South Korean auto manufacturers stepping up assault on wages, working conditions

Ben McGrath 

Workers in South Korea’s auto industry are facing escalating attacks on wages and working conditions as manufacturers demand ever deeper cuts. The corporations and the government, headed by President Moon Jae-in, intend to claw back all of the gains workers won through mass protests, wildcat strikes and plant occupations in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and return the workers to conditions they faced under the military dictatorship.

Automakers pointed to the decline in production and demand in the first quarter of this year compared to last year to justify their attacks on workers in the name of “remaining competitive.” Production dropped by 0.8 percent while demand fell by 0.3 percent. Exports have also declined to the US, amid threats from the Donald Trump administration to impose tariffs of 25 percent on South Korean-made vehicles, as well as falling demand from China.

Much like their American competitors following the 2008 financial crisis, the South Korean auto companies intend to carry out a drastic redistribution of wealth upwards from the pockets of the working class. However, South Korean workers are looking for ways to fight back.

Workers at Renault Samsung in the city of Busan have been engaged in protracted strike action since last October, at the plant where they produce a variety of SUV models. The company has demanded more cuts to labor costs as part of a new collective bargaining deal, pitting the Busan factory against affiliated plants in countries like Japan and Spain. Unwilling to accept this, workers voted by an 85.1 percent margin last September to go on strike.

Since then, they have staged 62 partial strikes of four hours each, the latest being held on April 19, ahead of the company’s scheduled five-day production downtime from April 29 to May 3. However, participation has dropped off, with only 44 percent of the workforce taking part in the latest strike, despite 70 percent participation on April 10.

The prolonged strike shows there is no shortage of willingness to fight the company attacks. However, the isolation and half-measures imposed upon the workers by the Renault Samsung Labor Union have clearly taken a toll. In fact, the partial strike tactic has long been used by the auto unions to allow workers to let off steam and burn themselves out while reducing the impact on the company as much as possible. In the aftermath, the union agrees to a sellout deal.

Facing the duplicity of the Renault Samsung union, autoworkers are increasingly drawing the conclusion that no matter how militant the labor unions may sound, their role is to disarm the working class and impose the demands of big business. That is why autoworkers must turn to their class brothers and sisters in other industries and across borders in Japan, China, and the United States to wage a genuine fight.

GM Korea and Hyundai workers are facing similar corporate attacks and isolation imposed by the unions. In a vote last week, 83 percent of the 2,067 workers at GM Korea’s new R&D spinoff GM Technical Center Korea (GMTCK) authorized a strike, demanding that they have the same collective bargaining agreement that their counterparts at GM Korea’s main plants work under.

Before GMTCK was established in January, workers rightly feared that the new division would be used to carry out broader restructuring, particularly following the shuttering of GM’s Gunsan plant last year. The Korean Metal Workers Union (KMWU) postured as opponents of the spinoff and closure, but ultimately accepted both.

The KMWU built up illusions in the state, appealing to the judiciary over the issue of the GMTCK workers’ contract. An Incheon court ruled earlier this month in favor of the company, stating that “while GMTCK and GM Korea share joint liability, collective agreement, unlike debt, is not a liability that needs to be met.” This will only pave the way for the deeper cuts GM has been demanding for years.

Similarly, Hyundai has been looking for a way to impose a two-tier system of wages, following in the footsteps of what the US Detroit automakers have achieved through collusion with the United Auto Workers union. Hyundai’s chosen method is the so-called Gwangju jobs project, also launched in January.

Backed with funding from the Gwangju city government as well as from the administration of President Moon Jae-in, Hyundai intends to hire 1,000 workers at a new plant, where they would receive only 35 million won ($31,000), less than half the average annual wage and benefits a worker would normally receive. The government claims an additional 10,000 jobs will be created indirectly in and around Gwangju, the second poorest metropolitan area in South Korea, where wages are already 13 percent below the national average.

The project is based on a German model used at Volkswagen from 2001 to 2009, which came to an end after concessions were enforced on autoworkers throughout the industry. As the South Korean government intends to expand this model to two more cities by June, workers must heed the warning that this is what lies in store for all.

The KMWU likewise postured as an opponent of the deal with Hyundai. However, at a signing ceremony to mark the project’s inauguration, which included President Moon, two leading officials of the union’s Kia branch also took part, providing the KMWU’s stamp of approval on the whole affair. Kia is a Hyundai affiliate. The two were later removed from their positions as a face-saving measure, but no strikes have been called in opposition.

As Hyundai moves to create this lower tier of workers, it also intends to slash as many 7,000 jobs by 2025. The leader of the KMWU’s Hyundai branch, Ha Bu-yeong, has already accepted this, saying, “Even though we accept the management's anticipation of cutting 7,000 jobs by 2025, 17,500 are scheduled to retire by then. Thus, the company has to hire at least 10,000 to keep its plant running.” Even if this dubious prospect were to come to fruition, Hyundai would seek the union’s support in cutting the wages of new hires, just as it has done in forcing older, higher paid workers out of the industry.

China hosts second Belt and Road Initiative forum

Peter Symonds

Chinese President Xi Jinping last week hosted the second forum in Beijing of one of his key programs—the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)—a massive infrastructure scheme aimed at linking China throughout Eurasia via land and sea and enhancing China’s position on the world stage.

Since it was first announced in 2013, the BRI has come under increasing fire from the US, which regards it as a challenge to its own global ambitions. When Italy became the first G7 power to formally sign up to the project last month, the US National Security Council lashed out with a tweet declaring that Rome was legitimising China’s “predatory approach to investment.”

US officials, including Vice President Mike Pence, think tanks and the media have repeatedly accused China of using the BRI to create “debt traps” to pressure countries to meet Chinese demands. The criticism is entirely hypocritical. The US has for decades exploited institutions like the International Monetary Fund to impose its economic and geo-political dictates around the world.

President Xi was anxious to use the BRI forum to counter mounting US criticism and strengthen ties across Eurasia and with Africa. In opening the gathering last Friday, Xi declared that China was committed to transparency and building “high-quality, sustainable, risk resistant, reasonably priced, and inclusive infrastructure.”

