions, it noted: “The outlook has darkened considerably in recent months. Manufacturing activity has contracted, exports have declined, and youth unemployment has reached record highs.”

Over the past decade and more, particularly since the financial crisis of 2008, the Chinese economy has become increasingly reliant on the housing and property market which, when flow-on effects are taken into consideration, accounts for between 25 and 30 percent of GDP.

This growth has been fueled by cheap credit for the property development giants as well as to local government authorities for the development of infrastructure projects. But in mid-2020, fearing debt creation was getting out of control, the government tightened regulations.

This led to a crisis at the property giant Evergrande, now undergoing a restructuring process, as well as the subsequent failure of many other developers. According to the Standard and Poor’s rating agency, more than 50 property developers have either defaulted or failed to make debt payments over the past three years.

Even if credit is eased it will not have the effect it did in the past. It has been estimated that it now takes around $9 of investment to produce a $1 increase in GDP compared to $5 less than a decade ago and $3 in the 1990s.

The worsening Chinese economy raises profound questions for global growth. Even with a lowered rate of expansion, the International Monetary Fund estimated China would account for around 35 percent of global growth this year. That is now called into question under conditions where there is no alternative source.

Certainly it will not come from Europe, where Germany, the world’s fourth largest economy, is expected to be the worst performing leading economy in the world this year. The German economy stagnated in the June quarter after contracting in the previous two.

One of the main reasons for the worsening performance is the downturn in manufacturing which has been hit by rising energy prices because of the US-NATO war in Ukraine. However, its problems go back further.

As the chief economist at the Commerzbank, Jörg Krämer told the FT: “If you take the coronavirus out, the underperformances started in 2017, so the structural issues have been there for quite a while now.”

These include the lack of competitiveness, higher labour costs and losses of market share in the all-important car industry.

A recent survey conducted by Consensus Economics predicted that German GDP would contact by 0.35 percent this year, compared to the growth forecast three months ago.

The world’s third largest economy, Japan, appears to be something of a bright spot. GDP increased by 1.5 percent in the June quarter compared to 0.9 percent over the previous three months. Much of this was due to a rise in exports which have benefited from a fall in the value of the yen in currency market.

But exports may start to decline because of weakness in the US and China. Credit Agricole economist Takuji Aida told the WSJ that the Japanese economic upturn was supported mainly by government stimulus measures.

He warned that “Japan may be swallowed into the darkness of deflation again” if the government spending stopped and the Bank of Japan started to lift interest rates. The latter is in prospect because of the increase in Japanese inflation, now running at 3 percent, and the fall in the value of the yen because of the country’s lower interest rate regime.

In any case, the relatively higher growth rate of the second quarter is not expected to last. According to SMBC Nikko Securities, the economy may contract at an annualised rate of 3 percent in the third quarter because a global economic slowdown will cut exports.

Last week it was reported that Japanese exports in July fell for the first time since February 2021, largely as a result of falling Chinese demand, with shipments to that destination down by 13.4 percent.

The US economy is also not going to provide a path forward with predictions of a slow down or even a recession next year. Even limited growth in the US means the Federal Reserve will maintain its high-interest rate regime, as it seeks to drive down real wages. This threatens further financial instability following three of the four largest banking failures in US history in March.

US test scores decline in history, civics, reading and math

Phyllis Steele

As the school year resumes, educators face huge challenges from “learning loss” among students arising from the ongoing trauma of the pandemic and years of chronic underfunding of public education. With the ending of federal COVID-19 relief funding, many of the already limited tutoring programs and supplemental resources have now evaporated, compounding the problem. 

Three boys reading in a classroom, August, 2013 [Photo: US Department of Edication]

Earlier this summer, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) released the results from its two national standardized tests, the Long-Term Trend (LTT) in reading and mathematics conducted among 13-year-old children and the National Assessment of Education Progress “Report Card” tests for history and civics among eighth grade students. Both tests showed a decline in all four subjects over the last decade.

The 2022-2023 LTT assessment of 13-year-old students showed average test scores dropped 4 points in reading and 9 points in mathematics, compared to the last assessment in 2019-2020. Scores dropped significantly during the pandemic, which both political parties blamed on the shift to remote learning. The report showed, however, that the decline began before the pandemic in 2012. That year witnessed an acceleration of the Obama administration’s Race to the Top campaign promoting charter schools and a deepening attack on educators, as exhibited in the school closures and mass layoffs that occurred after the Chicago Teachers Union’s betrayal of the 2012 strike.

While standardized test results are inherently problematic and have been used as a political weapon to attack public education, there is little doubt that American education is being increasingly bifurcated along class lines. Children of the working class are increasingly subjected to oversized classrooms, the lack of up-to-date facilities or even books and few cultural enrichments. Increasingly, they are slotted into for-profit charter schools or under-resourced public ones.

