IV482 - March 2015

IV 482 March 2015 PDF Magazine available to download here

Edgard Sánchez Ramírez is a longtime member of the Revolutionary Workers Party (PRT), the Mexican section of the Fourth International. He is on the steering committee of the PRT and an active member of the Workers and People’s Political Organization (OPT), a political organization founded by the Mexican Electrical Workers Union (SME) in 2011. In this interview conducted by Héctor A. Rivera in Mexico City, Sánchez talks about the neoliberal turn in Mexican politics in the late 1980s, its consolidation throughout the political system in the 1990s and its full-on implementation in the 2000s. A future q-and-a from the same interview with Sánchez will take up the current trajectory of Mexican politics.

The day after the Andalusian parliamentary elections on March 22, 2015, Podemos candidate Teresa Rodriguez made a statement that implies both a political balance sheet of the electoral campaign and anticipates its immediate political project as opposed to the social liberal government of Susana Díaz: “After elections all parties claim victory, but not us. We have obtained 15 seats in the Parliament but we have not achieved our objective because tomorrow we continue with the forty daily evictions from dwellings, Andalusia’s million unemployed and the million children living under the poverty line. Our goal is to win a political majority to govern in favor of the people and with the people as an active subject of its government. Until then we cannot claim victory”.

On February 5, 2015 the Tunisian parliament elected on October 26, 2014 gave a vote of confidence to the new government with an overwhelming majority of 81.5%. This major turning point in the political life of Tunisia takes place in a context of economic crisis and social tensions as demonstrations and strikes spread.

The expulsion of the National Union of Metal Workers of South Africa (NUMSA) from the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) in November 2014 was a watershed moment. It deepened further the crisis in the Alliance between the ANC, COSATU and the South African Communist Party (SACP). In addition to fighting for a radical shift amongst trade unions, NUMSA also played a major role in the establishment of a new United Front which will be launched in 2015. In December 2014 Sam Ashman (SA) and Nicolas Pons-Vignon (NPV) interviewed Deputy General Secretary of NUMSA Karl Cloete (KC) about a tumultuous year and the road ahead.

If the Indian government wanted to become the laughing stock of the world, it couldn’t have done so more instantly and effectively than by banning the BBC documentary “India’s Daughter” on Delhi’s December 2012 gang-rape. Not only was the film watched by millions the world over; it became a cause celebre for feminists, defenders of free expression and even progressive Hollywood actors.

Eric Toussaint was interviewed by Kristina Bozic for Slovenian weekly newspaper Dnevnik in early March. [1]. On March 17 the speaker of the Greek parliament, Zoé Konstantopoulou, announced during the creation of a commission to audit the Greek debt. The scientific coordination of that commission will be led by Toussaint. “The purpose is to identify any debts taken on by the Greek government that may have an illegal, illegitimate or odious nature,” the Greek people “has the right to demand that any part of the Greek debt that may eventually be shown to be illegal – be erased,” she declared.

It’s a telling comment on the state of the Indian media that most of it blacked out the fourth anniversary of the still-continuing Fukushima nuclear catastrophe, which fell on March 11. The same media reported breathlessly on the Indian government’s plans to triple domestic nuclear power-generation capacity by 2020-21, and on the “breakthrough” achieved on the nuclear liability issue during Barack Obama’s recent visit to India.

Guadalupe, pregnant at the age of 18 in El Salvador as the result of a rape, suffered obstetrical complications before she gave birth in the home where she worked as a domestic employee to a fetus that did not survive. After hours of hemorrhaging, her employer took her to the public hospital. There, medical personnel accused her of abortion, illegal under all circumstances in El Salvador, and turned her over to police. Prosecutors upgraded the charges to aggravated homicide, and the judge sent her to prison for thirty years.

Why did Irish workers, seen as passively accepting years of austerity, suddenly rise up against the imposition of water charges?