The Conundrums of Bangladeshi Politics

Vijay Prashad

Photograph Source: Md Joni Hossain – CC BY-SA 4.0

On Monday, August 5, former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina boarded a Bangladesh Air Force C-130J military transport in a hurry and fled to Hindon Air Force base, outside Delhi. Her plane was refueled and reports said that she intended to fly on either to the United Kingdom (her niece, Tulip Siddiq is a minister in the new Labor government), Finland (her nephew Radwan Mujib Siddiq is married to a Finnish national), or the United States (her son Sajeeb Wajed Joy is a dual Bangladesh-US national). Army Chief Waker uz-Zaman, who only became Army Chief six weeks ago and was her relative by marriage, informed her earlier in the day that he was taking charge of the situation and would create an interim government to hold future elections.

Sheikh Hasina was the longest-serving prime minister in Bangladesh’s history. She was the prime minister from 1996 to 2001, and then from 2009 to 2024—a total of 20 years. This was a sharp contrast to her father Sheikh Mujib, who was assassinated in 1975 after four years in power, or General Ziaur Rahman who was assassinated in 1981 after six years in power. In a scene reminiscent of the end of Mahinda Rajapaksa’s rule in Sri Lanka, jubilant crowds of thousands crashed the gates of Ganabhaban, the official residence of the prime minister, and jubilantly made off with everything they could find.

Tanzim Wahab, photographer and chief curator of the Bengal Foundation, told me, “When [the masses] storm into the palace and make off with pet swans, elliptical machines, and palatial red sofas, you can feel the level of subaltern class fury that built up against a rapacious regime.” There was widespread celebration across Bangladesh, along with bursts of attacks against buildings identified with the government—private TV channels, and palatial homes of government ministers were a favored target for arson. Several local-level leaders in Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League have already been killed (Mohsin Reza, a local president of the party, was beaten to death in Khulna).

The situation in Bangladesh remains fluid, but it is also settling quickly into a familiar formula of an “interim government” that will hold new elections. Political violence in Bangladesh is not unusual, having been present since the birth of the country in 1971. Indeed, one of the reasons why Sheikh Hasina reacted so strongly to any criticism or protest was her fear that such activity would repeat what she experienced in her youth. Her father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman (1920-1975), the founder of Bangladesh, was assassinated in a coup d’état on August 15, 1975, along with most of his family. Sheikh Hasina and her sister survived because they were in Germany at that time—the two sisters fled Bangladesh together on the same helicopter this week. She has been the victim of multiple assassination attempts, including a grenade attack in 2004 that left her with a hearing problem. Fear of such an attempt on her life made Sheikh Hasina deeply concerned about any opposition to her, which is why up to 45 minutes before her departure she wanted the army to again act with force against the gathering crowds.

However, the army read the atmosphere. It was time for her to leave.

A contest has already begun over who will benefit from the removal of Sheikh Hasina. On the one side are the students, led by the Bangladesh Student Uprising Central Committee of about 158 people and six spokespersons. Lead spokesperson Nahid Islam made the students’ views clear: “Any government other than the one we recommended would not be accepted. We won’t betray the bloodshed by the martyrs for our cause. We will create a new democratic Bangladesh through our promise of security of life, social justice, and a new political landscape.” At the other end are the military and the opposition political forces (including the primary opposition party Bangladesh National Party, the Islamist party Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami, and the small left party Ganosamhati Andolan). While the Army’s first meetings were with these opposition parties, a public outcry over the erasure of the student movement forced the Army to meet with the Student Central Committee and listen to their primary demands.

There is a habit called polti khawa or “changing the team jersey midway through a football match” that prevails in Bangladesh, with the military being the referee in charge at all times. This slogan is being used in public discourse now to draw attention to any attempt by the military to impose a mere change of jersey when the students are demanding a wholesale change of the rules of the game. Aware of this, the military has accepted the student demand that the new government be led by economist Muhammad Yunus, Bangladesh’s only Nobel Prize winner. Yunus, as the founder of the microcredit movement and promoter of “social business,” used to be seen as primarily a phenomenon in the neoliberal NGO world. However, the Hasina government’s relentless political vendetta against him over the last decade, and his decision to speak up for the student movement, have transformed him into an unlikely “guardian” figure for the protesters. The students see him as a figurehead although his neoliberal politics of austerity might be at odds with their key demand, which is for employment.

Students

Even prior to independence and despite the rural character of the region, the epicenter of Bangladeshi politics has been in urban areas, with a focus on Dhaka. Even as other forces entered the political arena, students remain key political actors in Bangladesh. One of the earliest protests in post-colonial Pakistan was the language movement (bhasha andolan) that emerged out of Dhaka University, where student leaders were killed during an agitation in 1952 (they are memorialized in the Shaheed Minar, or Martyrs’ Pillar, in Dhaka). Students became a key part of the freedom struggle for liberation from Pakistan in 1971, which is why the Pakistani army targeted the universities in Operation Searchlight which led to massacres of student activists. The political parties that emerged in Bangladesh after 1971 grew largely through their student wings—the Awami League’s Bangladesh Chhatra League, the Bangladesh National Party’s Bangladesh Jatiotabadi Chatradal, and the Jamaat-e-Islami’s Bangladesh Islami Chhatra Shibir.

Over the past decade, students in Bangladesh have been infuriated by the growing lack of employment despite the bustling economy, and by what they perceived as a lack of care from the government. The latter was demonstrated to them by the callous comments made by Shajahan Khan, a minister in Sheikh Hasina’s government, who smirked as he dismissed news that a bus had killed two college students on Airport Road, Dhaka, in July 2019. That event led to a massive protest movement by students of all ages for road safety, to which the government responded with arrests (including incarceration for 107 days of the photojournalist Shahidul Alam).

Behind the road safety protests, which earned greater visibility for the issue, was another key theme. Five years previously, in 2013, students who were denied access to the Bangladesh Civil Service began a protest over restrictive quotas for government jobs. In February 2018, this issue returned through the work of students in the Bangladesh Sadharon Chhatra Odhikar Songrokkhon Parishad (Bangladesh General Students’ Rights Protection Forum). When the road safety protests occurred, the students raised the quota issue (as well as the issue of inflation). By law, the government reserved seats in its employment for people in underdeveloped districts (10 percent), women (10 percent), minorities (5 percent), and the disabled (1 percent) as well as for descendants of freedom fighters (30 percent).