Moreover, studies have long shown that educational achievement is highly correlated with a family’s socio-economic status. A few statistics on the escalating growth of social inequality can provide a small indication of the social catastrophe occurring in the population, a disaster exponentially compounded by the COVID-19 pandemic and the bipartisan prioritization of the stock market and predatory wars over public health and the needs of society. Children face enormous obstacles in their educational attainment.

• In 2023, among the 74 million children living in the United States, 11 million live in official poverty. This includes one in six children under five (3 million children), the highest rate of any age group. Almost half (47 percent) of all children in poverty live in severe or extreme poverty, a number which rose from 4.5 million before the pandemic to 5.5 million in 2021.
• The current “unwinding” of Medicaid is expected to cut some 22 million people from healthcare, including up to 7.3 million children, thousands of which have already lost coverage.
• In February 2022, Democratic President Joe Biden reduced food stamps across the board affecting 42 million Americans, all of them poor and many of them children. The average per capita payment fell to $6.10 a day, or about $2 a meal.
• In 2021, Democratic President Joe Biden ended the expanded Child Tax Credits, measures throwing some 30 million families into poverty. 
• The government’s criminal disregard for the health and safety of the population during the pandemic has resulted in some 359,486 children losing a parent or primary caregiver; hundreds of thousands more suffer from the loss of other relatives and friends. 
• With over 96.3 percent of US children having had COVID-19 at least once, the far-ranging issues associated with Long COVID, including the alarming dangers of COVID-19 brain damage are unknown.

The combined effect of poverty, illness and death upon children is literally incalculable. The continued fall in education levels across the board is the inevitable outcome of such socially regressive measures.

The LTT scores in reading and math declined across all performance percentiles, though the largest declines were among the lowest performing students. Scores among students in the bottom 25th and 10th percentiles declined 5 and 7 points, respectively, while they declined by 3 and 4 points for students in the 90th and 75th percentiles, respectively. Math scores declined even more sharply.  

NCES commissioner Peggy Carr emphasized that the lack of “basic skills” is “troubling.” Compared to the first LTT assessment in 1971, reading scores for the lowest 10th percentile have decreased by 6 points and by 1 point for the 25th percentile, while scores for the 50th, 75th and 90th percentiles have eked up by only 1, 3 and 5 points, respectively.

In May, the NCES also released results of its 2022 NAEP “Report Card” tests in history and civics among eighth grade students. Those results showed that average scores in history decreased by 5 points compared to 2018 and 9 points compared to 2014, bringing the average score back to the 1994 level when the test was first introduced. By the NCES standards, only 13 percent of eighth grade students are “proficient” in history, while 40 percent are below “basic” level.

In addition to the scores themselves, student surveys conducted alongside the tests show that fewer eighth grade students reported taking a class devoted to US history than in 2018. The percentage of 13-year-olds reporting that they read every day for fun has declined precipitously, a fall of 13 percentage points compared to 2012.

While the two tests administered by the NCES, the LTT and the Report Cards, are methodologically different and not directly comparable, the common backward trend highlights the serious consequences of decades of bipartisan attacks against public education. The scores indicate that in more than 50 years—two generations—the literacy of 13-year-old children has not significantly improved.

In addition to the worrying trends in basic literacy and numeracy skills, the declines in civics and history are particularly significant. Carr stated that “too many of our students are struggling to understand and explain the importance of civic participation, how American government works and the historical significance of events.”  As one example, 55 percent of students incorrectly answered a question which tested understanding of the electoral college in a presidential election.

In another example, only 6 percent of students completed a two-part question on the following portion of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech delivered at the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963: “In a sense we’ve come to our nation’s capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a [promise] to which every American was to fall heir.”

The students were asked to first: “Identify two ideas from the Constitution and/or the Declaration of Independence that King might have been referring to in his speech.” Next the students were asked to “Explain why King might have referred to ideas from the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence in his speech.”

The failure to identify King’s references to the egalitarian concepts in the founding documents of the US, including “all men are created equal,” is highly significant. Every major American city has a street and school named after King yet his signature speech is not known or understood enough to garner a response from 94 percent of those who took the national test.

The inability of students to respond to such questions also reflects the damaging impact of the distortions of American history and attacks on historical truth coming from all sides of the political establishment.

