31 May 2018

Rohingya refugees face catastrophe in Bangladesh

Rohantha De Silva

With the monsoon season about to start in Bangladesh, the plight of Rohingya refugees in the Cox’s Bazar district in the country’s south, is about to drastically worsen.
Around 900,000 refugees, including those who have fled Myanmar since last August to escape attacks by Burmese military and Buddhist supremacists, are living in flimsy bamboo shelters spread across steep hillsides and in flood-prone valleys and islands.
Rohingya in Myanmar’s northwestern Rakhine state are an oppressed Muslim minority. They were stripped of their citizenship rights in 1982 and have faced numerous anti-democratic restrictions and periodic violence. Around 200,000 Rohingya were already living in Bangladesh before the recent wave of refugees.
Many refugees are living without adequate clean water, sanitary facilities, health care and food. According to a Daily Star report, the UN refugee agency, UNHRC, estimates that up to 200,000 Rohingya are at risk from landslides, floods and outbreak of epidemics this monsoon season.
The UN has admitted that it is “very unlikely” that bamboo community shelters would survive cyclones and the World Health Organisation warned there could be “massive loss of lives” when the monsoons hit.
Despite widespread sympathy among ordinary Bangladeshis for the Rohingya, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasani’s Awami League government initially tried to block the most recent refugees from entering Bangladesh and is attempting to push them back into Myanmar.
As for the major global powers, they describe the Rohingya as “the world’s most persecuted minority” and feign “concern.” This is entirely hypocritical.
While UNHRC and its partners launched a $US950 million Joint Response Plan this year to provide minimum facilities, only 16 percent of the required funds have been received. A World Health Organisation (WHO) situation report on May 24 said it needed $113.1 million, but had only received 6.3 percent of this amount.
The UK’s department for international development has boasted that it was one of the “biggest” providers of humanitarian aid to Rohingya in Bangladesh, but it has only donated $172 million. The US claims to have given Bangladesh $163 million in refugee aid since last August.
These amounts from are a drop on the ocean and a tiny fraction of the annual military expenditures of these imperialist countries.
US President Donald Trump has written to Bangladesh Prime Minister Hasina declaring that his government will “continue to pressure” Myanmar in order to create the necessary conditions for a return of Rohingya.
Trump’s statement, however, has nothing to do with sympathy for the plight of refugees. Washington wants to maintain close relations with Bangladesh whilst at the same time keeping political pressure on Myanmar so that it adheres to the US’s geo-political agenda in the Asia-Pacific. Both Myanmar and Bangladesh are strategically important for Washington and its increasingly aggressive efforts to undermine Chinese influence in the region.
For months, Washington and its allies ignored or downplayed the Burmese military’s brutal operations in the Rakhine state against the Rohingya minority, which began last August.
The Trump administration is currently exploiting the banner of “human rights” to put pressure on the Burmese military and the National League for Democracy (NLD) government of Aung San Suu Kyi to distance itself from Beijing.
Meanwhile, Bangladesh authorities have no serious plans to evacuate refugees to safe places. In fact, the Bangladesh government announced plans earlier this year to send 100,000 refugees to Bhasan Char, a muddy, uninhabited island. The low-lying island is prone to flooding and other dangers, including pirates and human traffickers.
Sinohydro, a Chinese construction company, has been engaged to build a $US280 million, 13-kilometre flood-defence embankment but this will do little to prevent the disasters created by the monsoons.
Aid agencies in Bangladesh have warned of a disastrous situation. Early this month Francesco Segoni, emergency coordinator for Doctors without Border (MSF), said: “Where relocation is already happening, sanitation and hygiene conditions are below the minimum standards. When the rain comes, not only do we anticipate flooding and landslides… [but] an “exponential increase in the risk of a [disease] outbreak. Latrines will go underwater; contamination seems inevitable. We are bracing for the worst.”
Referring to the lack of safe water, Segoni said: “The provision of clean drinking water is an absolute priority in the camps. It’s as much a lifesaving activity as our medical work. We are racing against time to reach out to new areas and keep up with the ever-evolving context.”
Deputy South Asia Director for Amnesty International Omar Waraich has raised doubts about the Bhasan Char island plan. “No one in the humanitarian community who we spoke to thought this was a good idea. This is a silt island that only emerged into view [above the sea] recently,” he told the media. People have been killed and homes destroyed by monsoons in the nearby Sandwip Island.
One refuge, Jahid Hussain, told the press that he would not relocate to Bhasan Char, which means floating island, but “would rather die right here.”
H. T. Imam, a political adviser to Prime Minister Hasina, told Reuters that sending Rohingya to Bhasan Char was a “temporary measure.” The refugees would not be given Bangladeshi passports or ID cards and would be allowed to leave only if they were returning to Burma or a third country.
Between 40 and 50 armed officers will be stationed on the island, Imam said, while cynically declaring “it’s not a concentration camp.”