It is the latter quota that has been contested since 2013 and which returned as an emotive issue this year for the student protesters—especially after the prime minister’s incendiary comment at a press conference that those protesting the freedom fighter quotas were “rajakarer natni” (grandchildren of war traitors). British journalist David Bergman, who is married to prominent Bangladeshi activist lawyer Sara Hossain and was hounded into exile by the Hasina government, called this comment the “terrible error” that ended the government.

Military Islam

In February 2013, Abdul Quader Mollah of the Jamaat-e-Islami was sentenced to life in prison for crimes against humanity during Bangladesh’s liberation war (he was known to have killed at least 344 civilians). When he left the court, he made a V sign, whose arrogance inflamed large sections of Bangladesh’s society. Many in Dhaka gathered at Shahbag, where they formed a Gonojagoron Moncho (Mass Awakening Platform). This protest movement pushed the Supreme Court to reassess the verdict, and Mollah was hanged on December 12. The Shahbag movement brought to the surface a long-term tension in Bangladesh regarding the role of religion in politics.

Sheikh Mujibur Rahman initially claimed that Bangladesh would be a socialist and secular country. After his assassination by the military, general Ziaur Rahman took over the country and governed it from 1975 to 1981. During this time, Zia brought religion back into public life, welcomed the Jamaat-e-Islami from banishment (which had been due to its participation in the genocide of 1971), and—in 1978—formed the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) on nationalist lines with a strong critical stance toward India. General Hussain Muhammad Ershad, who took control after his own coup in 1982 and ruled until 1990, went further, declaring that Islam was the state’s religion. This provided a political contrast with the views of Mujib, and of his daughter Sheikh Hasina who took the reins of her father’s party, the Awami League, in 1981.

The stage was set for a long-term contest between Sheikh Hasina’s centrist-secular Awami League and the BNP, which was taken over by Zia’s wife Khaleda Zia after the General was assassinated in 1981. Gradually, the military—which had a secular orientation in its early days—began to witness a growing Islamist mood. Political Islam has grown in Bangladesh with the rise of piety in the general population, some of it driven by the Islamization of migrant labor to the Gulf states and to Southeast Asia. The latter has steadily reflected growth in observance of the Islamic faith in the aftermath of the war on terror’s many consequences. One should neither exaggerate this threat nor minimize it.

The relationship of the political Islamists, whose popular influence has grown since 2013, with the military is another factor that requires much more clarity. Given the dent in the fortunes of the Jamaat-e-Islami since the War Crimes Tribunal documented how the group was involved on the side of Pakistan during the liberation struggle, it is likely that this formation of political Islam has a threshold in terms of its legitimacy. However, one complicating factor is that the Hasina government relentlessly used the fear of “political Islam” as a bogeyman to obtain U.S. and Indian silent consent to the two elections in 2018 and 2024. If the interim government holds a fair election on schedule, this will allow Bangladeshi people to find out if political Islam is a dispensation they wish to vote for.

New Cold War

Far away from the captivating issues put forward by the students which led to the ouster of Sheikh Hasina are dangerous currents that are often not discussed during these exciting times. Bangladesh is the eighth-largest country in the world by population, and it has the second highest Gross Domestic Product in South Asia. The role it plays in the region and in the world is not to be discounted.

Over the course of the past decade, South Asia has faced significant challenges as the United States imposed a new cold war against China. Initially, India participated with the United States in the formations around the U.S. Indo-Pacific Strategy. But, since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, India has begun to distance itself from this U.S. initiative and tried to put its own national agenda at the forefront. This meant that India did not condemn Russia but continued to buy Russian oil. At the same time, China had—through the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)—built infrastructure in Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, India’s neighbors.

It is perhaps not a coincidence that four governments in the region that had begun to collaborate with the BRI have fallen, and that their replacements in three of them are eager for better ties with the United States. This includes Shehbaz Sharif, who came to power in Pakistan in April 2022 with the ouster of Imran Khan (now in prison), Ranil Wickremesinghe, who briefly came to power in Sri Lanka in July 2022 after setting aside a mass uprising that had other ideas than the installation of a party with only one member in parliament (Wickremesinghe himself), and KP Sharma Oli, who came to power in July 2024 in Nepal after a parliamentary shuffle that removed the Maoists from power.

What role the removal of Sheikh Hasina will play in the calculations in the region can only be gauged after elections are held under the interim government. But there is little doubt that these decisions in Dhaka are not without their regional and global implications.

The students rely upon the power of the mass demonstrations for their legitimacy. What they do not have is an agenda for Bangladesh, which is why the old neoliberal technocrats are already swimming like sharks around the interim government. In their ranks are those who favor the BNP and the Islamists. What role they will play is yet to be seen.

If the student committee now formed a bloc with the trade unions, particularly the garment worker unions, there is the possibility that they might indeed form the opening for building a new democratic and people-centered Bangladesh. If they are unable to build this historical bloc, they may be pushed to the side, just like the students and workers in Egypt, and they might have to surrender their efforts to the military and an elite that has merely changed its jersey.

Cost-of-living spiral worsens legal aid crisis in Australia

Sofia Devetzi

A government-commissioned review of legal services funding in Australia has found that current levels are wholly insufficient. This has left millions of working-class people unable to secure legal representation or advice, while the wealthy elite and big business are able to hire expensive lawyers.

The report, released publicly in March, examined the funding of Legal Aid Commissions, Community Legal Centres and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Services. With the current funding arrangements due to expire next year, the federal and state governments were compelled to initiate a review. They appointed Warren Mundy, an economist, company director and former member of the pro-business Productivity Commission, to head the evaluation.

Australian Attorney General Mark Dreyfus (left) with copy of Independent Review of the National Legal Assistance Partnership and its author Dr Warren Mundy, March 5, 2024 [Photo: X/@MarkDreyfusKCMP]

Legal aid providers rely on funding from federal and state governments to pay staff and meet day-to-day operating expenses. For many low- and middle-income earners, assistance from such organisations is the only way to obtain essential legal services. Demand vastly outstrips supply.