Xi told the audience the BRI would promote “open, green and clean development.” Without specifically mentioning the US, he declared that “we need to build an open world economy and reject protectionism.” The remark was not only directed against the Trump administration’s trade war measures against China. It was a pitch to the European powers, which also confront the threat of punitive US tariffs.

Amid an increasingly aggressive US stance toward China—first under Barack Obama, then Donald Trump—the BRI was always designed to strengthen China’s economic and strategic position, particularly in Europe, by touting the economic benefits of closer economic and political cooperation.

Italy is the only major European power to sign up to the BRI and to send its head of government, Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, to the forum. However, other major European countries sent high-level representatives to look for economic opportunities, while attempting to avoid Washington’s displeasure.

UK Chancellor Philip Hammond attended the forum to lobby on behalf of British corporations. A Treasury statement declared there were opportunities for British companies in the fields of “design, engineering financing, public-private partnerships and legal services.”

In the lead-up to the Beijing forum, despite heavy pressure from the US, the British government gave approval, in principle, for Chinese telecom giant Huawei to assist in building the country’s next generation 5G data network. US State Department official Robert Strayer warned on Monday that any involvement of the “untrusted vendor,” even in non-core elements of the network, could compromise US-UK intelligence cooperation.

German Economy Minister Peter Altmaier was also at the BRI forum. He pushed for a multilateral BRI agreement between China and the European Union, which would ensure a greater say for Germany in the implementation of projects. In a thinly-veiled criticism of Italy, Altmaier declared that the EU “in its great majority” agreed that it did not want to sign any bilateral agreements.

In all, some 5,000 foreign delegates from more than 150 countries and more than 90 international organisations attended the forum, including 37 heads of government or heads of state. Along with the Italian prime minister, Russian President Vladimir Putin attended, along with leaders from Austria, Portugal, Hungary and Greece.

On May 4, the International Committee of the Fourth International is holding its annual International May Day Online Rally, with speakers and participants from throughout the world.

Top leaders from nine of the ten countries in the Association of South East Asian Nations were in attendance, as well as four of the five Central Asian republics. Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan took part, but India, which is hostile to China’s close ties with its regional rival Pakistan, was not represented by its prime minister.

Not only did US President Trump not attend, but there was no senior American representative at the forum.

Before the forum, the Chinese government set out to blunt some of the criticism of the financing of BRI projects. Malaysia Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, who came to power in last year’s election, was heavily critical of Chinese investment during the campaign and suspended or cancelled several major projects, including a railway line along the country’s undeveloped east coast.

China last month renegotiated the agreement on the $20 billion rail line by cutting the cost of construction by a third. The new deal ensured that Mahathir attended the Beijing forum and gave the BRI his “full support.”

President Xi told the media that China had signed some $64 billion in deals at the three-day forum. An Al Jazeera report estimated: “To date, about $90 billion have been invested in multiple BRI-related projects, but several hundred billion more have been loosely committed and it will be years before all that capital is invested.” Overall, China has indicated that over $1 trillion will be invested in various projected.

The communiqué from this forum identified several key projects that will be fast-tracked, including Pakistan’s Gwadar port—the starting point of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor to China’s southwest—and Greece’s Port of Piraeus, which China regards as a key beachhead into Europe.

The other major project is the China Railway Express—a network of railways linking London to the Chinese city of Chongqing and projected to be used by more than 14,000 freight trains every week. These infrastructure links are expected to cut costs, but from China’s standpoint also avoid too heavy reliance on sea transport through the Malacca Strait, which could be blocked by the US navy in time of war.

The US is determined to ensure that China’s BRI plans do not undermine American economic and strategic interests. At the ASEAN summit last November, US Vice President Pence slammed the BRI and declared that a US infrastructure plan for the Asia Pacific provided a better option. “We don’t drown our partners in a sea of debt, we don’t coerce, or compromise your independence … We don’t offer a constricting belt or a one-way road,” he declared.

The US, which is seeking support from allies such as Australia and Japan, has announced that just over $100 billion will be on offer for infrastructure projects. Not surprisingly, all the ASEAN countries were strongly represented in Beijing last week, as considerably more money is potentially available.

Unwilling to provide greater investment, Washington will undoubtedly ramp up the aggressive methods it has used to date to undermine Chinese influence—diplomatic intrigues, including regime-change operations, military provocations in dangerous flashpoints such as the South China Sea, and preparations for war with China.

Syriza government authorises mass evictions of refugees and asylum seekers

John Vassilopoulos

Hundreds of people gathered April 22 at the central square of Mytilene—the capital of the island of Lesbos—for a silent protest to mark the first anniversary of a far right attack on a group of mainly Afghan asylum seekers.

The asylum seekers, who included women and children, had gathered in the square to protest their internment at the Moria detention camp on the island and the delay in processing their asylum applications. They were then attacked by a fascist mob of around 200 under the nose of police units in the area, who reportedly had orders not to move against the thugs but only to disperse them. As a result, the mob was able to break through a police cordon and throw stones, bottles and flares at the asylum seekers, resulting in 35 people being injured.

The protest was organised by “Democratic Mytilene,” a local pseudo-left coalition made up primarily of Syriza and Popular Unity members, which was founded earlier this year to contest the upcoming local government elections. The group stated that “[a] year on after the events of those days, the culprits as well as their moral instigators remain unpunished. However, with their actions they continue to poison society, divide citizens and provoke hatred with their lies.”

In fact, chief among the “moral instigators” is Syriza.

As far right politics are being ever more openly adopted by the ruling elites of Europe, and fascistic movements encouraged, Syriza has only been too happy to lend its services to this effort.

In the four years since it took power in January 2015, Syriza has not only played a pivotal role in continuing and deepening the EU-dictated austerity that has pauperised millions of Greeks, but has also been at the forefront of cracking down on refugees, asylum seekers and migrants as part of the European Union’s (EU) anti-immigrant agenda.

There are currently more than 70,000 refugees interned in Greece in overcrowded camps on the mainland and islands as a result of the filthy deal cut between the EU and Turkey in 2016, which stipulates that all refugees crossing into Greece from Turkey be interned until their case is processed—with the plan that they are ultimately deported back to Turkey. For this, Athens has received more than €2 billion euros from the EU and Turkey is set to receive €6 billion euros.