Over 10,000 jobs at risk at Deutsche Bank

Gustav Kemper

In the last two and a half years, Deutsche Bank has slashed 6,000 jobs and closed 188 branches. Now the global workforce of 97,000 is to be further reduced to “well below 90,000,” the newly appointed chief executive of the bank, Christian Sewing, told shareholders at a meeting last week.
Some shareholders, pointing out that rival banks compete with half the staff, clearly expect even more layoffs. The Handelsblatt business paper quoted internal sources who remarked, “Behind closed doors the target figure (for total staff) is more like 85,000.”
Last weekend witnessed the legal completion of the merger between the private and corporate businesses of Deutsche Bank and Postbank, which is also expected to be the prelude to further job cuts. The new company, with the name “DB Privat-und Firmenkundenbank AG,” will be based at Deutsche Banks’ Frankfurt headquarters. Financial circles anticipate a reduction in staff of around 15 percent.
An annual reduction of 1,500 jobs at Postbank over the next four years is already in process. Employees will be forced to “voluntarily” quit their jobs over the next four years via redundancy programs and the non-replacement of vacant posts. The contractually agreed protection against dismissal is due to expire in mid-2021 and the entire program resembles a form of blackmail.
A large proportion of the redundancies are planned in Deutsche Bank’s investment sector, from which the bank plans to withdraw after realigning its strategy. Some 600 investment bankers in the United States have already left the bank in the course of the past seven weeks. In the US there is no protection against dismissal. In all, the bank will provide €800 million for severance payments in the current year.
At the annual general meeting, the new boss was applauded by shareholders after announcing the job cuts. All agreed that the job losses were necessary and overdue, particularly with regard to the increasing digitization of the financial industry, where Deutsche Bank lags behind.
The union Verdi, whose representatives sit on the Supervisory Board of Deutsche Bank and in 2017 approved bonus payments of €2.2 billion for the firm’s top investment bankers, sought to play down the significance of the planned job cuts. In such discussions it was “urgently necessary to include the works councils,” tweeted Jan Duschek, who heads the union’s banking section. The union, relying on the works councils, has agreed to a steady loss of jobs in recent years.
Deutsche Bank has been in turmoil since the onset of the financial crisis 11 years ago. Its share price has fallen 35 percent this year alone. Before the start of the financial crisis in 2007 its share price fluctuated around €91. On Monday it fell below €10. In 2015, Deutsche Bank recorded a record loss of €6.8 billion and has continued to incur substantial losses since.
After the bank’s profit in the first quarter of 2018 fell by 80 percent compared to last year, its CEO, John Cryan, was fired and replaced by Christian Sewing, the head of the bank’s private customer business. At the annual meeting, Sewing announced a change of strategy and demanded the “necessary hard measures” to enforce it.
Business newspapers have sought to find culprits for the bank’s crisis among its previous executives. They argue that former CEO Josef Ackermann had allowed the uncontrolled expansion of Deutsche Bank into the field of investment banking, while his successor, Anshu Jain, had tolerated illegal transactions and secret deals, and last but not least, CEO John Cryan had failed to reorganise the bank quickly enough.
In reality, the problem does not primarily lie with the mistakes of individual managers, but rather in the crisis of the entire financial sector, where banks all over the world are struggling for market share and using increasingly criminal means to compete. In the late 1970s, when gains were being made more quickly through speculation in financial markets than through investment in industry, Deutsche Bank followed suit, ditching its traditional business model known as “Rhenish capitalism.”
The former close interdependence of bank and corporate boards, which controlled and protected each other, was dissolved. Instead, stock markets determined the strategy of the corporations.
With the takeover of the London investment bank Morgan Grenfell in 1992 and the New York Bankers Trust Company seven years later, Deutsche Bank sought to compete for world market leadership against the biggest American investment banks.
Like many other financial institutions, Deutsche Bank participated in criminal mortgage transactions, Libor interest rate manipulation, money laundering for Russian oligarchs and other shady and criminal practices. According to a study by the London CCP Research Foundation, Deutsche Bank had to pay fines of more than $14 billion between 2010 and 2014. The bank still faces more than 7,000 legal suits. Last year alone it set aside a total of €3.2 billion for legal claims.
The bank’s attempt to compete with the big investment banks has “crashed with a bang,” according to financial analysts. The future holds a wealth of other dangers. The growing trade war between the US, Europe and China, the crises in the Middle East, North Korea and the Ukraine, a hard Brexit or interest rate hikes could all spark a new banking crisis more serious than that of 2008.
German industrial circles regard this prospect with great concern. Already two years ago, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, the mouthpiece of the German business world, warned: “German companies do not want to just rely on American investment banks … they want a reliable partner from the home market by their side. This role cannot be filled by other German banks such as Commerzbank. The German economy needs a healthy Deutsche Bank.”
The German government is also worried about the crisis at Deutsche Bank. Social Democratic Party Finance Minister Olaf Scholz told the press that the government needed a bank that was a “global player.”
This was precisely the promise made by the new head of Deutsche Bank at its shareholders’ meeting. The firm was to become a “bank for Germany” of which one could be proud again. The price will be paid by its employees.

Growing tensions over New Zealand’s ties to China

John Braddock

New Zealand’s deputy prime minister and foreign minister, Winston Peters, last week concluded his first trip to China, after several months in which he had played a key role in fomenting tensions over Beijing’s growing influence in the Asia-Pacific region.
Peters, who leads the populist, anti-Asian New Zealand First Party in the Labour Party-led coalition government, will next month assume the role of acting prime minister when Labour leader Jacinda Ardern takes maternity leave.
During the three-day visit, Peters met Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi and other high-ranking officials, including Politburo member and former Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi, and the Minister of the Communist Party International Department Song Tao.
Peters said they had “excellent discussions on issues of direct relevance for peace and security in the Asia-Pacific... and resolved to stay in close touch as we continue to encourage all parties to find a path to peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula, including through the North complying with all relevant UN Security Council Resolutions.”
Peters added that the trip ended with “an agreement for future high level visits between the two countries to maintain and build on the bilateral relationship.” The next round of discussions on the New Zealand-China Free Trade Agreement (FTA) are to begin in June.
China is New Zealand’s second largest trading partner after Australia. The FTA, signed in 2008, has almost tripled bilateral trade and discussions about an “upgrade” of the deal were formally launched in late 2016.
Peters’ trip took place amid increasingly bitter conflicts between Beijing and Washington over trade and the Trump administration’s belligerence over North Korea and the South China Sea. Washington is intensifying its struggle to maintain American hegemony and has identified Russia and China as its main strategic rivals.
New Zealand has sought to maintain an ever-more fraught balancing act between its traditional military alliance with the US and economic reliance on China. Addressing a China Business Summit in Auckland earlier this month, Ardern said her government intended to “ramp up” engagement with China. However, she expressed caution over Beijing’s “Belt and Road” initiative, the multi-billion-dollar infrastructure and investment plan to link China with the rest of the world and counter Washington. Ardern said New Zealand was “still considering” how it would “engage” with the plan.
The 2008–2017 National Party government signed a “memorandum of agreement” to work with China on the initiative. In a speech to the Sydney-based Lowy institute in March, however, Peters lashed out at the decision to sign the agreement “so quickly” and suggested the new government should not feel bound by the deal.
Peters promoted the government’s “Pacific reset,” a policy aimed at maintaining New Zealand’s neo-colonial position in the increasingly “contested strategic space,” in an alliance with the US, Australia and European powers. The government’s recent budget included almost $1 billion in foreign affairs spending, mostly for aid and development in the Pacific region, while billions are being spent on the military.
Labour and NZ First have for years sought to whip up anti-Chinese xenophobia in order to more closely align New Zealand with the US military build-up. Following last September’s election, the government banned house purchases from overseas, promised to cut immigration by up to 40 percent and signalled restrictions on Chinese investment. Peters called for an inquiry into foreign “interference,” demanding an investigation into Chinese-born National MP Jian Yang, who he denounced as a “Manchurian candidate,” i.e., a Chinese secret agent.
Ahead of his trip, however, Peters indicated he would not raise the Chinese “interference” allegations. “I’m in a job called foreign affairs and diplomacy is rather important,” he declared. Asked whether he would raise issues regarding the South China Sea, Peters said he would not air New Zealand’s position via the media. “The Chinese would not have any respect for me if I did that, and I do want them to respect me,” he said.
In fact, the government has already made clear its alignment with Washington’s stance. Last November, Ardern said New Zealand would “intervene in North Korea if backed by a United Nations resolution.” She opposed Chinese territorial claims in the South China Sea, claiming New Zealand’s position was based on “international law” and the need for “consensus on a code of conduct.” These terms echo the “rules based order” invoked by the US—whereby it sets the “rules”—to assert its strategic interests against China.
Washington is now intensifying its pressure on the New Zealand government over its links with China. Hillary Clinton, former US secretary of state and failed 2016 presidential candidate, told an Auckland audience this month that China’s attempt to gain political power and influence is part of “a new global battle.”
Clinton claimed that Beijing is much more active in the Pacific and intent on “dominating its part of the globe through soft power and the projection of its military capabilities.” Clinton cited the work of NATO-funded Christchurch academic Anne-Marie Brady, who has called for New Zealand’s intelligence agencies to take action against Chinese “influence” in NZ politics and business.
The military-intelligence apparatuses in NZ, Australia and the US are demanding stepped-up anti-democratic surveillance measures. Testifying at an Australian Senate hearing last week, Duncan Lewis, head of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), demanded the urgent passage of the government’s “foreign interference” bills to help combat the “threat” of “foreign interference” on an “unprecedented scale.”
Meanwhile, in a Washington hearing of the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission in April, former CIA analyst Peter Mattis called for a review of New Zealand’s membership in the US-led Five Eyes intelligence alliance, considered to be a “cornerstone” of New Zealand’s external security arrangements.
Mattis claimed the NZ Labour Party had accepted money from donors with links to the Chinese Communist Party, while former Prime Minister Bill English had “routinely” briefed Jian Yang on China-related matters. Mattis did not offer any evidence for his claims.
Mattis told the hearing: “Australia and New Zealand both face substantial problems with interference by the Chinese Communist Party, [...which has] gotten very close to or inside the political core, if you will, of both countries.”
Labour’s General Secretary Andrew Kirton said the party followed the law on donations and had no idea which donor the testimony referred to. National Party leader Simon Bridges said it was “completely false” that English had routinely shared information. Bridges added, however, that the commission hearing showed there was “a growing mistrust of this government in the US.”
Also this month, a report published by Canadian Security Intelligence Service, China and the Age of Strategic Rivalry, stated: “New Zealand is valuable to China, as well as to other states such as Russia, as a soft underbelly through which to access Five Eyes intelligence.”
Ardern refused to comment on the report, telling the Newsroom website she had had “no indication that our Five Eyes membership is under question.”