Mundy found there had been a significant increase in unmet legal need over the past decade, largely due to socio-economic factors and policy changes. Issues for which people need legal assistance—housing and homelessness, mortgages, dealings with financial institutions, small claims, workplace issues, family breakdown and violence—had been exacerbated by the cost-of-living crisis. In turn, unmet legal need often further intensified disadvantage for those already experiencing hardship.

The inquiry found that funding issues had been compounded by the introduction of “market mechanisms” like competitive tendering. Service providers, which are naturally collaborative, were pitted against each other for whatever small pool of funding is offered.

Organisations must devote to this process already-limited resources that would otherwise be spent helping clients. In the words of the report, “rather than known trusted partners providing a valued service to community, government has treated service providers like sporting clubs tendering for funds to renovate a block of change rooms.”

Despite a 2014 Productivity Commission report recommending better funding, governments have made no attempt to align funding with actual legal need and the costs of service provision. In the past decade, Legal Aid Commissions have received on average $16 million per annum less than necessary to cover the cost of service delivery. Mundy concluded that “it is clear that the extent of unmet need for people experiencing disadvantage is primarily an outcome of fiscal choices made by governments.”

The report found that “unmet need is the norm and met need the exception.” Disadvantaged people in some parts of the country were provided with no legal aid at all.

Vulnerable groups—including indigenous people, people in mental distress, single parents, the unemployed, those with long-term illness, and those unable to heat or cool their homes—reported more legal problems and were more likely to incur multiple legal problems at once.

These groups also experienced substantially slower resolution of their legal problems, further worsening their health, social and financial circumstances. In many locations, the nature and effect of unmet legal needs were reported to be at a “humanitarian level.”

The legal aid crisis was seen in shocking turn-away figures. Caxton Legal Centre in Brisbane had received 150,000 calls for assistance over the past five years, but could provide legal advice to only 13 percent of the people who sought assistance.

The centre estimated that of those who received initial legal advice, 1 in 3 also needed representation services, but were turned away due to lack of capacity. In all, 562 casework services were provided over the period, just 0.0035 percent of the initial calls for assistance.

On the other side of the continent, the main provider of legal aid in Western Australia had received 14,310 calls for civil law assistance in the past year, but only 6 percent could be booked in for an appointment with a lawyer due to services reaching capacity.

Overall, there were few grants for civil (non-criminal) issues such as family law, housing, debt problems and appeals against government decisions. This resulted in many disadvantaged people appearing without legal representation in courts and tribunals. Of the appeals commenced by self-represented litigants in the Federal Court, 72 percent were migration appeals.

Several legal aid organisations reported serious issues in providing housing and tenancy assistance, with some major providers completely unable to offer this type of aid due to funding constraints.

Legal aid for social security issues was also extremely limited, affecting the most economically vulnerable in society.

A “perfect storm” was thus unfolding. Legal aid for civil matters was becoming increasingly underfunded as the cost-of-living crisis intensified social and legal problems.

Legal aid providers reported significant problems recruiting and retaining staff. Uncertain funding, short-term contracts (often limited to a year or two) and unmanageable workloads had led to high levels of burnout and attrition. Surveys showed that 76 percent of providers asked staff to work additional hours to meet demand.

Mundy said that in spite of these challenges, legal aid lawyers had played an essential role in pursuing public interest cases, as exemplified most recently in their work to challenge the previous Liberal-National government’s “Robodebt” scheme. From 2015 to 2019, the scheme issued automated (and often inaccurate) debt notices to welfare recipients, declaring that they owed the government thousands of dollars.

Victims were threatened with jail terms unless they paid the demanded amounts or produced documents to disprove the alleged over-payments. The system had claimed nearly $2 billion from welfare recipients—and caused immeasurable grief, stress and financial suffering and a number of suicides—before finally being declared unlawful in a court case brought by Legal Aid Victoria.

The existence of an extreme crisis in legal aid funding is not new information. Mundy’s report is further evidence of a long-known and worsening problem.

The 2014 Productivity Commission review found high levels of legal need across the country, with over 1.5 million people living below the poverty line ineligible for legal assistance under means tests described by the Commission as “too mean.”

Of the 18 recommendations the Commission made to improve legal assistance, however, the federal and state governments took up only three. Notably, the recommendation to increase funding to adequate levels went unaddressed.

In his review, Mundy made 39 recommendations, including better geographical coverage of legal aid services, increased pay for staff at Community Legal Centres, and the abandonment of competitive tendering. He called for a $459 million increase in funding for civil law assistance, including early intervention and mediation—in line with the funding increase recommended by the Productivity Commission a decade ago.

Although Mundy’s report has been with governments for over six months, there has been no official response to it, nor mention of it in the recent federal or state budgets handed down by Labor governments, which are in office across the mainland.

The Law Council of Australia, the lawyers’ peak body, has voiced concern that this means funding is “unduly delayed.” The council added that with funding arrangements due to run out within a year, there was a “sword hanging over the heads” of legal aid services, making it even more difficult for them to recruit and retain staff.

Mundy’s report functions as an important exposé of the legal aid crisis, but it skates over the fact that this situation has been several decades in the making. Community legal centres were first created by students and volunteers to assist with enormous unmet need in the 1970s.

Then the Whitlam Labor government set up the National Legal Aid Office in 1973, as part of its efforts to contain a huge upsurge of workers’ struggles in Australia and globally. From the start, however, this was a minimal service, constrained by means tests and carefully deferring to the domination of the private legal profession.

Legal aid funding has only been stripped back since, leaving legal services almost entirely in the realm of the private and for-profit sector. No government has ever aimed to deliver anything like legal equality. The principle of “equality before the law” can only be a myth in a society where one’s purse-strings are a decisive factor in access to legal advice and services, and often preclude any legal assistance at all.

Fall in Chinese growth indicative of mounting problems in global economy

Nick Beams

The Chinese leadership is becoming increasingly concerned about slowing economic growth and that the economy is in danger of falling short of the official target of 5 percent—a situation that is starting to impact heavily on the global economy.

A young couple walk near office buildings in Beijing's Central Business District on March 2, 2024. [AP Photo/Andy Wong]

A meeting of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Politburo last week cited “insufficient” demand as it issued a call for government measures to stimulate the economy, particularly via increased consumption spending.

“The focus of economic policies should shift more towards benefiting the people and promoting consumption,” the Politburo, which is headed by President Xi Jinping, said. “It is necessary to increase people’s income through multiple channels.”

