IV480 - January 2015

IVP 480 January 2015 PDF magazine
IVP 480 January 2015 PDF magazine can be downloaded here

Greetings. We would like, first of all, to congratulate you for the intuition, the “flair”, the sense of initiative that you have had to build Podemos, from the beginning.

Since the attack against Charlie Hebdo, France has been the scene of a veritable outpouring of Islamophobia: accusations of culpability, amalgams, violence. But the least that can be said is that the ground had been largely prepared.

The victory of Felipe Nyusi and the Mozambique Liberation Front (Frelimo) in the October 15 presidential and parliamentary elections pours cold water on the hopes of many who were convinced that 2014 would bring political change to Mozambique. Instead, Frelimo will maintain its stranglehold on political power for another five years, with an absolute majority in parliament. Accredited observers, independent reports and the media documented numerous breakdowns of transparency and fairness in the recent electoral process.

This “Announcement of the Central Committee of ANTARSYA for the results of the Greek elections” was issued on 26 January 2015. It was published in English on the ANTARYSA website.

This statement by DEA (Internationalist Workers’ Left), member of Syriza and the Left Platform within it, was issued on 27 January 2015. It was first published in Greek on the RProject website. The English translation was published by socialistworker.org.

The latest opinion polls confirm a significant advance of Syriza: in the opinion poll given on TVSX today (23 January), Syriza would carry it with 36% the right 26%, the new catch-all party Potami and the Nazis being each credited with 7.5%.

Seventy-five people were killed on the Maidan in Kiev on February 20, 2014. The following day, Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski insisted: “If you do not sign the agreement, you will have a state of war and the army in the streets. You will all be dead.” The foreign ministers of France and Germany echoed his words. The trio of Ukrainian opposition leaders eventually folded under the pressure. Although they feared the worst – they were very afraid of the reaction of the Maidan – they accepted a deal with Yanukovych. He was to remain president until December - until the early presidential election. The Western political elites breathed a sigh of relief: the revolution was hijacked onto the institutional path, where it was sure to get bogged down. But immediately there was a first surprise. The troops of the Ministry of the Interior and the police reacted to this agreement as if it was a capitulation by Yanukovych. At full speed, even panicking, they deserted the battlefield, thereby depriving the regime of its security forces. More and more police went over to the side of Maidan.

Since the European Union started facing an abyssal debt crisis and several countries have been caught in the stranglehold of their creditors, the prospect of defaulting has become a real possibility. A majority of left-wing and orthodox economists consider that a suspension of debt payment must be avoided. The loans granted by the Troika to Greece (May 2010), Ireland (November 2010), Portugal (May 2011), and Cyprus (March 2013) were allegedly intended to prevent those countries from defaulting, which it was claimed would have had disastrous consequences for the populations in the concerned countries. Yet several economists also develop strong arguments to defend a suspension of debt payment. Anyway, it has now become difficult to deny that the conditions attached to those loans combined with the increase in those countries’ debts have a dramatic impact on the populations starting with the Greek people. It is high time to understand that suspending debt payment can be a justified option.

The Syriza electoral victory is a historic event for Greece of course, but still more for Europe, and it is almost amusing to see socialist leaders being pleased with this success, alongside a total collapse of PASOK, which in 2009 had won more than 3 million votes with a score of 44% and 160 seats: yesterday evening, it won just 290,000, 4.7% of the votes. The extreme examples of its collapse being in its historical bases like Crete with votes swinging mainly to Syriza: in 2009, PASOK won 54.6% of the votes in Heraklion, Syriza 4.3%; in June 2012 18.6%, Syriza 33.6%; and yesterday PASOK was at 5.9%, Syriza 47.9%!