Speaking to the New Zealand Herald on May 26, Victoria University academic Van Jackson warned Wellington against being seen as taking insufficient action in response to Washington’s “perceptions.” Jackson, who has worked in the Office of the US Secretary of Defence, said NZ so far had pushed the line that “there’s nothing to see here.” Jackson added that such a response “shows there is a problem” in US-NZ relations.

30 May 2018

Zayed Future Energy Prize of US$3 million for Entrepreneurs 2019

Application Deadline: 9th August 2018

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: All countries in The Americas, Europe, Africa, Oceania and Asia

To be taken at (country): United Arab Emirates

Categories of the Prize: The Zayed Future Energy Prize awards 5 categories:
  • Health
  • Food
  • Energy
  • Water
  • Global High Schools (1 award for each of the below regions)
    • The Americas, Europe, Africa, Oceania and Asia
About the Award: The Prize fund comes from the Abu Dhabi Government as a way to honour and continue the legacy of the late founding father of the United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan. Masdar, Abu Dhabi’s renewable energy company, manages the Zayed Future Energy Prize. A dedicated team works on the Prize all year round.
This annual award celebrates achievements that reflect impact, innovation, long-term vision and leadership in renewable energy and sustainability. You are invited to be a part of this vision and commitment to finding solutions that will meet the challenges of climate change, energy security and the environment.

Offered Since: 2008

Eligibility: The Zayed Future Energy Prize is open to all entrants other than:  (a) board members and employees of Masdar; and  (b) anyone who has been involved in organising, promoting or judging the Prize.

Selection Criteria: The Prize criteria for all categories are: Innovation, Impact, Leadership and Long-Term Vision.

Number of Awardees: several

Value of Awards: The total Prize fund is US $3 million, distributed as such:
  • Health  – US$ 600,000 (Six hundred thousand dollars)
  • Food      – US$ 600,000 (Six hundred thousand dollars)
  • Energy  – US$ 600,000 (Six hundred thousand dollars)
  • Water   – US$ 600,000 (Six hundred thousand dollars)
  • Global High Schools   – US$ 600,000 – Total value (Six hundred thousand dollars)
    • Divided amongst 6 Global High Schools in 6 different regions, awarding each up to US$100,000 (One hundred thousand dollars)
    • The Americas
    • Europe & Central Asia
    • Sub-Saharan Africa
    • East Asia & Pacific
    • South Asia
    • MENA
How to Apply: Apply

Visit Award Webpage for details

Award Provider: The Abu Dhabi Government

Important Notes: The submission should be sufficiently detailed and clear to enable the judges to analyse properly and to form a view on all elements of the submission and the nominee.

Women Leaders in Global Health Challenge Contest​ (Funded to London, UK) 2018

Application Deadline: 1st July 2018

Eligible Countries: All. Submissions are encouraged from women from developing countries

To Be Taken At (Country): London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, UK

About the Award: The Contest is looking for creative ideas to make the research year more flexible or spur more women to apply. Individuals who submit exceptional ideas will be supported to join the Women Leaders in Global Health conference in London this November. But more importantly, selected ideas deemed feasible by WHO/TDR will be implemented to increase women’s participation in the fellowship.
 The WHO/TDR clinical research and development fellowship (“the fellowship” in this challenge) provides support for mid-career individuals from low and middle-income countries (LMIC) to spend one year in a high-income country to learn about clinical research. Mid-career is defined as within 10 years of a medical degree or PhD.
Over the past four years, 16-24% of fellowship applicants have been women and about one-quarter of all participants are women. But this is not a simple problem and we need your creative solutions. A wide range of concerns may discourage women from applying, including issues related to moving away from home (finding work for spouses and child care), administrative issues related to going from an LMIC to a high-income country (obtaining visas for spouses, children, and care-givers), and other obligations associated with caregiving. One former fellow explained, “Having worked in the laboratory previously, it was exciting to be involved in work that could see promising candidates become actual products given to communities to save lives. However, I had a baby under 2 years at the time and the thought of leaving her and my older child and husband for a whole year was heart breaking. Besides, I had already been away from my husband while undertaking my PhD in Europe! Was I doing the right thing?”. There may be other barriers that prevent women from applying for this fellowship.