This includes the 1619 Project, launched in 2019 by the New York Times in line with the Democratic Party, which sought to re-write American history through the prism of a supposed unending racial struggle. Tellingly, the 1619 Project did not even refer to Martin Luther King Jr. Seeking to capitalize on the flagrant lies, distortions and omissions of “The 1619 Project,” the far right, centered around the former Trump administration, put forward its fascistic 1776 Report. Both documents in their own ways sought to excise the democratic and revolutionary content from the American Revolution and the Civil War and in doing so disorient and disarm the present struggles of the working class for social equality.

Just as occurred last year when the LTT assessments among 9-year-olds showed a decline in reading and math, the political establishment and corporate media have used the results to insist there will be no more school closures despite the continuing spread of COVID-19. However, commenting on reports published last year, Carr noted, “There’s nothing in this data that tells us that there is a measurable difference in the performance between states and districts based solely on how long schools were closed.”

The attacks against public education, public health and historical truth are all indications of the massive social and cultural retrogression at the hands of world capitalism, centered in the United States.

US-backed candidate Bernardo Arévalo wins presidential vote in Guatemala

Andrea Lobo

Bernardo Arévalo, a candidate promoted by the pseudo-left and US imperialism alike, won the presidential runoff elections in Guatemala on Sunday with 58 percent of the vote against Sandra Torres, a former first lady who was backed by most of the Guatemalan political establishment. 

Guatemala's president-elect Bernardo Arévalo. [Photo by Sandra Sebastián, openDemocracy / CC BY 4.0]

A figure largely unknown to the general population, the former diplomat and legislator Arévalo was seen as a default option to express popular anger against the traditional political forces that have ruled since the end of the civil war and supposed “transition to democracy” in 1996. 

Arévalo’s votes came predominantly from the urban middle class and sections of the working class, including 75 percent of votes in the capital Guatemala City.

The election was marked by an open attempt by sections of the state and fascist groups backed by the incumbent Alejandro Giammattei administration to disqualify Arévalo’s Semilla party and overturn the elections, among other irregularities.

Three top candidates had been disqualified on spurious grounds, and the first round witnessed numerous reports of vote buying, the burning of ballots, police repression and violence against electoral officials. Subsequently, the courts allowed prosecutors and the police to pursue an unconstitutional criminal investigation against Semilla over signatures and financing, leading to several raids against the electoral court and the party’s offices. 

Torres, who has refused to acknowledge her defeat, resorted to deranged anti-communist and bigoted propaganda previously employed by the far-right against her own two previous presidential campaigns. Her statements included calling Semilla members “Communists” who are “all effeminate and a bunch of sons of b******.”

Despite the fascistic threats, Arévalo rallied only limited active support and responded by making assurances that his administration would not impinge on the interests of the business elites and by decrying gay marriage and abortion. 

Protests against the coup threats were scattered and small. Moreover, 55 percent of the eligible voters abstained in the second round, similar to the percentage that abstained or cast blank and null ballots during the first round. 

Whatever popular illusions exist in Arévalo among young workers and professionals, they are the product of the efforts by the pseudo-left, the international corporate media and the US State Department to promote Semilla as “progressive.”

Several corporate outlets like the Washington Post and El Pais wrote that his election would bring about a new “democratic spring,” evoking the mass popular upsurge in 1944 that led to the first popularly elected president in the country, headed by Arévalo’s father Juan José.

There is absolutely no basis for describing Arévalo and Semilla as a left, democratic or progressive alternative to the clientelism of Guatemala’s ruling elite, whose subordination to foreign capital and US imperialism is the main cause of the rampant poverty, inequality, authoritarianism and corruption that characterize Guatemalan social life. 

Even the so-called “democratic spring” under J.J. Arévalo and his successor Jacobo Arbenz, who unlike Bernardo came to power based upon a program of democratic, agrarian and social reforms, proved most fundamentally that there is no peaceful or reformist road for the masses in Guatemala and other semi-colonial countries to secure their democratic and social rights. 

The CIA, which today backs Semilla, orchestrated the overthrow of Arbenz in 1954, which led to three decades of military dictatorships. 

At the time, the main role in disarming the Guatemalan working class against US imperialism and the comprador bourgeoisie was played by the Stalinist Guatemalan Workers Party (PGT), which had been founded in 1944 according to the Moscow bureaucracy’s popular front politics, orienting openly to an alliance of “the working class, the peasants, the patriotic sector of the national bourgeoisie and the petty bourgeoisie.” 

The PGT joined the Arbenz regime and advocated solely for capitalist reforms, rejecting any struggle for workers’ power and socialism. Arbenz then refused to arm the workers to resist the coup. 

By 1958, the PGT was backing the military regime on the basis of a “national conciliation” where “Guatemalans from the right and the left, conservative or Communist can live together.” Following the 1959 Cuban Revolution and the ruthless repression against left-wing workers, peasants and intellectuals in Guatemala, the PGT dissolved itself into suicidal guerrilla bands, which were swiftly crushed by the US-trained military and police death squads. The repression involved a genocidal campaign against Mayan Indians. 