The statement, as reported by the official Xinhua news agency, was in marked contrast to the one adopted at the Third Plenum of the CCP Central Committee which met earlier in the month. Its focus was on the development of “high quality productive forces”—the expansion of high-tech industries with the need for a stimulus and increased consumption barely rating a mention.

The Third Plenum ignored calls by economists within China and internationally for an increase in domestic spending, despite recent data which has pointed to the necessity for such measures if the official growth rate target is to be achieved.

Data for the second quarter showed an annualised growth rate of 4.7 percent—down from above 5 percent in the previous three months. It was the lowest growth rate in five months.

This was followed by a survey which showed that China’s manufacturing had fallen in July for the third consecutive month. The official purchasing manager’s index was 49.4, down from 49.5 in June. A PMI reading of 50 marks the boundary between expansion and contraction.

The non-manufacturing PMI was in expansion territory, coming in at 50.2 but below the level of 50.5 recorded in June.

There have been moves by the central bank to lift the economy with some interest rates cuts and limited stimulus measures by the finance ministry. This included a cash for clunkers program in which people receive subsidies when they trade in old cars and appliances for new ones. But the measures appear to have had little effect.

The call by the Politburo for a focus on consumption spending has been welcomed by commentators, but is being taken with a grain of salt because concrete measures have yet to be specified.

In financial circles, it is not regarded as having a great deal of significance.

Michelle Lam, the Greater China economist at Société Générale, told Bloomberg that the Politburo’s commitment to try to boost consumption was a “good shift” but lacked detail.

“Policymakers could still be focusing on better supply of services to drive consumer demand. It doesn’t seem like they are thinking about something unconventional, which is needed to revive weak investor confidence,” she said.

Analysts at Gavekal Dragonomics, which specialises in research on China, commented that “economic policy and growth in China have again broadly disappointed, with demand losing momentum as attempts at fiscal stimulus, a property bailout and a reform package have failed to gain traction.”

“The government’s main priority remains its manufacturing- and technology-focused industrial policy.”

They said there was a danger of China missing its growth target this year because of weak demand.

The focus of the Xi leadership has been on developing China’s industrial capacity. But in conditions of weak domestic demand this means the increased production must be sold on world markets.

As a result, exports are growing. More than $900 billion of goods were exported in the second quarter, up from $800 billion in the first three months of the year and 50 percent higher than before the pandemic.

However, the outflow of exports has run into an obstacle with the imposition of tariffs measures in a campaign led by the US and increasingly being joined by Europe.

The move by the Xi regime to focus on high-tech manufacturing and development is aimed at trying to shift the economy to a higher growth path. The shift has been made because the reliance on property and infrastructure development, which has accounted for as much as 30 percent of GDP in the past, is no longer viable because it only increases already high debt levels.

Even without the impediments to this plan resulting from tariffs and other constrictions, the new orientation would take a considerable time to take effect. In the meantime, the Chinese economy is still highly dependent on smaller scale factories producing consumer items such as clothing, furniture and toys.

But these industries, which have been a major source of employment, are running into problems as outlined in a recent major article in the Financial Times (FT) which described low-tech manufacturers as hanging on by their fingernails.

These factories were now “increasingly struggling with anaemic orders from Western buyers, trade restrictions in foreign markets and growing competition from rival hubs, particularly southeast Asian countries such as Vietnam and Indonesia, as well as Bangladesh and India,” it said.

The article cited comments by Fred Neumann, chief Asia economist at HSBC.

“China remains the behemoth when it comes to labour-intensive goods,” he said. But in the face of competition from lower cost rivals, “these are all industries that are hanging on with their fingernails.”

Footwear was cited as an example, with China’s share of global footwear declining by 10 percentage points over the past decade.

The slow growth in the world economy is impacting many of China’s smaller scale factories. One manager at a synthetic fabric manufacturer reported that orders from foreign buyers had declined since the end of the pandemic and that in his industry “every year is worse than the last.”

The slowdown in China, in particular the slump in the property market and construction, is in turn adversely affecting the global economy, with a significant fall in demand for key raw materials.

According to Sabrin Chowdury, head of commodities analysis at BMI, as reported in the FT, sentiment towards commodities is “really bad” and the outlook is “definitely weak in the coming months as the hope on China start to diminish completely.”

Rio Tinto, the world’s second largest mining group, has reported that demand for steel from China’s property sector was down by as much as 30 percent from its peak in 2020. Chinese demand for copper, often cited as an indicator of the strength of the world economy, was at a 13-year low in June.

The economic predicaments of China highlight the worsening trends in the global economy as a whole. Growth in the euro zone, in particular Germany is virtually stagnant, likewise Japan, and there growing indications that the surge in the US economy is coming to an end and it could be moving into a recession.

Thailand’s Constitutional Court dissolves main opposition party

Ben McGrath

Thailand’s Constitutional Court ruled Wednesday to dissolve the main opposition Move Forward Party (MFP) based on trumped-up charges, while banning 11 party leaders from participating in politics for 10 years. The anti-democratic decision exposes the fact that sections of the ruling elite grouped around the military and monarchy continue to exert control over politics despite claims of a “return to democracy.”

Former leader of Move Forward Party Pita Limjaroenrat, center, waves to his supporters at Constitutional Court in Bangkok, Aug. 7, 2024. [AP Photo/Chatkla Samnaingjam]

The MFP had previously campaigned for reforming Thailand’s draconian lèse-majesté law, known as Section 112 of the Criminal Code. This included during last year’s general election, which the party won with more than 14 million votes. After months of deliberation, the nine-member court ruled unanimously that its proposed reform amounted to an attempt to overthrow Thailand’s monarchy through unconstitutional means. It also voted 8-1 that the MFP had taken actions that were hostile to the monarchy.

The court, appointed by the military following the 2014 coup, claimed: “Expressions of opinion toward legal amendments (of the lèse-majesté law) and the vote campaigns posed significant threats to national security.”

The ruling expresses the military’s determination to block any discussion of reforms as the country faces a growing economic crisis. The monarchy serves as the linchpin of Thailand’s capitalist establishment, amid sharp tensions among the different factions of the bourgeoisie.