Type: Contest

Eligibility: 
  • The contest is open to anyone from any location.
  • Ideas from women in low- and middle-income countries are particularly encouraged, but review will be blinded so that judges do not know who submitted each one. Confidentiality will be maintained throughout the challenge contest.
Selection Criteria: Submissions will be judged on a 1-10 scale according to the following three criteria:
  1. capacity to increase the number of women who apply and receive WHO/TDR fellowships;
  2. feasibility;
  3. innovation, defined as different from the current practice used in the fellowship.
Final decisions about semi-finalists will be made by the Steering Committee.

Number of Awards: Not specified

Value of Award: 
  • At least three semi-finalists will be supported (registration, travel, hotel, per diem) to join and present their idea at the Women Leaders in Global Health conference in November 2018.
  • Selected finalists will have their idea implemented to increase women’s participation in this fellowship.
How to Apply: Send us your plan to expand women’s participation in a mid-career fellowship from WHO/TDR. This could be a way to more widely disseminate the fellowship call in order to increase awareness, a way to make the fellowship more conducive to women with caregiving obligations, or a way to increase the number of qualified women applicants. Be creative!
Format for submissions: Submissions must be written in English and less than 500 words. Submissions with figures have a 450 word limit.

Apply Here

Visit Programme Webpage for Details

Rotary/IHE Delft Masters Scholarships for Water and Sanitation Professionals 2018/2020

Application Deadline: 15th June 2018

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: All countries with a Rotary club presence

About the Award: Rotary and the UNESCO-IHE Institute for Water Education have teamed up to tackle the world’s water and sanitation crisis by increasing the number of trained professionals to devise, plan, and implement solutions in developing and emerging countries. Through this partnership, The Rotary Foundation will provide grants to Rotary clubs and districts to select and sponsor a limited number of students each year for the Masters Scholarships for Water and Sanitation.
Rotary scholars will benefit from the support they receive through regular contact with sponsoring Rotarians from their home country and the opportunity to interact with Rotarians in the Netherlands. After graduating, scholars’ expertise will be put to work improving water and sanitation conditions in their own community with a project the scholar and sponsoring Rotarians will design and implement together.
In addition, Rotary Foundation alumni are part of an extensive network of fellow Rotary scholarship recipients and Rotarians worldwide. Becoming involved with a local Rotary club and the alumni association allows scholars to stay connected to Rotary’s global community and resources.

Type: Masters, Grants

Eligibility: Students eligible for the Scholarships for Water and Sanitation must be provisionally admitted to one of the following degree programs at UNESCO-IHE (joint programs are not eligible):
  • MSc in Urban Water and Sanitation
  • MSc in Water Management
  • MSc in Water Science and Engineering
Students must also live or work near a Rotary club.

Selection Criteria: Scholars are selected in a competitive process. Candidates are chosen based on their ability to have a significant, positive impact on global water and sanitation issues during their career. Successful applicants will have a strong academic background, significant and relevant professional experience, and demonstrated leadership in the community

Number of Awardees: Not specified

Value of Scholarship: TRF awards scholarships of approximately €34,000, paid directly to UNESCO-IHE. Funding to cover additional costs (including international travel) related to participation in the academic program will be coordinated by UNESCO-IHE.

How to Apply:
  1. Students admitted to UNESCO-IHE’s eligible programs seek the sponsorship of their local Rotary club or district by submitting a scholar application to the potential sponsor.
  2. The potential sponsor receives and reviews the application and the terms and conditions.
  3. Rotarians interview the scholarship candidate and make a decision about sponsoring the applicant.
  4. The sponsor submits a full application online no later than 15 June of the year that the scholarship candidate’s program begins.
  5. The Rotary Foundation reviews the application.
  6. The Foundation awards a scholarship to a limited number of candidates who demonstrate the strongest potential to make a significant, positive impact on global water and sanitation issues during their career.
  7. The sponsor submits a progress report after the scholar’s first year of the program and a final report when the scholar completes his or her academic program.
Visit Scholarship Webpage for details

Award Provider: Rotary, UNESCO-IHE Institute for Water Education

Dubai Business Associates Programme for Recent University Graduates Worldwide 2018

Application Deadline: 30th June, 2018 (rolling basis, earlier encouraged)

Eligible Countries: International

To Be Taken At (Country): Dubai, UAE

About the Award: Run under the patronage of His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the Dubai Business Associates programme has been designed around three fundamental pillars for success: business experience, management training and cultural understanding.
  1. Business Experience: Participants will complete an associates with one of the emirate’s home-grown global leaders in a sector central to its economy, including trade, tourism, finance and logistics. The invaluable experience will provide participants with an understanding of how to operate within an international business environment.
  2. Management Training: Management training is an integral aspect of the programme. Combining practical experience with learning and development modules will provide participants with a better understanding and knowledge of fundamental business concepts and doing business in the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia region.
  3. Cultural Understanding: Dubai Business Associates offers a unique opportunity to gain a privileged insight into Dubai’s cultural communities and to develop cross-cultural communication skills. Participants will have access to influential business leaders and opinion formers from across Dubai, the UAE and the rest of the world.
Type: Training, Entrepreneurship

Eligibility: 
  • The Dubai Business Associate programme is open to recent university graduates (as well as those with up to three years of work experience) from all over the world.
  • Proficiency in both verbal and written English is required.
  • A keen interest in international business combined with a curious and inquiring mind is preferred.
Number of Awards: Not specified

Value of Award: All the associates will be fully funded during the programme, including accommodation, round-trip flights, working visa, comprehensive health insurance and a monthly allowance.

Duration of Programme: Beginning in September, the programme runs for nine months and includes business placements and consulting projects with our Placement Partners.

How to Apply: To apply for DBA, email recruitment@dubaibusinessassociates.ae with:
  • A current CV
  • An essay to a maximum of 500 words explaining your knowledge of Dubai and of the specific DBA partner who you believe can add value to and why
  • A link (e.g. on Wetransfer) to a maximum 90 second video of you explaining why you fit to the distinct learning culture, responsibilities and opportunities of DBA.
Application deadline: June 30th, 2018 (rolling basis, earlier encouraged)

Visit the Programme Webpage for Details

Award Providers: Falcon Management Limited

AMMSI-Phillip Griffiths Prize 2018 for African Mathematicians (USD 6,000 Prize)

Application Deadline: 30th June 2018.

