COVID-19 pandemic continues to pose major challenge for healthcare system across Canada

Dylan Lubao

Over four years after the first recorded case of COVID-19 in Canada, the disease remains a major fixture in the social and political life of the country and the world. Although infection, hospitalization, and death rates have declined since the recent winter wave, very little stands in the way of a major resurgence of the pandemic.

Victoria Hospital in Ontario, Canada. [Photo by Nephron / CC BY-SA 3.0]

The federal and provincial governments have dismantled all COVID-19 public health measures as part of their “profits before life” policy of protecting the economic interests of the corporations and the wealthy. As a result, the SARS-COV-2 virus continues to infect tens of thousands of Canadians every week, killing dozens and afflicting hundreds with the debilitating effects of Long COVID.

Because of the governments’ information blackout on the pandemic, the task of informing the public of the continued threat of COVID-19 has fallen to civil society groups like COVID-19 Resources Canada, which publishes weekly data sets and risk assessments.

According to the group’s most recent figures, around 32,600 Canadians were infected with COVID-19 on March 16, the latest date for which they had access to official data. The group estimates the true number to be closer to 42,600 based on wastewater data, which itself only covers half of the population. Roughly 2.28 percent of the population, or more than one in 50 people, is currently infected with the virus, predominantly the JN.1 variant.

From March 3 to March 9, there were 54 official deaths from COVID-19 in Canada. However, the group estimates that the government only reports 61 percent of COVID-19 deaths. This would put the actual number at 90 deaths in just under one week. By comparison, federal government data shows influenza deaths at roughly five per week.

The discrepancy between the sanitized official pandemic death toll and that compiled by COVID-19 Resources Canada illustrates the immense cover-up conducted by every level of government in Canada.

Officially, 51,710 Canadians have died of COVID-19 since January 2020. Taking into account the government’s reporting rate of 61 percent, the true number of people killed by the capitalist “profits before life” policy is 84,389, a number roughly equivalent to the population of the city of Peterborough, Ontario.

In effect, over 32,000 COVID-19 dead have simply been “disappeared,” their families told a mixture of official lies and half-truths to conceal the fact that their deaths were entirely preventable. 

In the initial phase of the pandemic, the federal Liberal government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau pursued a mitigation policy of letting the virus spread while disbursing vaccines and providing some meagre financial benefits to the working population. Following the first lockdown in the spring of 2020, the trade unions joined the Liberal government in enforcing a vicious back-to-work campaign, which led to hundreds of thousands of infections and thousands of deaths. This policy was designed to allow workers to continue to work, churning out profits for the banks and corporations.

While several smaller Atlantic provinces temporarily implemented an elimination policy that dropped infection rates to near zero and initially saved countless lives, the most populous provinces, like Ontario, Quebec, British Columbia, and Alberta allowed the virus to run rampant. Every political party, from the supposedly progressive New Democratic Party (NDP) and Quebec Solidaire (QS) to the arch-reactionary Conservative Party and Bloc Quebecois, fundamentally support these policies and have implemented them where they hold office.

This turned nursing homes and hospitals into killing fields. COVID-19 became the third-leading cause of death in 2022 after heart disease and cancer. With the emergence of the highly transmissible and virulent Omicron variant at the end of 2021, this policy also ensured that the vast majority of the Canadian population contracted the disease.

Life expectancy declined for the third straight year in 2022, a byproduct of the capitalist response to the pandemic. Statistics Canada’s analysis showed a staggering decline of one year between 2019 and 2022, from 82.3 to 81.3 years. Some provinces like Saskatchewan saw even larger declines of two years during the same period, from 80.5 to 78.5.

After the far-right “Freedom” Convoy provided the federal and provincial governments with the pretext to dismantle what little remained of COVID-19 safety precautions and testing capacity in early 2022, absolutely nothing has stood in the way of the spread of the disease.