The proposed reforms were quite limited. They included an amendment that would allow only the Bureau of the Royal Household to file accusations of lèse-majesté. Presently, anyone may file such an accusation. The MFP also called for reducing sentences for those convicted under the law. Nearly 300 people have been charged with violating the law since the 2020 student-led protests that called for an end to military-dominated rule and reform of the monarchy. Conviction comes with a maximum 15-year jail sentence for each charge.

The Constitutional Court opened up the possibility for the MFP’s dissolution in January, when it characterised these calls for reform as violating the 2017 constitution written by the military. Wednesday’s ruling relied on Section 92 of the Political Parties Act, which states any party supposedly conducting itself in an unconstitutional manner “must” be dissolved.

Among the party leaders banned from politics are de facto MFP leader and member of parliament Pita Limjaroenrat, who stated after the dissolution order was announced: “We have no intention of treason, insurrection, or separating the monarchy from the country.”

After his party’s election victory last year, Pita was blocked from forming a government by the military-appointed Senate and faced phony charges of ethics violations that led to a temporary suspension as an MP. Formal party leader Chaithawat Tulathon and other executive committee members are now also barred from politics.

The bans cut the number of MFP members in parliament to 142, though it remains the largest single-party bloc in the National Assembly. The remaining members now have 60 days to join another party or face ejection from parliament. While some MPs could defect, a new party is set to be unveiled on Friday with MFP deputy leader Sirikanya Tansakun slated to be the new head.

This is not the first time the party has been dissolved. In 2020, the MFP’s predecessor, the Future Forward Party, was similarly banned by the Constitutional Court on phony charges of violating the election law on political donations. The ruling helped fuel the student-led protests that year directed against the government of then Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha, the leader of the 2014 military coup.

Calls for the MFP’s dissolution were raised after the party emerged as the surprise winner of the 2023 general election. This victory demonstrated the hostility to the military felt by millions across Thailand after nearly two decades of coups, party dissolutions and violent attacks on protesters. Significantly, the Election Commission, another military-appointed body, last year called the accusations of lèse-majesté “groundless”.

Unable to win an election, the right-wing sections grouped around the military have responded to the electoral success of so-called “progressive” parties by simply having them declared illegal.

This also extends to parties with which the military has joined in the ruling coalition led by the Pheu Thai Party (PTP). Current Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin from the PTP faces removal from office next week in a separate case over bogus ethics violations. The former prime minister and de facto head of the party, Thaksin Shinawatra, a long-time adversary of the military, has also been charged with lèse-majesté.

Neither the MFP nor the PTP are genuine defenders of democracy. Srettha has refused to comment on the MFP case, saying on Tuesday, “The executive branch is in no position to interfere with the justice process.”

Furthermore, the MFP’s reform campaign was an attempt to put a progressive face on a thoroughly bourgeois party, in order to corral the votes of people looking for an alternative to the military-backed parties. The latter speak for right-wing and traditional layers of the state, including the bureaucracy and monarchy, with their significant business interests, opposed to competition from newer and emerging sections of the bourgeoisie.

The MFP’s reform agenda was not about democracy for the working class, but was meant to decentralise control of the economy that is centered around these traditional layers and thus open up more opportunities for weaker and newer sections of the bourgeoisie.

In the lead up to Wednesday’s dissolution, the MFP did everything possible to downplay the significant attacks on democratic rights in Thailand. Claiming little would change if a new party had to be set up, Pita, doing the rounds of the Western media, stated in an interview published August 5 in the Washington Post, “Our politics is about substance and not so much about form.”

Pita also met on August 2 with diplomats from 18 countries at the German embassy in an appeal for their support, speaking with representatives from the United States, the United Kingdom, the European Union, Germany, Japan, and France. Pita no doubt presented himself as a more reliable defender of imperialism’s interests. In his Washington Post interview, he declared, “It’s very hard for the Thai government to have legitimacy to engage Americans and Europeans.”

The meeting prompted Prime Minister Srettha to warn against interference, claiming, “Thailand’s judicial process is independent and is in line with international standards.” Srettha’s response demonstrates the nervousness that exists among the ruling elite that the court case could impact the balancing act Bangkok is conducting between Washington and Beijing.

In fact, there are sharp differences within the ruling class over whether Bangkok orients to China or the US. Washington is placing pressure on countries like Thailand to join in its war drive against Beijing.

The US State Department issued a short statement after Wednesday’s ruling, saying Washington was “deeply concerned” by the decision, which “jeopardises Thailand’s democratic progress and runs counter to the aspirations of the Thai people for a strong, democratic future.”

Macron’s moves to form right-wing French government expose bankruptcy of New Popular Front

Alex Lantier

This week, press reports revealed that President Emmanuel Macron is preparing to form a right-wing government, trampling the results of the July 7 election. Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s New Popular Front (NFP) won the election amid a surge of opposition to Macron’s policies and to the far-right National Rally. However, Macron is still considering naming right-wing politician Xavier Bertrand as prime minister.

French President Emmanuel Macron meets police forces, during the 2024 Paris Olympic Games in Paris, France, Saturday, July 27, 2024. [AP Photo/Yves Herman]

Yesterday, Le Figaro reported that Macron discussed Bertrand, a former health and labor minister under previous right-wing governments, as a possible prime ministerial choice with close associates sent by Bertrand. “How is he?” Macron asked them. They replied, “He is ready to take up the challenge. He’s prepared.”

These plans amount to a conspiracy against the people and, above all, against the working class. They are discussed behind the backs of the masses, with the media almost entirely focused on the Paris Olympics, at the height of the French summer holidays. But even after Macron’s party has been reduced to a small minority in the National Assembly and his policies rejected by an overwhelming majority of the French people, moves are afoot to name a government based on the same forces as before the July 7 election.

The main enabler of this conspiracy, however, is Jean-Luc Mélenchon and the NFP coalition. The NFP holds the largest single bloc of votes in the National Assembly, after carrying the votes of the bulk of the urban working class in the 2022 presidential and 2024 legislative elections. Yet the NFP has proven itself completely incapable of and unwilling to call on its millions of working class voters to mobilize and strike to bring down Macron’s right-wing conspiracy.

Instead, the NFP has proven utterly feckless, unable to rouse itself to any action against Macron’s reactionary maneuvers. Mélenchon has not issued a single tweet or statement on his blog since July. The NFP has left the task of criticizing Macron’s maneuvers with Bertrand to the political nonentity it unanimously chose as its proposal to Macron for prime minister, the obscure 37-year-old Finance Ministry bureaucrat Lucie Castets.