About the Award: The AMMSI-Phillip Griffiths Prize is awarded to an African mathematician, living in Africa, who has made outstanding contribution to mathematics, application of mathematics or promotion of mathematics, as evidenced by research and impact of the work.The Prize has been made possible through a grant to AMMSI by Phillip Griffiths on his winning the Chern Prize in 2014. Nominations are welcomed from any part of the world and should contain the following information:

Type: Award

Eligibility:  Nominations are welcome from any part of the world

Number of Awards: 1

Value of Award: The award comprises a certificate with a citation on the winner’s scientific achievement as well as a cash prize of USD 6,000.

How to Apply:  Nominations should contain the following information:
  1. A letter by the nominator(s) forwarding the nomination and giving the contact details of the nominator(s) and the institutional affiliation, if any.
  2. Full name, email address and mailing address of the person nominated;
  3. Home web-page of the nominee (if any);
  4. The proposed citation (a Concise statement of not more than 250 words detailing the outstanding contribution);
  5. Justification for nomination (The nominator should cite the reasons for considering the candidate to be deserving and include explanations of the impact of the candidate’s work arising from his/her publications and activities) (Maximum four A4 pages);
  6. A brief Curriculum Vitae of the nominee including selected major publications(Maximum four A4 pages); The nomination should be sent via E-mail to the address:                  ammsi.africa@gmail.com 
Visit Award Webpage for details

Award  Provider:  Phillip Griffiths

Freedom of Expression: A Global Threat

Samina Salim

 India, a complex, beautiful and enchanting land, a melting pot of innumerable cultures, religions, ethnicities and traditions. India, a society deeply rooted in tolerance, compassion and forbearance. India, a land where the legends of Akbar’s justice, Shahjahan’s love, Prithvi Raj’s valor, Chanakya’s wisdom, live in every household. India, a land which gave birth to the concept of ahinsa, a land of Kabir and Kalidas, a land of Sufis and Sadhus, the land of Gandhi and Ghaffar, the land of Nehru and Azad, the land of Nanak and Gautum. The list can be endless and the names more empowering. One cannot help but be proud of their secular Indian heritage. Having lived in a tolerant India, the news of the slow rise of fascism and intolerance seem almost incomprehensible yet, the facts are facts. We cannot run away from facts. A recent incident happened too close to home.
I like many other Indians followed the pursuit to higher education and came to the US.  An air of nostalgia breezes through the mind when reminded of the days spent at Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) in India. AMU, a public central university in India, was established in 1875 by Sir Syed Ahmad Khan, as Mohammedan Anglo-Oriental (MAO) College. It was in 1920 that the college became Aligarh Muslim University, the campus of which is situated in the Aligarh city in the state of Uttar Pradesh (UP). Ever since it’s inception, this University has been a beacon of education, freedom and equality, producing notable alumni, including a former President of India, a former Vice-President of India, several Governors, Chief Ministers, Poets, Writers, Scientists, Sportsmen, Film and TV artists and many others. Recent US News and World Report puts AMU as one of the top public universities in the country, with law, medicine and engineering programs as one of the top in the nation.
On May 2, 2018, a group of thugs disguised as political activists supported by law enforcement officials barged into the University premises with the demands of removing the portrait of a former Indian political figure who later championed the two-state theory and was instrumental in the creation of Pakistan. This portrait was placed in the pre-independence era during the days of British rule, along with the portraits of other life members of the University AMU Students Union galleries. Traditionally, photographs of all life members are placed on the walls of the student union office including that of Gandhi, Nehru, Azad, Dalai Lama, Mother Teresa to name only a few. Whether this portrait should or should not be there, is debatable, and should be debated by the present AMU student general body and due process should deliver the outcome.
The issue is not so much the portrait, as none of the AMU students, present or past think much of the individual in question any way, the point is the following. It is alarming when fascist forces start to break-in the gates of academic institutions with the aim of robbing these institutions of their freedom. Their agenda is not promoting patriotism or strengthening nationalism but their goal is curbing freedom of expression, silencing discussions, hijacking debates, raping harmony, undermining justice and diminishing peace. Can we as a society afford it?

