IVP605 - June 2025

The results of the Portuguese parliamentary elections on 18 May 2025 mark a turning point in the country’s politics. The traditional right was comfortably in the lead and the Socialist Party has fewer deputies than the far right (after counting the votes of the emigrant constituencies). The right-wing parties as a whole won two-thirds of the seats in the Assembly, while the left obtained the lowest result in its history.
All the parties to the left of the PS recorded their lowest results. (…)

As "No Kings" protests take place across the US - and in other cities worldwide such as Mexico DF, Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam - challenging Trump’s authoritarian rule, we publish this on the spot account of last weekend in Los Angeles.

Resistance to the Russian invasion has not erased class divisions within Ukrainian society. The inequalities of our capitalist societies and the brutal neoliberalism applied by the Zelensky government are significantly affecting the population of Ukraine. The popular classes thus fight on a "double front", against anti-social policies and imperialist aggression.

Since November 2024, Serbian students have been leading an unprecedented revolt against Vučić’s corrupt government. Along with two Belgian comrades from the Gauche Anticapitaliste, I went to Belgrade to meet them.
In front of Belgrade’s Faculty of Philosophy, a table and camping chairs were set up. A dozen or so students wrapped up in duvets were watching the entrance. On the table were sudokus and packets of cigarettes to pass the time. The students take 8am shifts to secure the faculty, (…)

“All five referendums were lost because none reached the quorum of 50% of the electorate. Around 88-89% who voted supported the progressive changes to the labour laws but this went down by 33 percentage points for the change to the citizenship process for immigrants.”

There is a significant risk that South Sudan could once again plunge into widespread conflict, on top of a major financial crisis.

“Suddenly, the resistance is real, in the streets, and fighting.”

Yemeni women have taken to the streets in their thousands in recent weeks.

Italy votes this weekend in 5 referendums. Four are all about the existing restrictive, anti-working class labour laws and one is about the length of time involved in claiming citizenship. Meloni’s post-fascist led government defends the repressive labour legislation and the current citizenship law which means you have to have lived in Italy for 10 years before becoming Italian. A Yes in the referendum would halve that period.

What we have witnessed in recent days in the negotiations between Hamas and the Zionist state under American and Arab auspices, following the Islamic movement’s rejection of the seventy-day truce accompanied by mutual prisoner releases and the entry of humanitarian aid, proposed by US envoy Steve Witkoff and accepted by Benjamin Netanyahu, is in fact a repetition of what we have been witnessing since the beginning of last year.