The remnants of the Stalinist and Maoist guerrillas and indigenous nationalist groups then transformed themselves into bourgeois parties and joined the state bureaucracy after the 1996 “peace” accords, which assured impunity for the military’s war criminals and left untouched the power of the traditional land-owning, banking and commercial oligarchy backed by imperialism. 

The coalition of the ex-guerrilla URNG-Maiz and the indigenous nationalist Winaq party endorsed Arévalo, along with the Central American Socialist Party (PSOCA) and other pseudo-left organizations. The Morenoite International Workers League (LIT) and La Izquierda Diario stopped short of openly endorsing Semilla, but falsely presented the party as “center-left” and “reformist” and concealed the pro-imperialist record of Arévalo and his party.

In backing Arévalo, the pseudo-left organizations of the middle class are repeating the role played by the PGT of politically disarming the working class, even as the Guatemalan ruling class and US imperialism resort increasingly to the armed forces and dictatorial forms of rule to suppress the class struggle and intensify capitalist exploitation.

The main reason behind the opposition of sections of the ruling elite to Arévalo is the association of his party to the International Commission against Impunity (CICIG), a US-financed and UN-backed agency that pursued select corruption cases to whip the ruling elite into line behind Washington’s political diktats. 

Despite the successful drive by the oligarchy to get rid of the CICIG in 2019, the Giammattei administration continued to follow US demands subserviently, including military deployments to attack migrants, the opening of a pilot office in Guatemala where migrants will be compelled to request asylum to the US, maintaining diplomatic relations with Taiwan, and maintaining its embassy in Jerusalem. 

But nothing short of political pawns is enough for US imperialism in an international context of economic instability, the US-NATO war against Russia and war preparations against China. And Arévalo has given every indication that he plans to double down on enforcing US diktats. Semilla itself was founded only after consultations with Democrat and Republican officials, on the basis of supporting the CICIG. Moreover, Giammattei has opposed ending relations with Taiwan and has demanded sanctions against the Russian government and firms.

Even an interviewer of France24 acknowledged that “Arévalo has been described as the most progressive candidate while Sandra Torres has dubbed herself a Liberal, but in practice both candidates are conservatives.” She then asked Eduardo Núñez Vargas, the Central American chief of the National Democratic Institute (NDI) “Was Arévalo’s victory really a punishment for the Guatemalan political establishment?”

After praising Arévalo’s anti-corruption rhetoric, Núñez Vargas insisted that what matters was that Arévalo channeled anti-establishment sentiments with success and, it could be added, with the complicit aid of the pseudo-left. 

“From what we saw from his campaign, Arévalo is disposed to have a greater proximity” to Washington, he concluded. The NDI is part of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which was created to carry out overtly the political operations that the CIA previously directed covertly, including training and bankrolling US puppets across Latin America. 

For his part, Stephen McFarland, US ambassador to Guatemala under Obama, openly backed Arévalo on social media and, in an interview with Prensa Comunitaria, said that he enjoys broad bipartisan support in the US Congress. “This means that the argument that Arévalo is supposedly a dangerous leftist has gained no traction or echoed among more-or-less conservative circles in Washington,” he explained. 

“The United States has been less successful in using its influence or making its influence have an impact in the Central American countries, including Guatemala, in recent years,” he added, pointing to hopes that Arévalo will facilitate a change in favor of US imperialism. 

Then, McFarland made clear that the US government strong-armed the Guatemalan ruling elite to allow for the election of Semilla warning that, “if a judicial coup does take place against the runoff candidates, I expect some sort of sanctions.”

Netherlands and Denmark deliver F-16 fighter jets to Kiev

Johannes Stern

Last weekend, the first European deliveries of F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine were announced. According to reports, the Netherlands will provide 42 and Denmark will send 19 F-16 fighter jets. Further pledges from other NATO members are to follow. The so-called fighter jet coalition, which was formed in May, officially also includes Belgium and Britain.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, second right, and Dutch caretaker Prime Minister Mark Rutte, center, look at F-16 fighter jets in Eindhoven, Netherlands, Sunday, August 20, 2023. On Friday, the Netherlands and Denmark said that the United States had given its approval for the countries to deliver F-16s to Ukraine. [AP Photo/Peter Dejong]

The deliveries are a concerted action by the leading imperialist powers—first and foremost the US—which are further escalating the confrontation with the nuclear power Russia. The Danish-Dutch push to deliver nuclear-capable fighter jets to Kiev was long prepared behind the scenes and closely coordinated with the Biden administration in Washington.