COVID-19 Resources Canada notes that their pandemic forecast is the lowest it’s been since the emergence of the Omicron variant. However, the risk level remains “High” for the country as a whole, and some provinces like Saskatchewan have risk levels of “Very High.” At the time of publication, infections were up 3 percent nationwide compared to the previous report. The effects of spring break travel will likely drive up these numbers in the weeks to come.

The mass murderers on Parliament Hill and in the provincial capitals, and their media accomplices, remain tight-lipped about the ongoing impact of Long COVID, widely recognized by principled epidemiologists as a “pandemic within a pandemic.”

About 1,977 people developed Long COVID on March 15, according to the COVID-19 Resources Canada report. This is down from 4,152 on the first day of the year, but still over ten times higher than the lowest point of the pandemic. To date, an estimated 3.5 million Canadians have experienced long-term symptoms following a bout of COVID-19.

Long COVID, otherwise known as Post COVID-19 Condition, covers a multitude of symptoms, including fatigue, shortness of breath, and cognitive dysfunction. The exact nature of this lingering malaise is still being researched but is often characterized as symptoms that persist or re-emerge twelve weeks after the initial infection phase. Some estimates put the Long COVID affliction rate at between 4 and 10 percent of all those who contract COVID-19.

Government support for those suffering from Long COVID is sparse and inconsistent. The indifference shown by governments at all levels towards a debilitating illness that has affected upwards of 10 percent of the population is no less criminal than the murderous policy of allowing COVID-19 to spread in the first place.

To date, the federal government has pledged a measly $29 million over five years to fund research into Long COVID and support those suffering from it. Meanwhile, an estimated 40 percent of those with Long COVID symptoms have reported difficulties with accessing relevant healthcare, according to a December 2023 Statistics Canada report. They have desperately resorted to informal sources like social media for assistance in diagnosing and treating their symptoms.

In contrast, the NDP-backed Liberal Trudeau government has allocated billions of dollars for war, including over $13 billion in economic and military aid for the far-right Ukrainian regime in the US-NATO war on Russia. This is on top of the $36.3 billion that Canada spent on defence in the 2022/2023 fiscal year.

The knock-on effects of the government’s “profits before life” pandemic policy are felt across society. Thousands of nurses and other healthcare workers have left their professions, citing burnout and dangerous working conditions. The shortage of family doctors, exacerbated by the pandemic, affects millions of Canadian households and has led to inundated hospital emergency rooms, which were already reeling due to the stresses caused by the pandemic. Measles, long considered an eliminated disease, is surging, with 31 infections so far this year as of March 16, the largest annual total since 2019 and more than double the total number of cases reported in 2022.

Slowing global economy intensifying economic war against China

Nick Beams

The drums of economic war, what used to be called trade war, are beating louder than ever.

Organisations, governments and the corporate media—which once maintained that free trade was the road to a peaceful global economic order and trade war had to be averted lest it lead to the kind of devastating consequences seen in the 1930s—are now gearing up for battle.

The economic war is being framed in terms of the need to counter Chinese state subsidies to industries that produce electric vehicles and other high-tech products, including lithium-ion batteries and solar panels, at lower cost and in higher quantities than anywhere else in the world.

It will be at the centre of talks which US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen holds with members of the Chinese government during her visit to Beijing this week.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen testifies before the Senate Finance Committee March 16, 2023. [AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin]

On the eve of her departure Yellen would not be drawn on the question of whether the US would introduce more tariffs against China but indicated that was by no means ruled out.

“We don’t want to be overly dependent and they want to dominate the market. We’re not going to let that happen,” she said in an interview.

In an indication of the shift in US political circles, Yellen, who was a supporter of China’s entry to the World Trade Organisation in the 1990s and regarded its exports of cheaper goods as beneficial to the US, made clear that was no longer the case.

“People like me grew up with the view: If people send you cheaper goods, you send a thank-you note. That’s what standard economics basically says. I would never ever again say, ‘Send a thank-you note,’” she said.