By thus abandoning the political field, the NFP is leaving the way open for Macron to plot the installation of what would be an illegitimate, violently right-wing government. Bertrand, a former labor minister under right-wing President Nicolas Sarkozy, would pursue an agenda of austerity, police-state repression and attacks on immigrants, while Macron kept participating in NATO’s wars internationally. Reporting on Bertrand’s attempts to market himself as a possible prime minister in his back-channel talks with Macron, Le Figaro writes:

[He] recalls that the closure of the “Jungle” [immigrant camp] in Calais in 2016 took place as he was president of the region, working with [Socialist Party] Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve. So did the cut-off of state contracts to the Averroès Muslim high school. This shows that on military-police issues, he does not promote a “weak consensus”. He is now making many contacts on the right and left, among business circles and the trade unions.

Macron and Bertrand clearly expect they can rely on the support of parts of the NFP to implement a right-wing agenda. Together, their two parties have only 146 of the National Assembly’s 577 seats, well short of the 289 needed for a majority. And so Bertrand is now in talks not only with the union bureaucracies, who backed the NFP in the elections, but also parties who joined Mélenchon in the NFP—such as the bourgeois Socialist Party (PS), the Stalinist French Communist Party (PCF) and the Greens.

The fecklessness of the NFP is exposing the thoroughly petty-bourgeois character of Mélenchon and his France Unbowed (LFI) party, the leading force in the NFP coalition. Beyond the NFP, moreover, an entire layer of middle class descendants of renegades from Trotskyism, like Workers Struggle (LO) or the Morenoite Révolution permanente (RP) tendency, that promoted the NFP as a way forward for the workers also stands exposed.

Macron, the “president of the rich,” is despised for ruling against the people, because he enforces policies demanded by finance capital but rejected by the international working class. A staggering 91 percent of Americans and 89 percent of West Europeans oppose sending NATO troops to Ukraine to wage war on Russia that threatens to escalate into nuclear war. Similarly, 91 percent of the French people oppose the pension cuts Macron decreed last year without a vote, in the face of mass protests and strikes, in order to finance the war.

The outcome of the July 7 vote revealed the widespread opposition in France to the xenophobic, anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant policies of both the neo-fascist RN and Macron, as well as deep-rooted opposition to the Israeli regime’s genocide in Gaza. However, the NFP squandered this political opportunity, rapidly forming an election alliance.

The NFP and its satellites do not represent the working class, but—like allied parties across Europe such as Syriza in Greece, Podemos in Spain or the Left Party in Germany—affluent layers of the middle class in academia, the union bureaucracy and the political-media establishment. Tied to the capitalist state machine and the ruling class, they pursue pragmatic maneuvers within a national framework, based on gender and racial identity politics.

The NFP cannot put itself at the head of the overwhelming working class opposition to Macron, because this would rapidly take them much further to the left than they are willing to go. Indeed, the NFP election program that LFI agreed with the PS called to send French troops as “peacekeepers” to Ukraine and to strengthen French intelligence and military police internally. The NFP therefore fears a movement in the working class against Macron that would also be directed against its own policies.

Instead, Castets is promoting herself based on her sexual orientation. This week, she gave an interview to lifestyle magazine Paris Match revealing that, in addition to being a “Parisian technocrat who oversees the servicing of the capital’s €8 billion debt,” she is also a lesbian with a wife and children. She commented, “I want to say who I am.”

Ukrainian military launches incursion of Russia

Clara Weiss

Early Tuesday morning, Ukrainian forces launched what appears to be the largest incursion of Russian territory to date in the border region of Kursk. According to Russian military authorities, the attack involved a unit of the Ukrainian armed forces with 1,000 men and 50 armored vehicles, including seven tanks. So far, Kiev has not officially taken responsibility for the attack.

This photo released by the acting Governor of Kursk region Alexei Smirnov telegram channel , shows a damaged house after shelling by the Ukrainian side in the city of Sudzha, Kursk region, Tuesday, Aug. 6, 2024. [AP Photo]

On Wednesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin described the attack as a “major provocation” and said that Ukrainian troops had carried out “indiscriminate shooting from various types of weapons, including missiles, at civilian buildings, residential buildings, and ambulances.” Footage dated from August 6 and analyzed by the Institute for the Study of War indicates that clashes between Russian and Ukrainian troops took place as far as 7 kilometers (4.3 miles) north of the border.

Unconfirmed reports by Russian bloggers suggested that Ukrainian troops were targeting a gas metering station in the town of Sudzha through which Russian gas that is delivered to Europe flows.

The Russian government declared by Wednesday evening that the attack had been warded off. However, a state of emergency is still in effect in the Kursk region. In the night between Wednesday and Thursday, Russian air defense shot down at least seven missiles by the Ukrainian armed forces targeting the region.

As of this writing, Russian authorities have confirmed that 31 civilians, including six children, had been wounded. No official number of dead has been released but Russian media reported that several paramedics were killed. People across the region have been called upon to donate blood, suggesting that the real number of wounded might be higher. Many residents have complained about problems evacuating, while others reported that they had to hide in churches to escape the shelling.

The scale of the incursion and the fact that it involved the Ukrainian military, which has been armed and trained by NATO, mark a significant escalation of the conflict. Ukraine has launched drone attacks on Russian cities and infrastructure and incursions of Russian territory before. However, previous incursions were carried out by neo-Nazi paramilitary units under the direction of Ukraine’s military intelligence, not the army.

Predictably, the White House has defended Ukraine’s incursion as a legitimate act of self-defense. White House National Security Communications Advisor John Kirby Washington stated that the attack had not violated US policy and that the US would continue to allow Ukraine to use American-supplied weapons “to target imminent threats just across the border.”

Ukraine launched its biggest incursion of Russian territory to date as the situation at the front looks increasingly desperate for the Ukrainian army. It keeps losing territory to Russian forces after two-and-a-half years of war, which have already claimed the lives of an estimated half-a-million men. On July 16, a new law came into effect, forcing millions of Ukrainian men between 18 and 60 years old—including those who fled the country—to update their registration data so that they can be drafted into the army.