“The president has given a green light, and we will allow, permit, support, facilitate and, in fact, provide the necessary tools for Ukrainians to begin being trained on F-16s, as soon as the Europeans are prepared,” US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said on CNN’s “State of the Union” program on Sunday.

Since then, there has been one announcement after another. On Monday, Greece offered to train Ukrainian pilots on F-16 fighter jets. During his visit to Athens, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky thanked Greece for the offer, which he “gladly” accepted. “We need Greece’s support in preparing our pilots to fly F-16s,” he said after a meeting with Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis.

Zelensky described the F-16 commitments as “historic.” The jets would “bring fresh confidence and motivation to the fighters and ordinary citizens,” he wrote on Twitter on Monday. He had already thanked Denmark for its F-16 pledges on Sunday in the course of a visit to that country. “I thank you, Denmark, for helping Ukraine to become invincible,” he said in a speech to the Danish parliament. “Today we are confident that Russia will lose this war.”

In fact, the current Ukrainian “counter-offensive” is a military debacle. Tens of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers have reportedly lost their lives in the last three months alone, and there have been no significant territorial gains. In the face of these setbacks, the leading NATO powers are once again massively expanding their direct involvement in the war, risking the danger of nuclear war.

“The fact that Denmark has now decided to donate 19 F-16 aircraft to Ukraine leads to an escalation of the conflict,” Russian Ambassador Vladimir Barbin said in a statement. “By hiding behind a premise that Ukraine itself must determine the conditions for peace, Denmark seeks with its actions and words to leave Ukraine with no other choice but to continue the military confrontation with Russia.”

In mid-July, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned that the delivery of F-16 fighter jets would be seen as a “nuclear threat.” The Russian Foreign Ministry quoted him as saying, “Russia cannot ignore the ability of these aircraft to carry nuclear weapons. No amount of assurances will help here.”

Lavrov continued: “In the course of combat operations, our servicemen are not going to sort out whether each particular aircraft of this type is equipped to deliver nuclear weapons or not.” Russia would “regard the very fact that the Ukrainian armed forces have such systems as a threat from the West in the nuclear sphere.”

The assurances of Ukraine and its supporters that F-16 fighter jets and other Western weapons systems will not be used directly on Russian territory are mendacious and provocative in every respect.

For one thing, the representatives of the imperialist powers are already cheering Kiev’s constant attacks on Russia. On Tuesday, Germany’s Green Party Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock described Ukrainian drone attacks on the Russian capital Moscow as legitimate. “Ukraine is defending itself within the framework of international law,” Baerbock claimed at a press conference in Berlin with her Estonian counterpart Margus Tsahkna.

Secondly, the use of F-16 fighter jets against the territories occupied and annexed by Russia in eastern Ukraine would be no less incendiary. From the Russian leadership’s point of view, this is “Russian territory.” Above all, the Kremlin considers a full-scale attack on Crimea to be a “red line.”

In an interview in early February, Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman and former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev warned that an attempt by Ukraine to retake the peninsula would have devastating consequences. “In this case, there will be no negotiations, only retaliatory strikes,” Medvedev said. The Russian leadership was “ready to use all types of weapons,” he continued, adding, “In accordance with our doctrinal documents, including the Fundamentals of Nuclear Deterrence,” the answer would be “quick, tough and convincing.”

Despite these threats, the escalation of Western arms deliveries is aimed precisely at that—the reconquest of Crimea. “The most important goal of the Ukrainian summer offensive” is to “cut off the land bridge connecting Russia with the occupied Crimean Peninsula and thus cut off the supply routes and the deployment area of Russian troops in the south,” said a commentary in the Süddeutsche Zeitung.

To achieve this, Britain and France “have already delivered cruise missiles that reach far into Crimea.” The newspaper continued: “Germany should follow suit as soon as possible; the F-16s would also be valuable here, as well as for airspace defence.” Only through the “interaction of long-range weapons against logistics and troops at the front” could “Ukraine succeed without sacrificing tens of thousands of its soldiers.”

A commentary in Die Zeit under the title “No peace without Crimea” is even more explicit. “The strategy of the Ukrainian military could be to turn the peninsula into a kind of island for Russia by attacking its infrastructure,” the newspaper wrote.

Should Ukraine “advance to the administrative border with Crimea in the course of the current counter-offensive in the south and finally destroy the bridge over the Kerch Strait, which has already been successfully attacked twice,” it continued, “the entire territory of Crimea ... would be within reach of those weapons systems that Ukraine is already using.”

The article quoted Ukrainian military officials openly advocating an area bombardment of Crimea, including to break opposition from the local, majority Russian-speaking population.