Another sign of the accelerating shift was a recent article by Rana Foroohar, a leading editorial figure at the Financial Times. It was significant not only for its denunciation of China—that is par for the course—but went further in calling for the scrapping of the WTO (World Trade Organization), the global body which supposedly sets trade rules and adjudicates on disputes.

She denounced the “hypocrisy” of China for challenging tax credits which support US clean energy producers under the Inflation Reduction Act for breaking WTO rules when its own economy is “built on plans that lay out decades-long subsidies and protectionist ringfencing of the most strategic industries, including but not limited to clean energy, telecommunications and artificial intelligence.”

The denunciations of China conveniently ignore historical experience. One could well ask where the US computer industry would be today if it were not for the continuous state-funded high-tech development going back to the military-industrial complex of the 1950s. And the giant US pharmaceutical companies, which dominate key areas of the world market, have been the beneficiaries of decades of research carried out by publicly funded institutions.

China’s political economy, Foroohar maintained, “goes against the free trade assumptions of the WTO,” which held that emerging nations would simply fall seamlessly in line with “free market rules written by Western powers” which had not happened.

But now there was “progress” because “policymakers (mostly in the US but some in Europe, too) [are] beginning to take their blinkers off and look at the world as it really is.”

She cited comments made to her by US Trade Representative Katherine Tai that “Europe’s existential concerns about the effects of China’s EV dumping have reached a fever pitch.”

Europeans and many American chief executives had for long been “willfully blind to the fact that the global trade model and the institutions that support it are not built to deal with today’s reality,” but now we “may be at a turning point.”

What exactly will emerge is not yet clear, but the trend is. It will see the development of international economic relations in which each country, or various groups of countries, seek to protect their own position at the expense of their rivals.

That is a return at a much higher level to the kind of conflict which tore apart the world market in the 1930s and which the institutions set up in the postwar period, starting with the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), the predecessor of the WTO, were intended to prevent.

This trend is being accelerated by the general slowdown of the world economy, recession in some areas, in which Chinese economic growth, having slowed markedly and showing no signs of a reversal, can no longer function as the shock absorber it was after the global financial crisis of 2008.

More than that, lower Chinese growth is set to become the trigger for deepening economic conflict, according to an article by Daniel Rosen and Logan Wright published in the Foreign Affairs journal last week with the title “China’s Economic Collision Course.”

The authors began by noting that China’s economy had barely grown in the past two years and that today basic policy reforms needed to achieve even 3 or 4 percent growth “are proving difficult for Beijing to achieve.”

China has run a trade surplus for the past two decades, but in 2022 and 2023 the slowdown in Chinese domestic demand “pushed the country’s exports to exceed its imports by a shocking $1.7 trillion.”

Like many others, the authors called for measures to increase consumption-led growth. “Yet over the past two years, the opposite has happened. Unable to sell goods to domestic buyers, Chinese companies are exporting their excess production abroad.”

“And as Chinese overcapacity drives foreign governments toward ever-harsher counter measures, the resulting confrontation is something neither the Chinese economy nor the global trade system can afford.”

Of course, an article in one of the leading journals of the US political establishment could not point to the absurdity and irrationality of capitalism, rooted in its profit-driven and market-based system, where “overproduction” of commodities, which could fuel growth and economic expansion and help deal with climate change, produces a crisis and confrontation.

Moreover, it passed over the fact that hostility towards China in trade, led by the US, is not recent but has been long developing.

Back in the 1990s, the Clinton administration led the drive to have China included as a member of the WTO. It considered this would open new areas for American investment and enable the US to maintain its pre-eminent position in the world economy in the era of globalised production.

It was also hoped that a turn to the “free market” in China would lead to changes in the regime, bringing forward sections of the rising Chinese capitalist ruling class more amenable to US domination and adherence to its so-called “rules-based” order.