The new law has dramatically increased social and political tensions in the country. Even before it came into effect, Ukrainian journalists have relayed to the WSWS that civilians increasingly resist the efforts to violently kidnap men off the streets by recruitment patrols. According to these journalists, there have been several recent incidents of desperate soldiers turning their weapons on their commanders, while desertions of soldiers from the front are growing.

The attack also comes days after a prisoner swap between the US and Russia, which involved the Wall Street Journal’s Evan Gershkovich and ex-US Marine Paul Whelan. The Putin regime, clearly seeking to assure Washington and openly pro-NATO sections of the oligarchy of its readiness to compromise, also released several of the most high-profile leaders of the NATO-backed opposition in the Russian oligarchy. Among them was Vladimir Kara-Murza, who has extensive ties in Washington, and several members of the team of the late oppositionist Alexei Navalny, long the best-known representative of the US and German-backed faction in the Russian oligarchy and state apparatus. Russia also released Andrei Pivovarov, the former head of the Open Russia organization founded by the prominent anti-Putin ex-oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky. In exchange, the US released a number of criminals and spies.

While the US bourgeois media presented the prisoner swap as a return to diplomacy, the attacks on the Kursk region underscore, yet again, that the growing debacle of NATO’s war effort in Ukraine and the overtures by the Kremlin to the imperialist power, if anything, only increase the aggressiveness of the imperialist powers and its proxies in Kiev. Above all, the military defeats on the front have prompted NATO and Ukraine to intensify their efforts to open a “second front” in the war, within Russia itself.

After multiple political assassinations, drone attacks, including on the Kremlin, and incursions by fascist paramilitary troops in 2022–2023, this year, these efforts have most notably included the March terrorist attacks on Moscow Crocus City Hall, which have claimed over 140 lives. These attacks are in line with the fundamental aim of the imperialist powers in this war: to bring about the carve-up of the entire region so that its vast raw material resources can be brought under the direct control of imperialism. As part of this strategy, incursions such as the one in the Kursk region are designed not only to divert military resources from the front. They are also intended to destabilize the political situation in Russia and fuel the raging infighting between different sections of the Russian oligarchy and state apparatus in order to create conditions for a regime change operation in Moscow.

Dell announces mass layoffs amid expanding global tech job cuts

Kevin Reed

Dell Technologies Inc., the global manufacturer of personal computers and other computer hardware, is laying off thousands of employees as part of a reorganization of its sales teams, according to news reports on Monday.

Dell Inc.'s offices in Santa Clara, Calif. [AP Photo/Paul Sakuma]

Bloomberg reported that two sales executives sent an internal memo to Dell employees that said, “We are getting leaner. We’re streamlining layers of management and reprioritizing where we invest.”

The Bloomberg report added that the executives Bill Scannell and John Byrne told the staff the company is creating a new group focused on artificial intelligence products and services and that Dell will change how data center sales are approached.

Although the number of employees being laid off was not disclosed, Bloomberg pointed out that the Texas-based hardware tech company has “enjoyed a renaissance of investor interest over the past year due to its high-powered servers that can run AI workloads.”

The online publication SiliconAngle reported that an unnamed source familiar with the Dell layoffs said that 12,500 employees, approximately 10 percent of the staff, were being terminated beginning on Tuesday. This number could not be confirmed and, according to theCUBE Research Chief Analyst Dave Vellante, “It’s unlikely the number is that high because that would typically trigger an SEC filing.”

In an email to SiliconAngle, a Dell representative wrote, “Through a reorganization of our go-to-market teams and an ongoing series of actions, we are becoming a leaner company. … We continually evolve our business so we’re set up to deliver the best innovation, value and service to our customers and partners.”

The new round of layoffs at Dell are a continuation of job cuts at the company that began in 2023. The $80 billion corporation based in Round Rock, Texas, laid off a total of 13,000 last year, with 6,000 jobs eliminated in February 2023 and another round in August, the numbers of which the company did not specify.

Former Dell employee Ian Armstrong, who had worked on the company’s user experience (UX) design team for eight years, referred to the layoffs as a “bloodbath” in a post on LinkedIn, saying that Dell has now laid off 24,500 staff in the past 15 months.

The Bloomberg report on Monday gave a glimpse of what is behind the layoffs, saying that investors are uneasy, “about how long it may take companies to see a payoff from AI investments, which often come in the form of expensive servers or graphics processing units.”

Dell disappointed investors with its most recent quarterly financial reporting and the company’s shares plunged almost 18 percent on May 31, the day after the results were released. SiliconAngle reported that “analysts raised concerns about the impact of rising demand for artificial intelligence servers on the company’s overall profitability,” and that “Dell officials said they expected the company’s gross margin to fall by roughly 150 basis points in fiscal 2025 as a result of the increased mix of AI servers, inflationary input costs and a more competitive environment.”

The Dell layoffs are part of the ongoing destruction of jobs in the tech industry over the past three years. Intel, the maker of computer microchips and processors based in Santa Clara, California, announced on August 1 that it is laying off 15 percent of its workforce. The company said it was cutting $10 billion in costs as part of a plan for 2025 that could mean as many as 19,000 jobs being eliminated.

The tech corporation, which was founded in 1968 by the pioneers of the integrated circuit, Gordon Moore and Robert Noyce, lost $1.6 billion in the second quarter of 2024 as it has failed to connect with the trends in AI.

In all, more than 124,000 jobs have been eliminated by 384 companies so far in 2024, according to the Indian publication, Business Standard. This includes the following layoffs: Microsoft (1,000 jobs), UKG (2,200 jobs), Intuit (1,800 jobs), Dyson (1,000 jobs) and hundreds of companies large and small with job cuts in the 50 to 250 range.

According to data maintained by Computerworld, there were 164,969 tech layoffs in 2022 and 262,682 in 2023.

Australian government uses “terrorism” alert to target anti-genocide protests and wider political discontent

Mike Head

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese convened a cabinet National Security Committee meeting, followed by a full cabinet meeting and a media conference on Monday to announce the raising of Australia’s National Terrorism Threat Level from “possible” to “probable.”

Lifting the level to “probable” alleges that there is a greater than 50 percent chance of a terrorist attack or planning in the next 12 months. That level was last declared in 2014—supposedly in response to the threat of the Islamic State in Iraq—before being lowered to “possible” in 2022.