It cited Oleksij Melnyk, a retired lieutenant colonel in the Ukrainian army who works in the field of international security for the Kiev think tank Zentr Razumkova, as saying, “Rationally speaking, fighting directly in Crimea must be avoided.” It would be “very bloody, especially in mountainous areas in the south of the peninsula—and realistically one would also have to reckon with some resistance from the local population.”

It is clear that the announcement of the F-16 fighter jets will be followed by the delivery of medium-range missiles with an even longer range. Military experts are “largely in agreement,” writes Der Spiegel. “The F-16 would give the Ukrainians advantages in air combat. However, it depends on the armament that comes with it.” Berlin is now “in demand.”

It goes on to say that Germany “does not have F-16s, but it could supply missiles.” A sensible contribution would be to “equip the Dutch and Danish F-16s for Ukraine with Taurus cruise missiles.”

With leading politicians and the media beating the drum for weeks for Taurus deliveries, an official announcement is seen as only a matter of time. Asked on Tuesday whether she would now push for a quick decision on such a delivery, Baerbock declared: “That every day counts, I believe we have had to experience in the last year-and-a-half not only impressively, but in a brutal way.”

While the ruling class in Germany, which already waged two murderous wars against Russia in the 20th century, is spearheading the war offensive, resistance is growing among the population. According to a recent survey by broadcaster ARD, 52 percent of eligible voters in Germany are against the delivery of Taurus cruise missiles to Ukraine, and only 36 percent are in favour. The delivery of German fighter jets is opposed by 64 percent.

West African states reiterate threat of military action against Niger, but are hampered by divisions

Thomas Scripps

Leaders of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) met in the Ghanaian capital Accra Thursday and Friday to discuss their response to the coup in Niger. The bloc insists Niger’s new military leaders led by Abdourahamane Tchiani reinstate President Mohamed Bazoum, currently held hostage. It has threatened military action as a last resort.

After a series of abandoned ultimatums, delayed meetings and open divisions among member states, ECOWAS Commissioner for Political Affair, Peace and Stability Abdel-Fatau Musah aimed to project a firmer stance. He told the assembled leaders Thursday, “If everything else fails, the valiant forces of West Africa are ready to answer to the call of duty.”

Mohamed Bazoum, President of Niger from 2021 until the 2023 coup [Photo by Benhamayemohamed - Own work / CC BY-SA 4.0]

Citing previous ECOWAS interventions in the Gambia and Liberia, Musah warned, “If push comes to shove we are going into Niger with our own contingents and equipment and our own resources to make sure we restore constitutional order.”

In a veiled reference to the US, Fance and other imperialist powers, he added, “If other democratic partners want to support us they are welcome.”

He claimed all of the bloc’s members, bar Cape Verde and those under military rule in Guinea, Mali and Burkina Faso, had agreed to provide troops. Ivory Coast’s President Alassane Ouattara has publicly committed 1,100 soldiers. Sierra Leone, Senegal and Benin have also indicated their support.

Significant obstacles stand in the way of a military intervention, however. Guinea, Mali and Burkina Faso have not just refused to provide troops to ECOWAS, they have pledged military support to Niger in any conflict. The governments in Liberia and the Gambia have so far refrained from backing an intervention.

Although not aligning themselves with Niger, many countries in the African Union oppose military action. At a reportedly “difficult” meeting of its Peace and Security Capital in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa on Monday, members rejected the proposed ECOWAS intervention. Several countries in northern and southern Africa were “fiercely against”, according to one diplomat speaking to French media.

There are also domestic divisions affecting ECOWAS members. The Nigerian senate has refused to endorse military action by the bloc’s most powerful country, urging a diplomatic solution.

Opposition figures in the Ghanaian parliament have called on President Nana Akufo-Addo to halt preparations for an intervention. Foreign Affairs Committee member Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa told the BBC that the president “lacks a mandate from the Ghanaian people in this regard... We firmly believe that resorting to military intervention is not the optimal course of action.”

Reporting from the ECOWAS meeting for France 24, Justice Baidoo commented Friday that it was “very difficult to get any information from a lot of the ECOWAS officials who are here. On one hand they say that they are very settled in that this action is going to happen. On another they are unable to tell when and how that is going to happen.”

The coup leaders in Niger have felt strengthened, announcing their intention put Bazoum on trial for high treason. From Saturday, civilians over the age of 18 will be encouraged to sign up to a Volunteers for the Defence of Niger organisation to help fight an invasion.

Divisions over a military intervention by ECOWAS reflect serious concerns in African governments that the consequences would destabilise their rule. Niger occupies a pivotal position in the Sahel region which has been wracked by conflicts with non-state armed groups for over a decade.