But by the time of the Obama administration, it was recognised this had not taken place. Closer integration of China had facilitated its economic expansion and led to the development of a regime which chafed at subordination to the US and was determined to move China further up the economic ladder—a threat to US supremacy.

Obama’s trade representative Michael Froman called for a new international trade architecture, noting that the US faced constraints because it no longer held as dominant a position as it did after World War II.

Reflecting this changed balance of forces, the Obama administration carried out the “pivot to Asia” in 2011, the start of the military encirclement of China which has proceed in leaps and bounds in the years since.

The Trump administration launched trade war measures in 2018 with a series of tariffs on Chinese goods, citing the massive imbalance between the two countries.

But the real thrust, as outlined in a series of documents at the time, was against Chinese development of new technologies, seen as an existential threat to the position of the US.

Under Biden not only have the Trump tariffs been largely retained but the war against Chinese development of high-tech has been extended with an ever-widening series of bans on the export of vital computer chips.

However, while these bans have caused significant problems, they have not been entirely successful with the result that China is now the leading producer of EVs and a range of other commodities, such as solar panels and batteries.

The worsening economic outlook for the world economy is furthering this economic warfare and increases the prospect that it will lead to a military conflict.

Further evidence of Boeing’s criminality exposed as near-silence on death of whistleblower John Barnett continues

Bryan Dyne

On Tuesday, the Wall Street Journal published an article providing further evidence of the criminality and neglect of aerospace giant Boeing during the production stages of its commercial aircraft. While the piece only focuses on a single production line at the company’s facility in Renton, Washington, and the final assembly of the 737 MAX 9 that had its door blow out while in flight this past January, it further exposes the underlying causes of the numerous dangerous issues known to affect Boeing aircraft.

A Boeing 737 MAX 8 jetliner at the assembly plant at Renton, Washington. [Credit: AP Photo/Elaine Thompson, File]

The basis of the Journal’s report is from previously unreported communications from Boeing’s messaging system, the Shipside Action Tracker (SAT), which is designed to communicate issues during an aircraft’s production so, ostensibly, they can be fixed before the plane is shipped out.

Starting on September 1, 2023, the fuselage of the specific 737 MAX 9, noted internally as Line No. 8789, had been flagged as having damaged rivets which needed fixing. For nearly three weeks, workers at Boeing wrote comments in the SAT that the rivets had to be replaced. One entry read, “Damaged rivets are not acceptable and need to be removed and replaced.”

In particular, they were requesting that work be done by Spirit AeroSystems, which had made the fuselage and made the mistake but was unresponsive. “No Spirit work in progress,” noted another entry.

And when Spirit finally did claim it had fixed the issue, a further extraordinary message in the SAT read, “CONDITION STILL EXIST. RIVETS WERE JUST PAINTED OVER.”

It was during this process that four door plugs were removed to ultimately fix the rivets. Those door plugs were not replaced, which was the immediate cause of the January blowout.

Spirit is infamous for its shoddy quality, which is even admitted by Boeing itself. A critical defect in 737 fuselages had been detected last August which required detailed inspection and re-drilling to correct. Rather than force Spirit to correct its issues, Boeing implemented a “traveled work” system in which production at the Renton facility was done out of order to fix errors as they were found.

What the Journal makes no mention of, however, is that these sorts of issues have been raised repeatedly by Boeing whistleblowers, especially by the late John Barnett. Barnett had worked for Boeing for 32 years, until 2017, and was a quality manager at the company’s facility in Charleston, South Carolina, which produces the 787 Dreamliner aircraft.

Barnett was in the middle of a detailed deposition against Boeing in which he alleged that Boeing retaliated against him in numerous ways for speaking out against production practices that made the planes unsafe. These allegations include that he was told to work in “the grey area” and not document defects, not report when parts from the plane were “being stolen,” and to submit “an incomplete build record, which constitutes a criminal felony offense and has the potential to adversely impact the safety of the flying public.”

On the third day of his deposition, March 9, Barnett was found dead from a gun shot wound in a truck in a Holiday Inn parking lot. It was ruled a suicide by the county coroner within 48 hours.