Over 7,000 of these refugees are detained at the Moria camp, whose capacity is for around 2,000.

The atrocious conditions at Moria were highlighted in an Oxfam report published this January, which included testimonials from aid workers as well as asylum seekers detained at the camp.

Sonia Andreu, who manages “Bashira,” a refuge for vulnerable women asylum seekers on Lesbos, told Oxfam that she sees Moria “as hell.”

“I know women,” she said, “who gave birth, they had a C-section delivery and after four days they were returned to Moria with their newborn babies. They have to recover under dirty, unhealthy conditions.”

“It’s really difficult to see a doctor,” said Shala, an Afghan refugee in her mid-forties. “There is just one doctor for the whole camp. You have to be on your death bed before they take your problems seriously.”

On May 4, the International Committee of the Fourth International is holding its annual International May Day Online Rally, with speakers and participants from throughout the world.

According to Oxfam, there was no doctor at all for the whole of November after the camp doctor quit.

The report also highlighted the unsanitary conditions that exist as a result of overcrowding. “70 people have to share one toilet, so hygiene is very bad,” said John, an NGO worker in Lesbos. “There are many small children and babies in the camp. Sometimes people do not even have a tent and winter is coming. In the Olive Grove, there are snakes, scorpions and rats.”

Three days before the silent protest in Lesbos, 60 refugees set up a camp at Syntagma Square in Athens, opposite the Greek parliament. They made handmade placards castigating their treatment, with some reading, “Evicted by police government” and “Why make us live in tents when there are so many empty buildings?”

They were protesting their recent forced eviction on April 18 from the “Clandestina” and “Cyclopi” squats in the Exarchia district of Athens—driven out by helmeted and masked riot police. The 68 people, including 25 children, had been occupying the squats for around a year. Just one week previously, the “Azadi” and “Babylonia” squats, also in Exarchia, were evicted by around 200 riot police on April 11. During the evictions at the four locations, an estimated 200-300 refugees were made homeless.

Quoted in a post appearing on infomobile, a blog reporting on the plight of refugees in Greece, a mother of three children described her eviction from the Clandestina squat: “I was sleeping with my children, when I suddenly woke up with guns being held in front of my eyes. There was police everywhere. I tried to collect our most important belongings. The police was shouting: ‘Fast, fast!’ Two of my kids have heart problems. One of them has asthma.”

Another refugee and former resident of Clandestina told infomobile, “Everything I had is in that locked building now: My tax number, my social insurance documents, medical papers… I am at zero again. They didn’t let us take anything.”

A statement released by the Ministry for Migration Policy showed the government’s contempt for the refugees, stating that by refusing to leave Syntagma Square they “were creating a negative image of themselves among Greek public opinion.”

The camp at Syntagma was cleared on April 20 after refugees were reportedly transported to different detention centres across the country.

Exarchia has been under what is a semi-permanent occupation by state forces for weeks, with Syriza authorising such operations in order to project itself as the responsible party of law and order. Responding to the evictions on social media, Syriza deputy minister for Citizen Protection, Katernia Papakosta-Sidiropoulou, wrote, “Well done to the Greek Police for the latest, well organised operation in Exarchia. Policemen performed a check mate. They proved that they don’t wait for the month of August [when most people are on vacation] to ensure the safety of citizens.”

The evictions in Exarchia are the culmination of months of saturated reports in the Greek media on alleged criminal activity in the area, such as alleged contraband and drug trafficking operations run by migrant gangs in collaboration with anarchist groups, who have had a long presence in the district. This reportage is solely aimed at demonising refugees and asylum seekers, accompanied by the usual law-and-order chorus to clamp down on the “no-go zone” of Exarchia.

Behind the evictions there are wider commercial considerations, with the district being part of recently unveiled plans to regenerate the city centre. A February article in the pro-business capital.gr, stated that “Anaplasi PLC, whose aim is to implement urban revitalisation works, is investigating in conjunction with Attica Metro, three new scenarios of where to place a Metro stop in Exarchia, aiming to preserve the public space of Exarchia Square, which today is a haven for criminal activities.”

Exarchia, along with other run-down areas in the city centre, are seen by many investors as prime real estate and they are snapping up properties there. Speaking to the in.gr website Lefteris Potamianos, president of the Athens-Attica real estate agents’ association, stated that real estate prices in the district have gone up by 30 percent in the last year: “It’s not just apartments, but strangely also whole blocks that have been bought up and are being earmarked for airbnb apartments or hotels. All these sales have happened in the last year.”

Global military spending tops $1.8 trillion, highest on record

Niles Niemuth

Global military spending has reached a new post-Cold War high, topping $1.8 trillion in 2018, according to an annual report published this week by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). This marks a 2.6 percent increase over the previous annual record for worldwide military expenditures in 2017.

Most notably, US military spending increased by 4.6 percent in 2018, to $649 billion, the first annual US spending hike recorded by SIPRI since 2011. This trend is set to continue, with President Donald Trump having signed a $686 billion budget for 2019 and requesting $718 billion for the Pentagon in 2020. The Congressional Budget Office projects that if current funding trends continue, the US will spend $7 trillion on its military over the next decade, equivalent to the amount which will be spent on education, infrastructure and public health programs combined.

Los 15 países con el mayor gasto militar en 2018 (miles de millones de dólares de 2018)

The Trump administration is expending immense sums to modernize and develop the US arsenal to prepare for “great power conflicts,” with China and Russia first among its targets. The Pentagon expects to spend $500 billion over ten years in modernizing all aspects of its nuclear triad—intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched ballistic missiles and strategic bombers—including the development and deployment of more “usable” low-yield nuclear missiles.

With its continued aim of global dominance, even as its economic position continues to decline, US imperialism far outpaces allies and enemies alike in military spending. In 2018, the US spent more than two and half times the amount of economic rival China ($250 billion) and more than ten times that of the supposedly great menace Russia ($61.4 billion). All told, the US spent as much as the next eight countries combined, accounting for 36 percent of the world’s military spending.

This immense military buildup is being carried out with the support of all factions of the political establishment, without even a whiff of protest. In fact, the Democratic Party’s main critique of Trump has been from the right, demanding an even greater military buildup and a more aggressive posture toward Russia.