Rooted in the poverty of the region, the lack of jobs for a rapidly growing population, competition over scare water reserves and pastures, a spur was given to the growth of these groups by an influx of NATO’s Islamist proxies from the war on Libya in 2011. Over 6,000 civilians were killed by these forces in the Western Sahel in 2021, and 9,000 in 2022. Over two million people have been internally displaced by the violence of the last decade, and nearly half a million are refugees in neighbouring countries.

Any war would massively worsen the situation, creating more refugees and the conditions for militias to spread across the region.

Niger [Photo by Peter Fitzgerald / CC BY-SA 4.0]

The economic disruption would also compound raging social crises in multiple West African states. Inflation in Ghana is over 40 percent, while interest payments on government debt were until recently consuming over 70 percent of revenues, forcing a default and $3 billion IMF bailout and restructuring programme. This will involve mostly regressive tax rises lifting the price of water, electricity and fuel, plus reductions in government spending.

Inflation in Nigeria is at an 18-year high of 24 percent following economic reforms demanded by international investors. The country’s central statistics agency noted “increases in prices of oil and fat, bread and cereals, fish, potatoes, yam and other tubers, fruits, meat, vegetable, milk, cheese, and eggs.” Its population shares close cultural and economic ties with Niger and is broadly opposed to any conflict.

Given that persistent violence and economic distress are the main sources of the popular discontent which military leaders have exploited to act against their governments in recent years, any intervention could have the opposite effect to its stated goal of dissuading coups in the region, with ECOWAS leaders’ necks on the line.

West African governments and their military chiefs both fear a genuinely popular uprising in which mass anti-imperialist sentiment and social discontent is turned against the entire ruling class, complicit in the exploitation of the population by foreign powers.

For the same reasons the imperialist countries, except for France, have been circumspect in supporting a military intervention in Niger. The United States and the European powers have repeatedly expressed concern at the rising influence of both China and Russia in a resource rich and strategically located region. But with ECOWAS divided, they are worried about its ability to advance their interests in a region where political turmoil has given Russia’s Wagner mercenary group the chance to establish a presence.

The Western powers would undoubtedly prefer to see Bazoum back in the saddle, having invested billions of dollars in military training and various forms of “aid” in Niger in the last decade. To that end they have suspended aid programmes and endorsed ECOWAS’s blockade and sanctions, to devastating effect on what is already one of the world’s poorest countries.

The US has supported ECOWAS’s threat of measures up to and including military action but talk of military action is at this point still bound with caveats regarding first seeking a diplomatic solution. Kathleen FitzGibbon has been sent to Nigerien capital Niamey as America’s first active ambassador in the country in two years, following an earlier and unsuccessful visit by Deputy Secretary of State Victoria Nuland.

This could change rapidly if Washington is convinced that a military intervention could be successful. But to date the US State Department has refrained from officially designating the military takeover in Niger a coup while it works out the future of its military presence in the country. Pentagon press secretary Sabrina Singh commented bluntly Tuesday, “We have assets and interests in the region, and our main priority is protecting those interests and protecting those of our allies… a [coup] designation … certainly changes what we’d be able to do in the region, and how we’d be able to partner with the Nigerien military.”

Those assets include 1,100 soldiers and a $100 million air base in the north of the country used as the base of operations for US drone flights in West Africa. Sources told the CNN broadcaster, in its words, “If a coup determination is made, administration officials have also explored the possibility of issuing a waiver to allow certain US military activities to continue.”

UK wage growth cannot conceal escalating cost-of-living surge and social inequality

Robert Stevens

A slew of media coverage aping Conservative government propaganda is claiming that the cost-of-living crisis is coming to an end, with a fall in inflation married to record pay increases.

The BBC reported August 15 under the headline “UK wages grow at record rate” that from April to June, “Regular pay rose by 7.8%, the highest annual growth rate since comparable records began in 2001.”

A section of the March 15, 2023 strike rally in London

But this still leaves wage growth to June lower than the rate of inflation.

The government’s preferred measure, the Consumer Prices Index (CPI), stood at 7.9 percent in June, falling to 6.8 percent in July, primarily due to a fall in gas and electric energy prices following a 17 percent cut to Ofgem’s energy price cap. The more accurate Retail Prices Index (RPI) stood at 10.7 percent in June, since falling to 9 percent.

Headline inflation figures in any case give a distorted picture as the costs of basics, including food prices, are still surging. The House of Commons Library reported this month, “Food prices have also been rising sharply over the past year and were 14.8% higher in July 2023 compared with a year before, down from the 45-year high of 19.1% set in March 2023. Over the two years from July 2021 to July 2023 food prices rose by 29.3%. It previously took over 13 years, from February 2008 to July 2021, for average food prices to rise by the same amount.”