Almost immediately, his lawyers questioned the official account. They asserted, “We didn’t see any indication that he would take his own life. No one can believe it. The Charleston police need to investigate this fully and accurately and tell the public. No detail can be left unturned.”

Days later, a close family friend of Barnett’s spoke to an ABC affiliate and said Barnett told her, “If anything happens to me, it’s not suicide.”

Most recently, Barnett’s mother Vicky Stokes was interviewed by CBS News. When asked if she blamed Boeing for her son’s death, she replied, “I think if this hadn’t gone on so long, I’d still have my son. My sons would still have their brother, and we wouldn’t be sitting here. So, in that respect, I do.”

It is absurd, given the sheer volume of Barnett’s allegations against Boeing, a total of 32 pages, and the suspicious nature of his death, that none of this is mentioned in the article by the Wall Street Journal.

The New York Times, the supposed “newspaper of record,” is no better. It has published several articles on Boeing defects in the past few days, including articles titled, “How Boeing Favored Speed Over Quality,” “4 Takeaways About Boeing’s Quality Problems” and an opinion piece, “You Don’t Need to Freak Out About Boeing Planes (but Boeing Sure Does),” to name just some.

Yet none of them mentions Barnett’s suit or comment in any way on his “suicide,” despite the fact that Barnett is arguably the most prolific Boeing whistleblower, especially since he was finally forced out of the company in 2017. And the CBS News interview proves that the owners and editors of the newspapers are clearly aware of the significance of Barnett’s allegations, both past and present.

The underlying reason for the silence is the stature of Boeing itself. The airplane manufacturer sits at the heart of both American exports and the US military machine, including much of the equipment used by Israel in its genocide against Gaza. There is every reason to suspect that Barnett was in a position to reveal even more about the company’s inner workings and that the media companies had been instructed to “just paint over” his known allegations and subsequent death.

There is little doubt that what else Barnett had to say would have thrown Boeing even further into crisis. As the Journal article admits, the reason the company was pushing through defective fuselages was to deliver promised 737 MAX planes. It is several years behind fulfilling orders after it was forced to halt production in the wake of the two MAX 8 crashes in October 2018 and March 2019 which collectively killed 346 passengers and crew.

Since then, Boeing’s share of the commercial airline market has fallen from 50 to 42 percent. Several ranking officials, including CEO David Calhoun, have been forced out over the recent spate of crises, following the ouster of ex-CEO Dennis Muilenburg at the end of 2019. And while under the tenure of both, the safety and quality of Boeing’s aircraft have taken a nosedive. Yet salaries and bonuses of executives and stock buybacks for investors have never been higher.

Thailand Leads Southeast Asia: Parliament Approves Landmark Same-Sex Marriage Bill

Pranjal Pandey

Photograph Source: Chainwit. – CC BY-SA 4.0

Legislators in Thailand’s lower house of Parliament have decisively endorsed a marriage equality bill, marking a historic step towards becoming the first Southeast Asian nation to legalize equal marriage rights for all people. On March 27, 2024, 400 out of 415 attending lawmakers voted in favor of the bill.

“This is the beginning of equality. It’s not a universal cure for every problem. Still, it’s the first step towards equality,” Danuphorn Punnakanta, an MP and chairman of the lower house’s committee on marriage equality, told Parliament while presenting a draft of the bill.

The bill must undergo approval by the Senate and receive endorsement from the Thai king. Following this endorsement, it would be published in the Royal Gazette and become law after 60 days. If it happens, Thailand will join Taiwan and Nepal as one of the few countries in Asia to legalize same-sex marriage.

The National Assembly has debated different versions of the legislation since December last year. Subsequently, the cabinet of Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin sent the bill to Parliament. Initially, four draft bills on same-sex marriage were proposed by various political parties, which were later consolidated into one. In 2020, the constitutional court upheld the constitutionality of the country’s marriage law, which only recognized heterosexual couples. However, it recommended expanding the law to ensure the rights of other types of couples.