El gasto militar mundial por región en 1988-2018 (excepto 1991 por falta de datos de la Unión Soviética para ese año; en miles de millones de dólares constantes de 2017)

The bloody Saudi monarchy, the United States’ chief Arab ally in the Middle East, has held on to the number three spot in military spending, after leading the world in expending the greatest share of its economic output, 8.8 percent of gross domestic product, or $67.6 billion.

The Obama administration funneled more than $110 billion in weaponry to the kingdom over eight years, and the supply of weaponry and training has continued under Trump. Saudi Arabia has been waging an unrelenting onslaught against Yemen for more than four years, utilizing fighter jets and bombs supplied by the US on the defenseless population below, killing tens of thousands and pushing millions to the brink of starvation.

Russia did not qualify for the top five, with its spending falling for the second year in a row, surpassed by France ($63.8 billion) and India ($66.5 billion). The latter dwarfs the military buildup of its neighbor Pakistan ($11.4 billion). The two South Asian nations nearly went to war with each other earlier this year.

Germany increased its world ranking from ninth to eighth, spending nearly $50 billion on its military in 2018, increasing its spending by 9 percent since 2009. The coalition government in Berlin has declared that it will increase its role in foreign military interventions in order to assert its position as Europe’s largest economy. It plans to spend 1.5 percent of its GDP on its military by 2025.

While Moscow under President Vladimir Putin has been presented as a looming threat to Eastern and Central European nations, not to mention the survival of American democracy, the NATO alliance ($963 billion) outspent Russia nearly 16 to 1. Since 2016, thousands of US and Western European soldiers have been deployed to NATO member countries on or near Russia’s western border, to serve as a potential trip wire for war with one of the largest nuclear armed powers in the world.

On May 4, the International Committee of the Fourth International is holding its annual International May Day Online Rally, with speakers and participants from throughout the world.

Poland has been the spearhead of the military buildup in Central Europe, spending $11.6 billion in 2018, 8.9 percent more than the previous year and nearly 50 percent more than in 2009. With approximately 800 US soldiers currently deployed to Poland on a rotating basis just 50 miles from the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad, the Pentagon is moving towards building a permanent military base, dubbed “Fort Trump.”

Eight of the 15 countries which saw the highest relative annual increase in military spending were in Southeastern or Central Europe. Latvia increased its military expenditures by 24 percent, Bulgaria by 23 percent, Ukraine by 21 percent and Lithuania and Romania both increased outlays by 18 percent. Lithuania led Europe in its rate of increase over the last decade, hiking its military spending by 156 percent.

Spending in Asia and Oceania topped $500 billion, marking the 30th consecutive year of spending increases, led by China, India, Japan ($46.6 billion), South Korea ($43.1 billion) and Australia ($26.7 billion). Countering the rise of China has been a focus of the United States during this period, both with the military buildup under Obama’s Pivot to Asia and currently with Trump’s trade war policies.

Gasto militar en 2018 de Estados Unidos, Rusia y los otros miembros de la OTAN en miles de millones de dólares

What the SIPRI figures show is that nearly three decades after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the end of the Cold War and the much-heralded "triumph" of the capitalist economic order, humanity faces a new arms race, led by US imperialism, which threatens the outbreak of a catastrophic world war between nuclear-armed powers.

As in the First and Second World Wars, the division of the world into nation states competing for control of resources and geo-strategic chokepoints once again threatens to drag the world into catastrophe. A colossal amount of resources is being wasted by competing ruling elites in the effort to assert their regional and global economic interests at the expense of the world’s working class. SIPRI’s data shows that in excess of $41 trillion has been spent on building up arsenals of death and destruction around the world over the last three decades.

With new war crimes being prepared in Washington, DC and the capitals of Europe, those who exposed the past crimes of US imperialism, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and whistleblowers Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden, are being silenced. The critical question facing the world’s working class today is not reform or revolution, but revolution or counterrevolution. The international working class must be mobilized to put an end to the mad drive towards war which threatens all of humanity.

The recent period has seen rising interest in socialism and the growth of the class struggle internationally. From the yellow vest protests in France, to mass demonstrations in Algeria, teacher strikes in the US and strikes by maquiladora workers in Mexico, this movement has developed independently of and in opposition to the pro-capitalist trade unions and political organizations.

Sudan: Protest leaders agree to collaborate with Transitional Military Council

Jean Shaoul

Sudan’s Transitional Military Council (TMC) has agreed with leaders of the protest movement that forced the removal of long-time autocrat Omar al-Bashir to form a joint body to lead a two-year transition to civilian rule. The military ousted Bashir on April 11 in an unsuccessful attempt to put an end to months of strikes and protests.

Ayman Nimir, an opposition negotiator in the coalition known as the Declaration of Freedom and Change Forces said, “Today we have taken positive steps and we expect to reach an agreement satisfactory to all parties.”

The TMC is seeking a government of “technocrats” in which it would retain the key interior and defence portfolios—thereby ensuring military rule behind a civilian façade.

Any attempt to present such an arrangement, in a country dominated by a small, wealthy clique as a step towards genuine democracy that would resolve the enormous social and economic problems confronting Sudanese workers, is a treacherous lie. It exposes the deep chasm that exists between the Declaration of Freedom and Change Forces, including the Sudanese Professional Association (SPA) of doctors, lawyers and teachers, the National Consensus Forces (NCF), Sudan Call, the Unionist Gathering, the Umma Party and the Sudanese Communist Party (SCP), and the millions of protesting workers and youth.

Workers and youth came out onto the streets for a fundamental transformation of the entire social order, not a civilian-fronted military regime, technocratic government or political reshuffle, and have already voiced their anger at the agreement with the TMC.

Conscious of what happened to the Egyptian Revolution in 2011-13, protestors continued the mass rallies in the capital Khartoum in the weeks following the army’s ouster of al-Bashir on April 11 and demanded an end to military rule.

Furious at the appointment of regime insider Awad Mohamed Ahmed Ibn Auf, the military chief and al-Bashir’s close aide, as the interim leader of a Transitional Military Council to run the country for two years and the imposition of military rule, including a state of emergency and curfew, they demanded a swift transition to civilian rule.