The speed of some of the increases is astounding. According to the Office for National Statistics Retail Price Index figures, the cost of an 800-gram loaf of bread rose by 9 pence from February to March from an already high £1.31 on average to £1.40, a nearly 7 percent increase in just one month.

A survey by the Which? consumer group, shared with the Guardian and released this week, found that over the past two years the price of milk rose by 36.4 percent, cheese by 35.2 percent, butters and spreads by 32.2 percent, and bakery items by 30.3 percent. Vegetable prices rose 19.1 percent, meat prices by nearly a quarter (23.6 percent), while savoury pies, pastries and quiches shot up by 26.2 percent. Juice drinks and smoothies rose by 28.6 percent.

In June, Which? reported that the cost of a staple meal in a UK household—fish fingers, chips and beans—had increased by 24 percent, from £3.06 (76p per portion) to £3.79 (95p per portion), in the three months March-May 2023, compared to the same three-month period in 2022. The price of baked beans rose by an average of 36 percent across all brands. Among leading brands, price-gouging rises are often much greater as firms ramp up profits. Which? noted, “HP Baked Beans in a Rich Tomato Sauce (415g) went from 54p to 95p at Asda [supermarket]—a hike of 77%.”

The rising costs of basic goods do not impact the most affluent in society, hitting the working class disproportionately. According to Resolution Foundation think tank research, poorer families are most affected by surging food prices as they spend a far greater share of their family budgets on food (14 percent) compared to the highest-income households (9 percent).

The choice for many people is now between paying off utility bills or feeding their families. The Guardian reported that research by the StepChange debt charity “found one in seven people had recently skipped meals or gone without a healthy diet in order to keep up with credit repayments—rising to nearly one in three for those on universal credit.”

Another critical element of the cost-of-living crisis is that facing mortgage payers and renters. Both have been hammered by the Bank of England raising interest rates for 14 consecutive months, massively increasing borrowing costs. Last month’s rise in rates by 25 basis points to 5.25 percent—their highest level in 15 years—kept millions in financial distress. It is widely expected that rates will rise again to 5.5 percent at the Bank’s next meeting in September. Renters saw their costs rise by 5.3 percent in the 12 months to July—the highest annual growth rate since UK-wide records began in 2016.

The claim of “record” wage rises across the economy is also incorrect as those already in the highest-paying sectors are seeing wages grow faster than the rest. By some distance the highest wage growth was in the finance and business services sector, at 9.4 percent.

Most of the 7.8 percent growth in wages in the quarter to the end of June was accounted for by the one-off bonus payment made to over 1 million National Health Service staff.

After 40 years of Thatcherite policies carried out by successive governments, much of Britain is de-industrialised and an economic wasteland. Most growth remains centred on London and the south east of England. The Financial Times reported last month, “UK pay growth since the start of the pandemic has been strongest for top earners in London, leading to a widening of regional inequalities, according to analysis released on Tuesday by a leading think-tank.”

The newspaper cited the Institute for Fiscal Studies which found that “between February 2020 and May 2023 mean earnings for employees living in the UK capital had increased by 5 per cent, after adjusting for inflation, to £4,400 a month before tax. Many areas within commuting distance of London had also seen pay increases of more than 4.5 per cent—far above the average national increase of 2.7 per cent.”

Despite the rosy predictions of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and the media that the cost of living is set to fall dramatically, the Office for Budget Responsibility forecast only in March that household disposable income would continue to fall, by 5.7 percent over the two financial years 2022-23 and 2023-24. This would represent the largest two-year fall since records began in 1956-57.

It predicts that income inequality measured by the Gini coefficient will rise every year and could reach a record high of 40.8 percent by 2027-2028.

Any temporary growth in income pales into insignificance when compared to the off-the-scale accumulation of wealth by UK billionaires who have amassed an identifiable £683 billion between them—equivalent to almost 30 percent of the UK’s annual £2.2 trillion GDP. Between 2020 and 2023, the wealth of the billionaire oligarchy rose by almost £180 billion.

Further investigation of the wage figures provides a devastating indictment of the trade union bureaucracy’s role in enforcing real-terms pay cuts. The private sector saw pay growth of 8.2 percent, significantly above the much more heavily unionised public sector at 6.2 percent.

In the last 40 years, union membership has collapsed in the UK, with just 22 percent of the UK’s 33 million strong labour force in a union. Trades Union Congress-affiliated unions have lost over 250,000 members over the last two years. According to an analysis this month by the TUC, just 12 percent of workers in the private sector are in a union. Union membership in the public sector is 48.6 percent, having fallen below 50 percent for the first time.