New Malaysian government formed amid internal and global tensions

John Roberts 

Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad has begun to form the country’s new cabinet, following the historic defeat of Prime Minister Najib Razak’s United Malays National Organisation (UMNO)-dominated Barisan Nasional coalition government (BN) in the May 9 election.
The 92-year-old Mahathir leads the Pakatan Harapan (PH) four-party coalition. The PH received 47.92 percent of the popular vote, winning a clear majority in the 222-member lower house of the parliament. This compares with 33.8 percent for the BN and 16.99 percent for the Islamist Parti Islam se-Malaysia (PAS).
UMNO’s electoral defeat was the outcome of immense discontent over social inequality, entrenched ruling nepotism and corruption, and the suppression of the democratic aspirations of the mass of the population.
Six-decade-old mechanisms to maintain virtual one-party rule in Malaysia failed to deliver victory to UMNO and its coalition, for the first time since the country gained independence in 1963. These included the use of race and religion to divide the electorate, the flagrant channelling of state funds to business cronies, tight control of the media, political control of the courts and massive gerrymandering.
The PH coalition, however, is far from a homogeneous political grouping. It consists of Mahathir’s United Malaysian Indigenous Party (PPBM), which has 13 seats; Anwar Ibrahim’s People’s Justice Party (PKR), with 47; the ethnic Chinese-based Democratic Action Party (DAP) with 42; and Amanah, a breakaway from the Islamist PAS, with 11 seats.
The PH is a disparate collection of ruling-class elements whose interests clashed with UMNO’s predatory rule. The only unifying position they have is the fear that Najib’s brazen corruption, expressed most clearly in the billions of dollars looted from the state-owned investment fund 1MDB, was fuelling the underlying social discontent and threatening the ruling class as whole.
Mahathir was the BN prime minister and UMNO leader from 1981 to 2003. Anwar Ibrahim was his deputy prime minister until they fell out over the economic response to the 1997–1998 Asian financial crisis. At the time, to silence Anwar’s opposition to his policies, Mahathir presided over the frame-up of his deputy on fabricated sodomy charges.
Anwar was arrested in September 1998 and sentenced in 2001 to nine years’ imprisonment. He was not released from solidarity confinement until 2004. New charges were laid against him in 2008 under Najib’s government, which ultimately resulted in his re-imprisonment in 2015.
The ruling coalition is wracked with conflicts over major domestic and international issues. On May 10, Mahathir was supposed to announce 10 of the up to 25 ministers to join himself and Wan Azizah, the PKR leader and deputy prime minister, in the cabinet.
Mahathir was able to name only three: Muhyiddin Yassin (PPBM) as home affairs minister; Lim Guan Eng (DAP) as finance minister; and Mohamad Sabu (Amanah) as defence minister.
On May 13, Mahathir declared that while “deliberation” would take place inside PH, he could appoint the cabinet at his discretion. More than a week later, only 13 ministers from the four parties had been sworn in. Among the positions still not filled was that of foreign minister.
Mahathir quickly established a 12-member “Council of Elders,” stacked with some close political and business associates, operating independently of the parliament. It is drawing up the government’s plans to implement various populist measures that PH pledged to carry out in its first 100 days in office. These include the abolition of the unpopular goods and services tax, an increase in the minimum wage, with an automatic review every two years, and the prosecution of Najib and others over the 1MDB scandal.
Mahathir claimed his return as prime minister would have a transitional character. In a pact worked out in January, Anwar’s PKR agreed to support Mahathir on the condition that Mahathir would move immediately to have the Anwar pardoned and released. After an interim period, Anwar, now 70, would re-enter the parliament and take over the premiership.
King Muhammad V, the head of state, pardoned Anwar on May 16. Anwar told the media upon on his release he was “happy” with the transition period. He said he would give “complete support” to the government “on the understanding that we are committed to the reform agenda, beginning with the judiciary, media and the entire apparatus.”
Both Anwar and Mahathir have declared that their “feud,” which erupted in 1998, is over. But the two represent rival sections of the Malay ruling elite.
In 1997–98, Anwar supported the demands of the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and the United States that Malaysia dismantle the various means it employed to protect national-based corporations and exclude foreign competition—a decades-long regime denounced by global finance as “crony capitalism.” His PKR continues to advocate the end of economic protectionism.
Mahathir only broke with UMNO after his faction of the party failed to remove Najib. Mahathir and his supporters formed the PPBM in 2016. Far from denouncing protectionism, the PPBM attacked Najib for making too many pro-market concessions, including the agreement to join the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP). In demagogic and nationalist fashion, Mahathir said the TPP would see Malaysia “colonised again” by US imperialism.
The PPBM remains committed to the defence of the New Economic Policy, which for decades has served the interests of a thin layer of ethnic Malay capitalists, at the expense of the mass of the population, as well as the ethnic Chinese and Indian business elite.
Mahathir also made it clear that he will seek closer relations with China and align with Beijing’s efforts to counter Washington’s influence in the region. On May 24, he sent Council of Elders member Robert Kuok, Malaysia’s richest man, to the Chinese embassy to discuss cooperation between the two countries. The next day, Mahathir met with Chinese ambassador Bai Tian.
US interests have expressed concern. In a May 11 article, the Pentagon-connected Center for International and Strategic Studies (CSIS) declared that Mahathir’s anti-American track record “creates a risk for bilateral relations.” In contrast, the think tank stressed that Anwar Ibrahim “enjoys deep and warm ties in Washington” and the US had supported him throughout his “travails.”
In reality, the Bush and Obama administrations supported Najib and did nothing to oppose the persecution of Anwar. Nevertheless, the CSIS assessment is that the PKR’s economic outlook pushes it to politically lean toward Washington, and against China.
Beside its military predominance in the region, Washington still has immense economic clout, despite Beijing’s growing trade and investment. The American total stock of foreign direct investment in the southeast Asian economies is $US226 billion—more than China, the European Union and Japan combined.


Differences over foreign policy, fuelled by the intrigues of the US, China and other powers, are likely to mesh with domestic issues and cause ruptures within the fragile coalition. At the same time, the inability of the Malaysian ruling class and its new government to meet the economic and political demands of the working class portends the eruption of massive social struggles.