The law, which redefines marriage as a partnership between two individuals rather than solely between a man and a woman, grants LGBTQ+ couples equal rights. These rights include marital tax savings, inheritance entitlements, and the ability to give medical treatment consent for ill partners. Additionally, under the law, married same-sex couples can adopt children.

However, the lower house did not adopt the committee’s suggestion to replace the terms “fathers and mothers” with “parents.” A government survey conducted late last year indicated overwhelming support for the bill, with 96.6 percent of respondents in favor.

The rights to marry and form a family are fundamental rights acknowledged in Article 23 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights(ICCPR), a treaty ratified by Thailand. Currently, 37 countries have included same-sex marriage in their national laws. Taiwan set a precedent in 2019 by becoming the first Asian country to recognize same-sex marriage. Meanwhile, Nepal acknowledged a nontraditional marriage in 2023 under an interim order from the Supreme Court, awaiting a final judgment.

In 2015, Thailand enacted the Gender Equality Act to offer legal safeguards against gender-based discrimination, particularly targeting unfair treatment of LGBTQ+ individuals. Nonetheless, the law retains provisions that permit the justification of discrimination against LGBTQ+ individuals on grounds of religion or national security. Furthermore, legal gender recognition remains absent, depriving transgender and non-binary individuals of the ability to officially alter their surname or gender on official records.

Same-Sex Marriage in Asia

In Asia, the legal landscape regarding same-sex marriage is evolving, with only Taiwan and Nepal currently recognizing such unions. Taiwan made history on 24 May 2019, becoming the first country in the region to legalize same-sex marriage nationwide. This milestone followed a landmark ruling by the Constitutional Court and subsequent legislative reforms. Meanwhile, Nepal has been a pioneer in LGBTQ+ rights, with the Supreme Court granting permission for same-sex marriage as early as 2008. This progressive stance was further solidified by the 2015 constitution, which explicitly prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation.

Despite strides towards equality, Nepal continues to navigate the legal intricacies of recognizing same-sex unions. In a significant move on June 28, 2023, Supreme Court Justice Til Prasad Shrestha directed the government to establish a dedicated register for sexual minorities and nontraditional couples, allowing for their temporary registration. However, a definitive verdict from the Supreme Court on the broader recognition of same-sex marriage is still awaited, underscoring the ongoing legal debate surrounding LGBTQ+ rights in the country.

Against this backdrop, November 2023 marked a historic moment in Nepal’s LGBTQ+ journey. In Dordi Rural Municipality in western Nepal, Maya Gurung, a 35-year-old transgender woman, and Surendra Pandey, a 27-year-old gay man, legally formalized their union.

Meanwhile in India, the journey towards obtaining legal recognition for same-sex relationships has been rife with legal and societal challenges. A significant breakthrough occurred in 2018 when the Supreme Court of India took a groundbreaking step by decriminalizing consensual same-sex relations, marking a pivotal moment of progress for the LGBTQ+ community.

However, in a notable turn of events in 2023, the Supreme Court bench led by Chief Justice D.Y. Chandrachud unanimously rejected the legalization of same-sex marriage. Moreover, the court voted 3 to 2 against acknowledging civil unions for non-heterosexual couples. This ruling dealt a blow to activists who had campaigned for equal rights within the realm of marriage.

This decision underscored the crucial role of legislative action in shaping the fate of same-sex marriage. The court abstained from interpreting the Special Marriage Act (SMA) 1954 to encompass same-sex unions, emphasizing that such matters lie within the purview of Parliament and state legislatures. Despite this setback, the court reiterated the fluid nature of the institution of marriage and affirmed the equal right of queer individuals to form unions, i.e., to stay as a live-in couple or have a relationship short of marriage.