When Auf claimed that al-Bashir was under arrest, this met with widespread disbelief. No one believed that he was in jail. They demanded his imprisonment, pending prosecution for corruption, abuse of power and crimes against the people. Auf sought to placate the protestors by claiming that the transition period could be as short as a month if it were managed “without chaos.” This was viewed as a threat that the security forces might instigate “chaos” in order to justify a crackdown.

Protests forced the TMC to announce Auf’s resignation and to replace him with Lieutenant General Abdel Fattah Burhan within 48 hours of al-Bashir’s ouster.

The TMC then moved to announce some anti-corruption measures, the resignation of some former officials and the dismissal of others, as well as some arrests.

It removed al-Bashir’s ruling National Congress Party (NCP), which is affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, from the political scene, in part at least to win support from its Saudi Arabian patron. Military intelligence claims that the chief public prosecutor is to question al-Bashir after his transfer to Kobar prison, after suitcases loaded with cash were found in his home.

All of this was met with contempt and suspicion. Last week, protestors encamped in Khartoum were joined by hundreds of workers who had travelled by train from Atbara, with thousands more joining them from cities, towns and villages along the way. There were renewed calls for a general strike.

On May 4, the International Committee of the Fourth International is holding its annual International May Day Online Rally, with speakers and participants from throughout the world.

Atbara has long been a centre of the country’s trade unionists and political activists before and after Sudan’s independence in 1956. It is where the protests started on December 19 over the removal of bread subsidies that tripled its cost, with students setting fire to the local offices of the NCP. Within days, the protests became a generalized political movement across the country, protesting the soaring cost of living and the impact of privatization of the port and railways on jobs and demanding the ouster of al-Bashir.

Last week’s decision of the African Union (AU), meeting under the rotating chair of Egypt’s military dictator General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi in Cairo, to give the military council three months to implement democratic reforms provoked outrage. This extended the AU’s previous 15-day deadline for Sudan’s TMC to hand over power to civilians, or face suspension from the AU.

El-Sisi was one of the first to voice his support to the TMC.

Protestors are conscious that it was el-Sisi, an army leader and minister of defence in President Mohammed Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood-led government, who overthrew the elected government, drowned the opposition to his coup in blood and has introduced legislation enabling him to stay in power until 2030. El-Sisi regards his southern neighbour as his country’s Achilles heel.

Thousands marched on the Egyptian embassy in Khartoum, holding up posters and chanting slogans against el-Sisi, demanding an end to his interference in their country’s affairs. The Egyptian authorities have deported dozens of Sudanese activists who had fled to Egypt to escape al-Bashir’s brutal regime and handed them over to Sudan in recent months.

Sudan’s TMC know they can rely on the support of the major imperialist powers and the region’s dictators, all of whom hate each other but fear even more their own working class and poor peasants and the threat they pose to their shaky regimes.

While the US and the European Union long opposed al-Bashir, backing his indictment at the International Criminal Court for war crimes, including genocide in Darfur, and not openly supporting him during the protests, the last thing they want is instability in Sudan and a new wave of refugees heading for Europe. The country is strategically located in the Horn of Africa, alongside the Red Sea and the entrance to the Suez Canal through which much of the region’s oil passes. Washington has issued a statement calling on Sudan to move speedily to democracy.

The petro-monarchies of the Gulf, as well as Turkey, Russia and China have all been competing for influence in the Horn of Africa. Their conflicting agendas and local clients will only serve to accentuate the power struggles within the narrow circles that dominant economic and political life in Sudan.

Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have reportedly offered $3 billion in aid in the form of cash, food, medicine and petroleum products to Sudan, which is all but bankrupt following the secession of the oil-rich South Sudan in 2012, the civil war in South Sudan and the loss of income from the transport of oil through its pipeline from the south to Port Sudan. Russia and Turkey, which is seeking to build a military base in Suakin, near the Red Sea, have pledged fuel, wheat and other aid, with Russian private contractors training Sudan’s security forces.

Protesters rejected Saudi aid, which they saw as support for the counterrevolution, and chanted, “We don’t want Saudi support.” There is enormous opposition to the government’s support for Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen, as well as its sale of vast swathes of irrigated agricultural land to Gulf companies at the expense of local farmers.

The movement of the Sudanese working class is part of a growing wave of strikes and demonstrations by workers across North Africa—in Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco—and around the world. The only way to establish a democratic regime in Sudan is through a struggle led by the working class, independently of all the rotten bourgeois parties, trade unions and pro-capitalist alliances, to take power and expropriate the regime’s ill-gotten wealth in the context of a broad international struggle for socialism.

Former President Garcia’s suicide exposes desperate crisis of Peruvian bourgeoisie

Armando Cruz & Cesar Uco

Former Peruvian president Alan Garcia shot himself in the early morning of April 17 when a state attorney and policemen arrived at his home to place him under “preliminary detention” following a judge’s order.

Over the previous weeks, there had been speculation that Garcia would be detained following the naming of several of his close collaborators as recipients of bribe money from the Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht.

After failed attempts to revive him at the local Casimiro Ulloa hospital, Garcia was pronounced dead at 11AM.

Garcia, who ruled the country twice—first from 1985 to 1990 and later from 2006 to 2011—was, along with four other former presidents, under judicial scrutiny for more than two years after top Odebrecht officials revealed to Peruvian state attorneys that they had been bribing presidents, ministers and potential presidential candidates for nearly two decades in order to be awarded overpriced, lucrative construction contracts.

The money Odebrecht managed to siphon from the Peruvian state through these corrupt arrangements could reach a billion Peruvian soles (over US$ 300 million)—a sum similar to what they stole in Brazil itself.

Though Odebrecht has admitted to having bribed state officials in nearly a dozen other countries, it is in Peru where an investigation into their practices has seen the powerful political figures fall from grace and land in “preventive detention”—imprisonment for those accused of a serious crime, whose liberty might threaten an ongoing legal investigation against them.

In April 2017 a judge ordered the “preventive detention” for 18 months of former president Alejandro Toledo (2001-2006) for having received over US$ 25 million in bribes from Odebrecht. Today he is in holed up in California, seemingly under the protection of US officials.

