IV496 - May 2016

How can we explain the 15M movement five years later, its consequences, its limits and its potential? It’s not an easy task, but we must try, because the way we read it determines the political choices we make. [1]

Dilma Rousseff was suspended as Brazilian president on Thursday 12 May, and replaced by Michel Temer of the PMDB. Ruy Braga of the the University of São Paulo spoke to journalist Cátia Corrêa Guimarães on April 6, 2016 outlining the background to this and indicating what he thought would happen once Rousseff’s fall was confirmed.

The agreement between Podemos and Izquierda Unida (IU – United Left) to form an electoral coalition is very good news for everyone committed to defeating the regime at the ballot box and changing policies in favour of the working social majority.

It’s been inescapable: the emotion that rises each time another story crosses the screen about the wildfires in Alberta is enough to occupy any free, thinking part of a brain and burst an already full chamber of a heart.
Especially when we think about 90,000 people fleeing a Canadian city because of a climate emergency.

You may have noticed on Facebook many people changing their profile picture to a solid block of red. It’s for a campaign of solidarity with the Syrian city of Aleppo.

The crisis is not yet the event, but it is already the announcement of it, a door opened.... hours are transformed then suddenly into minutes and years into days. Daniel Bensaïd

The world is witnessing with perplexity the political, legal and media coup, called in Brazil “the institutional coup”, which reached its culminating point during the vote which took place in the national legislative chamber on April 17, 2016, for the approval of the opening of the process of the impeachment against President Dilma Rousseff. We are witnessing the sad end of the era of Workers’ Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores - PT) government, the result of the trajectory that they have taken since Lula’s first term as president. It sent signals to the markets and the right, and sought to assemble a coalition government where all interests and social classes would be represented. Its first major initiative was the “reforma da Previdência”, the reform of unemployment insurance, of a clearly neoliberal character. Its policy has demobilised the social base of popular support for the PT and strengthened the sectors which today have turned their backs on it.

The most bitterly contested presidential and vice presidential elections in the country’s recent history is approaching its endgame. [This article was written on 6 May, the elections were on 9 May - IVP.] The campaign period (60 days for national and 45 days for local candidates) will come to a close in two days time but there seems to be no stopping for opposing camps in the presidential and vice presidential candidates on hitting each other harder by an hour. [2]

[This article was written on 28 April, the elections are on 9 May - IVP.] It is only ten more days before the actual election in the Philippines. More surprises, political gimmicks, and circus are daily unfolding and shown to the electorates. Social media, more than ever, has played very important role in projecting and spreading issues for and against the candidates – especially – presidentiables and the vice presidentiables. Those who have seen its importance are maximizing this modern information technology. They can put up defenses against their attackers/critics and can easily demonize and demolish their opponents and winning in the pre, actual, and post elections surveys. With more than sixty percent of the electorates having easy access with the internet, social media can easily reach them and influence their decisions to elect candidates. [3]

Today, it would seem that the upcoming September elections to the State Duma are a cause of growing concern only in the Kremlin. While polls continue to record a low level of public interest in the event, and the tiny number of parties allowed to run in the election wanly prepares to fulfill their usual roles, the president and his entourage are increasingly talking about possible threats.

"To let things continue as before, that is the catastrophe," Walter Benjamin [Charles Baudelaire]

The holding of new elections is already a real possibility [4]. The parliamentary arithmetic has produced what we saw: several months of staged negotiations, during which the population passively watched the show and the precariousness of daily life continued as if nothing had happened. There was not the least improvement in the situation of workers: it is clear that if we let those above negotiate, without those below moving, very little will change.