Rich list shows more Australian billionaires than ever

Oscar Grenfell

This year’s Rich 200 list, released by the Australian Financial Review (AFR) last week, revealed that the ranks of Australia’s billionaires has swelled to 76, up from 60 in 2017. The collective wealth of the richest 200 individuals stands at an unprecedented $283 billion.
The figures underscore the immense growth of social inequality. Amid an increasingly precarious existence for millions of working people, characterised by stagnant or declining wages, a rise in poverty, homelessness and unemployment, the financial elite is making more money than ever.
The bonanza for the ultra-wealthy, which comes at the direct expense of ordinary people, is the continuation of a decades-long process that has intensified since the 2008 global financial crisis. In that year, there were 14 Australian-based billionaires. The number now stands at 33. The majority of Australia’s billionaires live abroad near the major hubs of international finance in the United States and Europe.
Together, the richest 200 people increased their fortunes by an estimated $50 billion over the past 12 months, a rise of 22 percent. Collectively, their bank accounts and stock portfolios grew by more than $1 billion every week.
The speed of financial accumulation has accelerated. The holdings of the richest 200 individuals increased 4 percent faster over the past year than during the previous 12 months.
This is part of a vast transfer of wealth to the corporate elite on a global scale, driven by tax cuts, austerity measures and the intensified exploitation of the working class, enforced by capitalist governments.
An Oxfam report, released in January, found that 82 percent of global wealth created over the previous year had gone to the richest 1 percent of the world’s population. By contrast, the poorest half of humanity, 3.7 billion people, saw no increase in their share. The report noted that internationally, billionaire wealth had risen by an average of 13 percent since 2010, and that every second day, a new billionaire was created.
As in the United States and Europe, the overwhelming majority of the richest individuals in Australia make their money through parasitic industries centred on financial speculation, which create no new wealth in the real economy.
More than a quarter of those on the AFR’s list, 51 individuals, accumulated their fortune through the property market. Harry Triguboff, the second richest Australian, is the country’s largest apartment builder. His wealth has increased from $25 million in 1984 to more than $12.7 billion.
The dramatic influx of financial investment into the property market, encouraged by the pro-business policies of Labor and Liberal-National governments at the state and federal levels, has created a deepening housing crisis.
House prices have soared across the country, with median prices above $1 million in Sydney, the centre of the property bubble. An entire generation is being locked out of home ownership, while millions of workers have exorbitant mortgages that threaten to tip them over the financial cliff.
Figures released by Digital Finance Analytics last year found that a quarter of all mortgaged households, numbering some 820,000, were in “stress.” Around 32,000 were deemed to be in “severe stress,” while 52,000 were at risk of defaulting that month.
Reflecting the rise and rise of finance capital, 20 of the richest individuals made their money through investments and 16 are in the financial services sector. Another 22 are in retail. Eighteen, including 3 of the 10 wealthiest individuals, are in mining and resources. They benefited from a rebound in commodity prices. Tenth on the list is James Packer, the billionaire heir who augmented his family fortune by operating casinos.
The richest individual, for the second year in a row, is Anthony Pratt, who has personal assets of $12.9 billion. Much of his wealth is based on the expansion of his privately-owned Pratt Industries, which operates a cardboard box and recycling business based primarily on the super-exploitation of thousands of low-paid workers in the United States.
In the AFR, Pratt hailed US President Donald Trump’s unprecedented corporate tax cut, to be paid for by the gutting of social spending. The Australian billionaire declared the tax handout would boost Pratt Industries’ profits by $100 million a year.
The article featuring Pratt underscored the aristocratic character of the ultra-wealthy. It reported that Pratt last year took out a $200,000 membership in the 62,500-square-foot Mar-a-Lago luxury resort owned by Trump.
The article noted: “Over a mild spring weekend at the resort, Pratt flits between a house on the estate owned by the President’s son, Eric Trump, and the resort’s communal areas—the main dining room, which is lined with marble from an old castle in Cuba; the living room with its high ceilings and walls adorned with gold-plated motifs ... and the tiled patio terrace that is the centrepiece of the estate.”
Pratt’s Australian company, Visy, is notorious for tax avoidance and brutal attacks on its employees. In 2010, more than 70 striking Visy workers were arrested after the company used police, security guards, helicopters and scab labour to combat a two-week strike over cuts to pay and conditions, and greater use of temporary workers.
The AFR’s editorial proclaimed that the enormous wealth of those on its list proved that “Australia is a land of opportunity for all who strive.” Nothing could be further from the truth.
Over the past three decades, social inequality has skyrocketed. The wealthiest 1 percent of the population controls more wealth than the poorest 70 percent. The richest six individuals, holding around $64 billion, have roughly as much money as the poorest 20 percent of the population.
Around three million people live below the official poverty line. Figures released this month by Launch Housing found that the poverty rate had increased by 3.3 percent from 2014–2016. An additional 613,000 people, including 229,000 children, had been forced below the poverty line.
Other studies have shown that rental unaffordability, homeless, child hunger and other indices of social misery have grown rapidly. Wage growth last year fell to a record low 1.9 percent, below the cost of living increase for working-class households. The corporate share of national gross domestic profit stands at 24 percent, a 10 percentage point increase over four decades.
The social gulf is a product of an assault on the social position of the working class, initiated by the federal Labor governments of prime ministers Bob Hawke and Paul Keating in the 1980s and early 1990s. Since then, every government has moved to lower spending on education, healthcare and other vital social services, while slashing corporate taxes and imposing pro-business policies across the board.
The trade unions, which function as an industrial police force of the corporations and governments, have played the central role in enforcing this agenda, through the suppression of industrial and political struggles by workers.

Amazon, Microsoft and Google compete for Pentagon Cloud warfighter project

Will Morrow

Amazon, Microsoft and Google are competing to secure a multi-billion-dollar Department of Defense contract to build and oversee the US military’s Cloud computing infrastructure, which will be used to control every aspect of the Pentagon’s global operations.
The Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) project will transfer the large number of separate data control centers currently being run by the Pentagon into a centralized Cloud network that will be administered by one of the technology giants. The contract is reported to be worth up to $10 billion over the next decade, potentially making it the Department of Defense’s single largest acquisition ever. The winning bidder is expected to be announced in September.
The company that secures the contract will be completely integrated into all of the US military’s fighting operations. According to Nextgov, Brigadier General David Krumm, the deputy director for requirements for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, described JEDI as a “global fabric” that will connect the headquarters with active combat forces, from an F-35 fighter jet pilot to a Pacific submarine captain to an Army platoon leader. “This is going to make a difference like few things have to get information to our warfighters,” Krumm said.
The Department of Defense hosted an industry conference on the project on March 7 in Arlington, Virginia, attended by technology companies, including representatives from Amazon and Microsoft. Krumm told the audience that JEDI would “change the way that this nation, its soldiers, its sailors, its Marines and its airmen fight and win our nation’s wars.”
The Cloud network will be required to hold data at all security classification levels, meaning security officials with top secret security clearances will be working at the facilities.
On May 16, Bloomberg Government published images of the advertisements produced by Amazon and Microsoft on electronic billboards in the Pentagon railway station about how their companies’ technology could support the military in battle.
Microsoft’s ad featured an image of a special operations soldier and the caption, “The cloud gets actionable insight while the action is still unfolding.” An Amazon Web Services ad included the statement, “Time to launch: months minutes,” to underscore that the cloud infrastructure will help coordinate missile launches.
The JEDI program was first announced in September 2017, a month after Trump’s Defence Secretary James Mattis carried out a tour of Silicon Valley boardrooms. Mattis met with Google’s Founder Sergey Brin and CEO Sundar Pichai, as well as executives at Facebook and Amazon, to discuss further integrating their technologies into the US armed forces.
The Defense One website reported on April 12 that “Brin in particular was eager to showcase how much Google was learning every day about AI and cloud implementation,” citing an anonymous senior Defense Department official. Mattis “returned to Washington, D.C., convinced that the US military had to move much of its data to a commercial cloud provider—not just to manage files, email, and paperwork but to push mission-critical information to front-line operators,” the article noted.
Significantly, the article notes that while Amazon and Microsoft have publicly expressed their desire to secure the contract, Google has “kept its own interest ... out of the press. Company leaders have even hidden the pursuit from its own workers, according to Google employees Defense One reached.”
Google’s integration into the military’s operations has triggered widespread opposition among its employees. A letter published in April written to Google’s CEO Pichai and signed by more than 3,000 Google workers, demanded that the company cease its collaboration with the Pentagon.
The letter was a response to Google admitting in March that it is providing the military with artificial intelligence software that can be used to detect objects in video surveillance footage, under what is called Project Maven. This technology can be directly used to develop automatic targeting for the US drone murder operations in the Middle East and North Africa.
The Defense One article stated that “Maven is more than either Google or the Defense Department has admitted publicly, according to the senior defense official who called it a ‘pathfinder’ project, a starting point for future collaboration between the Pentagon and Google.”
Media reports indicate that the company most likely to secure the JEDI contract is Amazon. The company is considered to have an edge because it is already operating a Cloud network for the US intelligence agencies, under a $600 million contract reached in 2013.
Since September 2016, Amazon has been providing facial recognition technology called Rekognition to police forces and private intelligence contractors. Rekognition is able to process video footage from police body cameras, surveillance cameras and CCTV to “identify persons of interest against a collection of millions of faces in real-time, enabling timely and accurate crime prevention”.
The distinction between the technology corporations and the state has become almost entirely blurred as they become ever-more integrated into the military-intelligence apparatus. This takes place as Washington is working to outpace its major geostrategic rivals, above all China and Russia, in the arena of advanced warfare technology and artificial intelligence, in preparation for a catastrophic war that would inevitably involve the use of nuclear weapons.