Months later in the same year, another judge ordered former president Ollanta Humala (2011-2016) and his wife Nadine Heredia subjected to the same form of detention. They both spent nine months in prison until one of their appeals was approved by the Supreme Court and they both were released, though the investigation into their alleged crimes continues.

In March 2018, then president and former Wall Street banker Pedro Pablo Kuczynski had to resign amidst revelations that he had also favored and received money from Brazil’s Odebrecht while he was minister of Economy and Finance under President Ajelandro Toledo. The 80-year old former president is currently serving a 36-month preventive jail sentence for influence trafficking and having two companies, Westfield Capital and First Capital, that collected invoices from Odebrecht for US$ 4.8 million in financial services.

Then in 2018, ex-presidential candidate and daughter of former president Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000), Keiko Fujimori, was ordered by a judge to remain under “preventive detention” for three years, while state attorneys investigate whether she and her party—Fuerza Popular—laundered money received from Odebrecht for her 2016 election campaign.

Fujimori’s detention shocked a significant segment of the ruling class, which had grown accustomed to a compliant justice system always working in its favor. Fujimori, with her vast influence over the judiciary and the favor of the corporate elite, had always been seen as an “untouchable.” The implications of the Lava Jato scandal—the bribery and kickback schemes involving Odebrecht and other Brazilian companies—meant that no one was really “sacred” anymore in the widely corrupt Peruvian establishment.

All of these corrupt ex-presidents and likely future convicts have issued messages of condolence for Garcia and his circle and denounced the “persecution” against him as the reason for his suicide.

Garcia had voiced opposition to Fujimori’s arrest. In a series of tweets he labeled Fujimori’s arrest a “coup” engineered by a “law-breaking” current President Martín Vizcarra, because Fujimori and her party were the main right-wing opposition to his government.

As more damning revelations surfaced about the flow of money from Odebrecht’s specific bribery accounts to Garcia’s close collaborators and members of his APRA party (the oldest in Peruvian history), his statements became ever more unhinged, including personal attacks on journalists and attorneys investigating the charges.

A turning point occurred when an appeal by a state attorney, Jose Domingo Perez, for a court order barring Garcia from leaving the country for 18 months was approved by a judge. Garcia at first feigned compliance, affirming it would be an honor “to remain in Peru”, but on November 18, in a move nobody expected, he secretly entered the Uruguayan ambassador’s residence asking for “political asylum” and a safe exit to Uruguay.

Garcia’s plea for a diplomatic means of escaping Peru was based on the claim that he was a victim of a “political persecution” by a justice system manipulated by a “dictatorial” Vizcarra, who was hunting down all his political enemies. His APRA subordinates and friends in the media repeated this claim over the following days, urging Uruguay’s President Tabare Vasquez to grant Garcia safe conduct to Montevideo.

Behind the scenes, anonymous sources inside APRA told the press that Garcia was “terrified” of landing in jail “even for a short period” and that he had unofficially sought asylum first in Colombia (where he had fled into exile in 1992 after Fujimori’s father carried out his “self-coup”, shutting down the congress, suspending the constitution and purging the judiciary).

After two weeks of staying at the Uruguayan ambassador’s residence amid protests outside of it—mostly by young people demanding that Garcia not to be allowed to escape—on December 3 the Vasquez government accepted Vizcarra’s petition not to grant Garcia diplomatic protection—since it would allow other individuals under investigation to claim “political persecution”—and Garcia was forced to leave.

Vasquez’ decision came a few days after the US ambassador to Peru, Krishna Urs, and his EU counterpart, Diego Mellado, insisted that there wasn’t any “political persecution” in Peru and that its “democratic institutions” were safe—essentially taking Vizcarra’s side in the dispute.

A few weeks after Garcia left the ambassador’s residence, Odebrecht executives revealed that one of his closest allies, former presidential secretary Luis Nava, had been on the receiving end of multi-million-dollar bribes through the subcontracting of one of Nava’s trucking companies.

During Garcia’s funeral at the APRA headquarters in downtown Lima, his daughter Luciana Garcia read what amounted to a suicide note, in which Garcia implied that his decision to end his life had been taken some time earlier.

In his typical egomaniacal fashion, he boasted of having led “APRA to power on two occasions” and expressed great resentment against politicians who tried to “criminalize” him. To the end, he maintained his innocence and concluded saying: “I have seen others paraded in handcuffs, guarding their miserable existence, but Alan García does not have to suffer those injustices and circuses.”

Garcia’s rise and fall cannot be explained outside of an assessment of the politics and roots of the APRA movement, which dominated much of Peruvian history during the 20th century. At least two of the many military coups that have plagued the country were launched specifically to crush APRA’s appeals for political mobilization of the working class.

APRA was a mass bourgeois party that had a significant following in the 1930s and 1940s. A series of unprincipled alliances, and the party’s failure to contest US imperialist domination of the country, led to a declining membership and splits to the left.

A turning point came with the end of World War II when the bourgeoisie’s fear of the emerging Peruvian working class led APRA to take a more openly anticommunist stand. In the 1960s, its trade union affiliate, the Confederacion de Trabajadores del Peru (CTP), was the rival of the Confederacion General de Trabajadores del Peru (CGTP). Originally founded by Jose Carlos Mariátegui in 1929, the CGTP over the following decades was persecuted by the Peruvian state and was dispersed until being refounded under the leadership of the Stalinist Communist Party in June 1968. Then APRA suffered the desertion of many of its members in the working class to the Stalinist-led CGTP.

After the death of APRA’s founder, Victor Raul Haya de la Torre—at 84 years old—in August 1979, it was up to Garcia to lead the party into the presidential elections of 1985. He faced the mayor of Lima, Alfonso Barrantes, representing a largely discredited Izquierda Unida (United Left), a conglomerate of left organizations going back to the 1960s. He easily beat Barrantes in the first round.

Garcia’s first term in office was marked by his defiance of the demands of US imperialism and Wall Street, limiting Peru’s foreign debt payments to 10 percent of GDP. Hyperinflation reached 1722.3 percent in 1988 and 2775 percent in 1989. At the time, the Maoist guerrilla movement Sendero Luminoso controlled most of the southern Peruvian Andes. Garcia was responsible for ordering the massacre of 300 Senderistas after they had been disarmed and were lying helpless on the floors of three jails in Lima.