The SMA is a piece of Indian legislation that allows individuals of different religions, nationalities, castes, or communities to solemnize their marriage through a civil ceremony. It provides a legal framework for interfaith and inter-caste marriages and offers provisions for the registration and validation of such unions.

Meanwhile, other prominent countries in Asia are also grappling with the complexities surrounding same-sex marriage. In China, there is no nationwide recognition of same-sex marriage. In countries such as Cambodia and Japan, partnership certificates are available only in specific cities or prefectures. In contrast, Hong Kong provides spousal visas and benefits to same-sex partners, highlighting stark differences from countries such as Afghanistan, Brunei, Iran, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE, where homosexuality can result in the death penalty.

The level of social acceptance towards LGBT individuals varies considerably, with evolving public attitudes and ongoing discussions influencing the trajectory of same-sex marriage rights across the region. Advocacy efforts and legal battles persist as communities strive for equality and acknowledgment in a continent marked by complex social dynamics.

Erdoğan’s AKP suffers setback in Turkish local elections as CHP comes first

Ulaş Ateşçi

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) suffered a major setback in local elections held nationwide on Sunday, while the opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) came first for the first time since 1977. It was the first time since 2002 that the AKP did not come first in an election. With over 61 million eligible voters, turnout dropped to 78 percent from 87 percent in last year’s presidential and parliamentary elections.

Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Sarajevo, Bosnia, on September. 6, 2022. [AP Photo/Armin Durgut]

The local elections marked a drastic reversal of last year’s elections, which Erdoğan and the AKP won. This year, according to preliminary results, the CHP gained 37.7 percent of the vote, according to preliminary results, and the AKP only 35.5 percent. The CHP, which had won only 25 percent of the vote in the 2023 elections, increased its vote by nearly 50 percent.

The CHP won Turkey’s three largest cities—Istanbul, led by CHP incumbent Ekrem İmamoğlu, Ankara and Izmir—by a wide margin. It also carried major industrial cities such as Bursa and Manisa.

The elections were dominated by the deep inflation and cost-of-living crisis that is devastating workers in Turkey. They took place amid 67 percent official annual inflation, as real wages collapse and large sections of the working class, including pensioners, are impoverished. During the election campaign, growing working class discontent erupted in a series of wildcat strikes in sectors including metal, shipyards, and textiles.

Over a year after the February 6, 2023 earthquakes officially killed 53,000 people in Turkey, hundreds of thousands are still living in tents or containers, while no action has been taken for millions living at risk from expected major earthquakes across Turkey.

In the May 2023 elections, despite mass anger over inflation, the earthquakes and the AKP’s disastrous handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, Erdoğan eked out a narrow victory. At that time, the World Socialist Web Site explained that his victory was mainly due to the right-wing campaign of CHP candidate Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu. While Kılıçdaroğlu denounced migrants and pledged support for NATO against Russia in the Ukraine war, Erdoğan made phony criticisms of NATO and promises to workers, public sector employees and pensioners.

In this year’s election campaign, however, Erdoğan not only failed to make social promises to the workers but was also exposed as a pro-imperialist politician amid the NATO war with Russia and the ongoing Israeli genocide against Gaza.

After the Israeli genocide in Gaza began in October 2023, Erdoğan repeatedly denounced Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and expressed support for Hamas. However, he kept supplying oil and other key war materials to Israel for its war on the Palestinians and maintained bilateral ties with the Netanyahu government, despite protests over Gaza in Turkey, where there is overwhelming pro-Palestinian sentiment.

At recent AKP campaign rallies Erdoğan attended, pro-Palestinian demonstrators holding banners calling to stop trade with Israel were violently assaulted and arrested by police.

Under conditions where masses of workers saw no left-wing or revolutionary alternative to Erdoğan, the CHP was the undeserving beneficiary of opposition to the government. It did not campaign on workers’ social grievances or on the Gaza genocide but focused instead on local issues on a city-by-city basis, trying to sweep under the rug its backing for NATO expansion to Finland and Sweden and for Erdoğan’s close ties with Israel.