Corruption crisis prompts demand for snap elections in Spain

Alejandro López & Paul Mitchell

The National Court last week found 29 top officials linked to Spain’s ruling Popular Party (PP) government guilty of corruption. Those convicted forged documents, took bribes and laundered money siphoned from kickbacks linked to public works contracts. They were sentenced to a total of 351 years in prison.
The court declared that the PP had spawned “an authentic and efficient system of institutional corruption.”
The Gürtel case, as it has become known, is the largest and most pervasive political corruption scandal since the end of the Francoist dictatorship in the mid-1970s.
On Friday, Socialist Party (PSOE) General Secretary Pedro Sánchez announced a no confidence vote aimed at him replacing the PP’s Mariano Rajoy as Spain’s prime minister—with the intent of preventing a general election and exacerbating Spain’s economic and social crisis.
The no confidence vote is due to take place on Friday.
Sánchez, whose party has connived in keeping Rajoy’s minority government in power, appeared before the press to claim the PSOE would “Return [Spain] to political and institutional normality, regenerate democratic life, and set in motion a social agenda that would attend to urgent social issues.”
Such words are cynical. The Gürtel case has been around for years. It is almost a decade since it came to public attention. Most suspects were put on trial in 2016. Throughout this time, the PSOE covered for the PP’s corruption, kept it in power and backed its austerity measures and anti-democratic assault in Catalonia during the independence crisis.
The PSOE’s support of the PP was also covered up by the pseudo-left party, Podemos, which suppresses any independent mobilisation of the working class in its pursuit of a “progressive alliance” with the PSOE. Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias has now offered his party’s unconditional support for the PSOE motion of no confidence.
It was also left to Podemos to make a direct appeal to the right-wing populist Citizens on behalf of Sánchez. Podemos number two and candidate for regional premier in Madrid, Íñigo Errejón, broadcast a video on social networks calling for an end to the PP government, regardless of “political names.” He declared that “Acronyms cannot become a trench from which to reproach us while Spain is still blocked.” He warned Citizens leader Albert Rivera that he will be “co-responsible” for the “blockade” and “shame” if Citizens keeps the PP in power.
Citizens, however, is demanding the PSOE withdraw its no-confidence vote. They do not want to replace Rajoy with Sánchez but want new elections in the hope they will become the main party in Spain. Citizens General Secretary José Manuel Villegas said that “the solution passes through elections, there is no government programme to discuss” with the PSOE.
With the exception of the pro-PP ABC and La Razón, most of the Spanish media has dismissed Sánchez’s grab for power and are calling for snap elections. They are using the Gürtel corruption crisis to prepare the way for a right-wing replacement to the unstable minority PP government, which has seen its share of the vote at the last election in 2016 slump, in the space of just two years, from 35 percent to around 20 percent.
The main right-wing Spanish newspaper El Mundo proclaimed that the country was suffering a “very deep political crisis” that “could lead to the fall of the government.” It demanded Rajoy call an early ballot.
The nominally liberal and pro-PSOE El País, Spain’s largest newspaper, declared there was a “moment of national emergency.” It said an early election would be the “least damaging” option in order to produce a new “stable and coherent government.”
Both newspapers warned, however, about an unstable PSOE government coming to power when the economy was under pressure and having to rely on Podemos and regional nationalist parties in the Basque Country and Catalonia to rule.
El País declared, “making concessions to the secessionists is to cross a red line”.
El Mundo railed against “Catalan and Basque separatists, and the populist anti-system Podemos,” claiming they wanted to “cause a territorial breakup of the state.” They declared that any PSOE government would be a “hostage” to such forces.
Another right-wing publication, El Español, expressed most clearly what all of them are working for, declaring, “The best solution for Spain is an agreement between Sánchez and Rivera. Sanchez should add to his no confidence vote a specific day for elections… And Rivera should support this scenario and allow the socialists access to the Presidency of the Government even for a few months.”
The neo-liberal Citizens has been nurtured by the Spanish press, helping it grow from a small anti-Catalan independence party to threaten the PP and jockey for position as number one in the national polls. Citizens is seen as the force most prepared to use whatever means are necessary to drive through structural reform of the Spanish economy, repress the working class, prevent the breakup of the Spanish state threatened by regional separatism and defend Spain’s geo-political interests.
New elections in Spain would represent the third since December 2015, all of which produced hung parliaments. Such instability is symptomatic of the breakdown of the post-World War Two order and the two-party system, through which the Spanish bourgeoisie has ruled through the PP and PSOE in the post-Franco era.
Growing sections of the ruling class see the Gürtel case as the last straw, which is worsening already explosive class relations. After Greece, Spain is the country in western Europe where the financial crisis and austerity policies have created the greatest devastation. Despite a slight economic upturn based on rock-bottom wages, cheap oil and a weak euro, Spanish capitalism is moribund.
According to a study by Fedea and Accenture, Spain has almost five million people living lives of precariousness, labour poverty and unemployment.
The European Commission, which has backed Spain’s austerity packages, was forced to describe the inequality situation in Spain as “critical… either not improving sufficiently fast or deteriorating further.” It noted that the 20 percent of those on the highest incomes make 6.6 times more than the 20 percent with lowest incomes, placing the country in a bottom group that also includes Bulgaria, Lithuania and Greece.
In contrast, the richest Spaniards—in the top 10 percent—saw their share of household wealth balloon from 44 percent in 2008, the year of the global financial crash, to 53 percent in 2014, according to a report published by the Bank of Spain.
Such conditions are provoking growing social opposition. In 2017, the number of days lost due to work stoppages rose almost 53 percent. El Economista recently warned that “the labour conflicts in the air and rail sectors threaten Spain with a hot summer.”