During his second term, he followed the neoliberal policies of his predecessor Alejandro Toledo favoring multibillion-dollar foreign investments. That term was marked by the “Baguazo,” a massacre that ended with 23 policemen and 10 indigenous inhabitants of the Amazon basin dead. The protest was ignited by the government’s failure to consult with the indigenous population over a plan to hand over its jungle territory to transnational corporations for raw material exploration. Garcia arrogantly responded that as president he did not have to consult with anyone. The measure was later revoked.

The death of Garcia only underscores the desperate crisis of rule of the Peruvian bourgeoisie, in which every single major political figure and party—including APRA, the country’s oldest—has been implicated in massive corruption.

Economic reversal exposes Australian election myths

Mike Head

Official inflation figures released this week confirm that the May 18 Australian election is being held amid a sharp economic downturn. Regardless of any election promises, the next government, whether headed by Labor or the Liberal-National Coalition, will seek to impose the burden of the slump on workers and young people.

The headline inflation rate, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, came in at zero during the March quarter, pushing the annual rate down from 1.8 percent to 1.3 percent. This is an indicator of a rapidly stalling economy. Financial commentators expressed fears of a deflationary spiral, in which heavily-indebted consumers delay purchases in the hope of waiting for lower prices.

The inflation rate is now well below the Reserve Bank of Australia’s (RBA) target of 2–3 percent, leading to predictions that the central bank would be forced to quickly cut its cash interest rate, which already has been at a record low of 1.5 percent for more than two-and-a-half years.

The financial markets are now betting on at least two consecutive 25-point rate cuts, down to just 1 percent, in May and June. A Dow Jones Newswire commentary published by the Australian went further, saying the RBA could roll out as many as four interest rate cuts by the year-end, with the first coming on May 7, just before the election.

Such moves would be a desperate bid to forestall a recession. Already, house prices are falling substantially, construction work is plunging and wages are stagnating amid a slowdown in global economic growth, compounded by fears of an ongoing US-China trade war.

Just months ago, the RBA was signalling that it would lift rates, in line with rate hikes by the US Federal Reserve, amid forecasts of a global upturn. The sudden reversal is a sign of mounting concern in ruling circles.

However, interest rate cuts may have little effect in stimulating spending because household debt is at record levels, averaging nearly double disposable income, one of the highest ratios in the world.

With an estimated 40,000 jobs already eliminated by the fall in housing construction, unemployment could worsen quickly. AMP Capital chief economist Shane Oliver said the RBA’s board would “conclude that it’s too risky to wait until unemployment starts to trend up.”

Officially, the joblessness rose only marginally last month, from 4.9 percent to 5 percent, but these statistics seriously understate the real situation. According to figures released last month by the Roy Morgan group, 18.2 percent of the workforce, or around 2.5 million people, are either jobless or under-employed.

Separate figures from the Jobs and Small Business Department showed online employment vacancies fell in March by 1.5 percent, the third successive monthly drop in what is regarded as a leading indicator of the trend ahead.

On May 4, the International Committee of the Fourth International is holding its annual International May Day Online Rally, with speakers and participants from throughout the world.

As soon as the inflation figure was released, the Australian dollar fell almost 1 percent against the US dollar—another indicator of an anticipated slump.

However, the Australian share market rose about 1 percent to an 11-year high, reaching heights last reached in January 2008 before the last global financial crisis wiped off about 50 percent of its value. Evidently, the financial elite hopes to benefit from rising joblessness by further pushing down real wage levels.

The inflation figures revealed mounting pressures on working class budgets. The costs of fruit and vegetables soared by up to 7.7 percent in the March quarter because of the impact of drought and floods. Clothing and footwear prices dropped, however, following weak retail sales figures. The price of fuel also fell, but has since recovered and recently reached six-month highs.

Falling new dwelling prices and slowing rent rises fed directly into the inflation figure. This is on top of the underlying impact of the more than 10 percent drop in house values over the past 18 months. A six-year housing bubble has burst, wiping billions of dollars off prices and leaving many households with mortgage debts that exceed the market values of their homes.

The inflation result is just the latest economic statistic to underscore the bogus character of the 10-year budget predictions on which both the Coalition and Labor have based their election pledges. Just a week after the government’s April 2 budget, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) effectively demolished the budget forecasts.

The IMF issued a sharp downgrade for global growth predictions, and said Australia’s economy was slowing twice as fast as comparable countries. The bank slashed its 2019 growth estimate for Australia from 2.8 percent to 2.1 percent, far below the budget’s unreal forecasts of 2.75 percent in 2019‑ 20 and 2020–21. That alone means cutting billions of dollars from social spending in order to meet the demands of the financial markets for a budget surplus.

Both the Coalition, with its claim that it will “create 1.25 million jobs” over five years, and Labor, which is making populist pitches about “fairness,” are peddling myths, desperate to get through the election before the slump hits.

All the economic indicators verify the analysis made by the Socialist Equality Party (SEP) in its election manifesto: “The slowing of the Australian economy is proceeding at a faster rate than in any other advanced country, signalling the onset of a deep recession that will spur mass opposition by the working class.”

The SEP’s election campaign is seeking to clarify the necessity for that opposition, if it is to defeat the corporate offensive, to turn to the fight for a genuinely socialist program. What is required is the establishment of a workers’ government to reorganise economic life on the basis of social need and equality, not private profit.

Half of all land in England owned by less than one percent of the population

Margot Miller

The UK is one of the most unequal societies on the planet. The scale of this is effectively documented in new research revealing that one half of all the land in England is the private property of less than one percent of the population. This equates to just 25,000 people. England accounts for just over half (53 percent) of the total area of the UK.

The research is available in a new book by Guy Shrubsole, Who Owns England?: How We Lost Our Green and Pleasant Land and How to Take It Back. Shrubsole is a writer, campaigner and investigator at Friends of the Earth.