On the pretext of averting unsubstantiated threats of terrorism, the Labor government and the domestic political surveillance agency, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), are seeking to create an environment to use police-state powers to suppress mounting social and political disaffection.

The real anxiety in the ruling class is the collapsing support for the Labor government and the growing hostility toward the political establishment as a whole. This unrest is particularly driven by widespread working-class anger over the worsening cost-of-living crisis and the government’s support for the US-armed Israeli genocide in Gaza, which has produced large demonstrations in Australia, as elsewhere.

Flanked by the ASIO chief—Director-General of Security Mike Burgess—and Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus, Albanese denounced protests against the mass killings in Palestine, essentially conflating them with terrorism.

Albanese doubled down on his previous condemnations of anti-genocide protests outside parliamentarians’ offices. “It’s not appropriate for people to encourage some of the actions outside electorate offices and to dismiss them as being just part of the normal political process,” he declared.

The prime minister demanded that because “the temperature of the security environment is rising, we must lower the temperature of debate.” He depicted the protests as threats to the “national asset” of “social cohesion.”

Australian Security Mike Burgess [Photo: ABC News screen capture]

Burgess spoke in even broader terms, saying “politically-motivated violence” had become a “principal security concern” and ASIO anticipated it would increase as “polarisation, frustration and perceived injustices grow.”

Burgess declared: “Unfortunately, here and overseas, we are seeing spikes in political polarisation and intolerance, uncivil debate and unpeaceful protests. Anti-authority beliefs are growing. Trust in institutions is eroding. Provocative, inflammatory behaviours are being normalised.” 

The ASIO chief directly linked the discontent to the Gaza genocide, saying it had “fueled grievances, promoted protest, exacerbated division, undermined social cohesion and elevated intolerance.”

Burgess said this would be inflamed by a wider war in the Middle East—which the Israeli regime, backed by the Harris-Biden US administration, is seeking to instigate against Iran. “An escalation of the conflict in the Middle East, particularly in southern Lebanon, would inflict further strain, aggravating tensions and potentially fueling grievances,” he stated.

Without providing any detail, Burgess asserted: “More Australians are embracing a more diverse range of extreme ideologies and more Australians are willing to use violence to advance their cause.”

He sought to connect this to terrorism, claiming that in the past four months there had been “eight attacks or disruptions that have either involved alleged terrorism or have been investigated as potential acts of terrorism.”

There was one revealing exchange when a journalist asked about “exacerbating factors” such as “sustained economic hardship.” Burgess said, “the economic grievance or issue can be a driver for violence in this environment… yes, it is a potential factor.” 

That points to the fears in ruling circles that the opposition to the genocide and the Labor government’s underlying commitment to US militarism could be compounded by the intensifying unrest over declining working-class living conditions.

Raising the terrorism threat level will further activate vast ASIO and federal and state police powers of surveillance, intimidation and potential detention and questioning. These were introduced or expanded by barrages of “anti-terrorism” laws under the banner of the “war on terrorism” declared by the US and its allies following the still-unexplained 9/11 attacks in the US in 2001.

Burgess indicated that ASIO was targeting the internet, social media and the use of encryption. He depicted these as the primary platforms for “radicalisation,” effectively adding to calls for political censorship.

Despite the scare-mongering, there is no evidence of anti-genocide protests involving violence. As has always been the case historically, however, the police-state powers will be mobilised against left-wing and socialist parties, not the far-right groups like those fomenting anti-immigrant riots in Britain.

Making an appearance on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s 7.30 television program, Burgess made an unclear but calculated reference to ASIO investigating one person who included neo-Nazi references in a manifesto but allegedly joined Antifa, an anarchist group depicted in the corporate media as extremely left-wing.

Since it was established by the Chifley Labor government in 1949, ASIO has had a long and notorious record of surveillance, harassment, undercover infiltration, incitement and frame-ups against left-wing individuals and parties as well as alleged terrorist plotters.

The terror alert takes to a new level the desperate moves by Albanese and his senior ministers to falsely associate political protests, especially over the Gaza genocide, with violence and terrorism. Slogans and banners such as “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” have been demonised by the Labor government and Zionist groups as advocating terrorism.

Protest participants, including Jews denouncing the genocide, have been slandered as “antisemitic” and purveyors of “hate speech” for opposing a monumental war crime that has already killed at least 186,000 Palestinians according to estimates published in the respected medical journal, The Lancet.

In July, Albanese even linked the attempted assassination of former US President Donald Trump with the Gaza demonstrations, depicting them as a threat to democracy. The then Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil accused anti-genocide protesters of “terrorising politicians” and adopting the methods of “despots.”

Such charges, combined with inflammatory allegations of denying access to services and damaging buildings, represent the true assault on basic democratic rights. Already, state Labor governments have threatened the mass anti-genocide demonstrations while directing major police mobilisations against them, some of which have involved groundless arrests and police violence.

The actual terrorism is being perpetrated daily by the Israeli regime, armed and defended by the US and all the imperialist governments, including Albanese’s. The massacres in homes, schools, hospitals, refugee camps and aid facilities are taking to a horrific new level decades of Zionist terrorism against the Palestinian population.

The Labor governments have combined their backing for, and assistance of, the Israeli genocide with supporting the escalating US-NATO war against Russia in Ukraine and the related US-led confrontation with China. This is the real violence—a drive for US global hegemony even at the potential expense of millions of lives in a nuclear conflagration.

This is a bipartisan corporate-backed agenda. Liberal-National opposition leader Peter Dutton greeted Monday’s terror alert announcement by asserting that it was needed because anti-Semitism was “occurring on a common basis in our country” at an “unprecedented” level.

An editorial in yesterday’s Australian, a Murdoch media flagship, demanded an indefinite resort to measures to suppress opposition to the genocide. “For Australia, and much of the world, the elevated terror threat will be no passing phase,” it insisted.

“It is symptomatic of uglier, angrier societies in which divisions are sharpened by the sewer of social media. In the face of these factors, government and security authorities should not shy away from pointing out that the greatest threats are likely to arise from anti-Semitic Islamist extremism.”

That must be taken as a warning of preparations for repression of dissent, including political frame-ups and arrests, as the US and its allies plunge humanity into war, and impose the burden on workers and youth amid already rising job losses and signs of global slump.