“The CHP has now broken the invisible 25 percent ceiling over its head, it has shattered it,” declared CHP leader Özgür Özel, who replaced Kılıçdaroğlu at a November party congress. He added: “The CHP is now the party of all democrats, social democrats, but also nationalist democrats, conservative democrats and Kurdish democrats, who can vote together at the same time.”

This year, the Islamist New Welfare Party (YRP) was the only party that sought to benefit from rising social discontent and anger against the Gaza genocide.

The YRP campaigned on calls to raise the minimum wage and cut trade with Israel. On this basis, it increased its vote from 2.8 percent to 6.2 percent, suddenly becoming the third-largest party.

YRP leader Fatih Erbakan, the son of former late Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan, applauded his own campaign, stating: “The debt-interest-price increases-tax economy that the government has stubbornly applied for years and the resulting poverty and economic crisis played a role in the formation of this result.”

He added, “Again, the shame and disgrace of continued trade with Israel and the Zionist murderers played a major role in this result. The approval of the NATO membership of Sweden … played a role in this result.”

The near-total silence on these decisive issues of the Workers’ Party of Turkey (TİP), which ran in an electoral alliance with the CHP, and of other pseudo-left groups that ran their own candidates, testifies to their political bankruptcy.

For his part, Erdoğan vowed to continue the social attacks on the working class demanded by the banks and major Turkish corporations. He said, “We will see the positive results of our economic program, especially inflation, in the second half of the year.”

After the May 2023 elections, the AKP government appointed as finance minister Mehmet Şimşek, who pursued a policy of high interest rates and slashing real wages. The central bank then raised interest rates from 8.5 percent to 50 percent, and real wages continued to fall. The US dollar exchange rate, which was around 19.5 Turkish liras at the time of the May 2023 elections, rose by nearly 50 percent after that. Before the March 31, 2024 election, it took 32 liras to buy US$1.

According to the pro-government Türk-İş trade union confederation, the poverty line for a family of four rose to 54,700 liras in March 2024, while the minimum wage is 17,000 liras and the minimum pension is only 10,000 liras. Unlike the 2023 elections, Erdoğan announced this time that there would be no additional increases in the minimum wage and pensions, baldly claiming, “there is no money.”

The Kurdish nationalist People’s Equality and Democracy Party (DEM), which won 8.8 percent of the vote (4.8 million votes) last year, fell to 5.7 percent (2.6 million) on Sunday. However, it will reclaim many areas where the government undemocratically removed its officials and appointed trustees after the 2019 local elections.

Especially in western Turkish cities like Istanbul, Kurdish voters shifted to the CHP. Meral Danış Beştaş, the DEM candidate in Istanbul, said, “Ekrem İmamoğlu should not say that these votes are mine. They are not his votes. Our voters voted for him. Why? Because they wanted to punish the AKP.” She received only 2 percent of the vote.

On Sunday, the DEM Party alleged that the Erdoğan government was responsible for electoral irregularities in the Kurdish provinces, having brought soldiers and policemen en masse from other cities to vote in order to shift vote totals in the Kurdish provinces.

Turkey’s far-right parties did not advance. The AKP-linked Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) remained at 4.9 percent of the vote, so that the combined AKP-MHP vote fell from 50 percent in the 2019 local elections to 40.4 percent this year. The Good Party, which was allied to the CHP in last year’s elections, suffered a major setback, falling from 9.7 percent of the vote last year to 3.8 percent, with many Good Party voters supporting the CHP instead.

In the cities hit by the February 6, 2023 earthquakes, the AKP vote collapsed. In Kahramanmaraş, it dropped from 67 percent in 2019 to 42 percent in this election. The AKP lost Adıyaman to the CHP and Şanlıurfa to the YRP. The AKP only won Hatay after the CHP re-nominated Lütfü Savaş, who was hated by the population for his responsibility in the massive death toll in the earthquake.