Although it was broadly understood that the ruling elite owned much of the land, this reality has generally been shrouded in secrecy. New developments in digital mapping, however, as well as the work of campaign groups enabling the release of data under Freedom of Information legislation (FOI), made possible the research that revealed the following statistics:

• The aristocracy and gentry still own 30 percent of the land.

• 18 percent is owned by corporations.

• 17 percent is in the possession of oligarchs and bankers.

• The crown and royal family own 1.4 percent and the Church of England 0.5 percent.

Therefore, this tiny stratum of society owns nearly 70 percent of all land privately. Moreover, it should be noted that the percentage attributed to the aristocracy is likely a vast underestimation, according to Shrubsole. The ownership of 17 percent of the land remains undeclared at the Land Registry—a database that registers property and land sold in England and Wales—because it has not been sold on the open market. This is most likely the property of the aristocracy, passing down the generations. This percentage has barely changed for centuries.

Among the pieces of land owned by the monarchy is the Crown Estate, the Queen’s personal estate at Sandringham, Norfolk. The land within the Duchies of Cornwall and Lancaster also provides vast amounts of income to Royal family members.

The public sector owns just 8.5 percent of English soil, followed by home owners who own just five percent. Two percent is owned by conservation charities, including the National Trust.

Shrubsole lists the top 100 corporations that possess the most land in England, including some based abroad or offshore to avoid tax liabilities or for money-laundering purposes. The Land Registry, reportedly by accident, sent Private Eye investigative journalist Christian Eriksson, after a FOI request, a huge database of offshore companies that had purchased land in England and Wales from 2005 to 2014. This comprised 113,119 hectares of land worth an astonishing £170 billion ($US 220 billion).

At the top of the list of landowning companies is United Utilities, formed when the Tories privatised the water industry in 1989. Much of the land surrounding its reservoirs is owned by the firm.

Pro-Brexit businessman Sir James Dyson is high on the list. He owns several large grouse moor estates and Beeswax Dyson Farming. Other household names owning vast swathes of land are Tesco, the UK’s largest supermarket chain, Tata Steel and housebuilder Taylor Wimpey.

In an extract from Who Owns England? published in the Guardian, Shrubsole discusses the extensive interests of landowning company Peel Holdings and its many subsidiaries. The company owns up to 1,000 tracts of land nationally totaling around 13,000 hectares. Just in the northwest of England its land interests spread from Liverpool’s John Lennon airport, through fracking country in Lancashire, to one of the largest wind farms in the UK, taking in shopping centres and ports, including the Port of Liverpool.

Peel was the developer behind the 15-hectare MediaCityUK in Salford, the main northern hub of the BBC and ITV. It is based on land next to the 36-mile Manchester Ship Canal that Peel bought in 1993.

Shrubsole searched for Peel Holdings and its subsidiaries on the Companies House website. This revealed a systematic lack of transparency with one holding company owned by another, “like a series of Russian dolls, one nested inside another.”

“Peel Holding s… is also illustrative of corporate landowners everywhere,” continues Shrubsole, adding that “[c]ompanies with big enough budgets can often ride roughshod over the planning system, beating cash-strapped councils and volunteer community groups.”

On May 4, the International Committee of the Fourth International is holding its annual International May Day Online Rally, with speakers and participants from throughout the world.

The public sector, which includes central and local government as well as universities, is less secretive about the land they own. This is because they are compelled to advertise land for sale on the open market to offset austerity cuts—and in the process transfer even more land into private hands.

The sale of public land means it cannot be used for housebuilding or environmental improvements. In the last period, vast amounts of public spaces and parks in towns and cities have been hoovered up by the private sector. These landscaped areas are then out of bounds to the general public and especially public protests.

In 1980, Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher introduced the sale of public housing under “right to buy” and council house building began to drastically decline. Britain was apparently to become a “nation of home owners.” However, most such housing consists of tiny “shoebox” units, as is indicated by the fact that all the 15.1 million homeowners in Britain own just 5 percent of the land.

The Guardian noted that “figures show that if the land were distributed evenly across England’s population, each person would have just over half an acre [0.2 hectare]—an area roughly half the size of Parliament Square in central London.”

Those who can afford to buy their own home may not necessarily own the land it stands on, but only lease it, which ensures not ownership but long-term tenancy. Leasehold properties comprise 27 percent of properties in England and Wales. An annual ground rent is paid to whoever owns the freehold for the length of the lease. After the lease runs out the freeholder becomes the owner of house and land, lock stock and barrel.

Developers are raking in a huge revenue stream in building leasehold properties. A House of Commons Library report revealed an increase in leasehold new builds, from seven percent in 1995 to 15 percent in 2016—with clauses in leases doubling the ground rent every ten years, which are sold on to speculators.

One of those companies that makes its money from the ground rents market is Wallace Estates, which possesses thousands of freehold properties, selling long leases for the annual rents. Wallace Estates is the company with the third-highest number of land titles, possessing a property portfolio worth £200m, the details of which are in the public domain and owned by an elusive Italian count.

The buying up of land is also a convenient investment to avoid paying inheritance or capital gains tax.

Speculation in land has led to parasitical land banking. In the 1990s and early 2000s, Tesco, for example, purchased huge land banks for the future construction of out-of-town shopping complexes. The Guardian estimates that in 2014 the supermarket was sitting on enough land to accommodate 15,000 homes.

Some land promotion companies specialize in preparing land sites for development by doing the leg work of gaining planning permission for developers and then taking a cut from the final sales. The Gladman company made a pretax profit in 2016 of £11.6 million, while in the same year Gallagher’s raked in £79 million.

The Shelter housing charity revealed last month that almost of third of sites approved for building on five years ago have still not been completed. The top ten housing developers have land banks with space for more than 400,000 homes.

UK pension funds and insurance companies commonly buy land as a long-term investment. For example, Legal and General is in possession of 1,500 hectares stretching from Luton to Cardiff.

The Telegraph revealed that close associate of former Tory Prime Minister David Cameron, Tony Gallagher, head of the aforementioned company, sold his land promotions company after three decades for £250 million—lucrative indeed. This wealth propelled his total fortune to £850 million, but such is the enormity of the wealth of the richest of the rich in Britain that Gallagher was only able to place 52nd on the Sunday Times Rich List.