People's Democracy

International News Briefs

Norway Labour Party gains best election results: Norway's governing Labour Party won its best local election result in more than two decades and the xenophobic Progress Party plummeted in support two months after terrorist attacks by Anders Behring Breivik (a former member of the Progress Party) killed 77 people. Labour won 33.2 per cent of the vote while the Conservatives jumped to second place with 27.7 per cent, in county and municipal elections. The Progress Party sunk to 11.8 per cent from 18.5 per cent in 2007 while the Socialist Left, which is part of the governing coalition, won just 4 per cent of the vote, down from 6 per cent in 2007.

Progressives win elections in Denmark: Social Democratic Party chairwoman Helle Thorning-Schmidt is set to become the first woman prime minister in the country's history after voters handed 92 of the Danish parliament's 179 seats to the "red bloc" coalition she leads. Her party defeated a right-wing coalition that had been in power for over a decade. The alliance won 6.7 per cent of the vote, up from 2.2 per cent in 2007. It is resolutely opposed to Denmark's membership of NATO and the EU and is committed to improving the country's welfare system. Incumbent prime minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen's centre-right "blue bloc" coalition won 87 seats. Ms Thorning-Schmidt and her allies promised a progressive alternative, pledging to stimulate the economy through government spending, to be financed by increased taxes on banks and the super-rich - and a one-hour increase to the 37-hour working week. The populist anti-immigrant Danish People's Party (DPP), which provided vital support for the outgoing right-wing coalition, saw its share of the vote drop by 1.5 points to 12.3 per cent.

Centre-Left wins most votes in Latvia: A centre-left alliance, Harmony Centre, which campaigned for renegotiating a 2008 EU loan-for-austerity deal won most of the votes in Latvia's parliamentary elections. It had won 29.2 per cent of the vote. One in five voters picked right-wing Reform Party while Unity, the senior coalition partner, came third with 18.2 per cent – a sharp drop from the 31.2 per cent it got last year. The far-right National Alliance secured 13.78 per cent and the populist Union of Greens and Farmers took 12.12 per cent. A key demand of the alliance, which unites left-wing socialists and social democrats, is the revision of a €7.5 billion loan that former president Valdis Zatlers accepted from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund in December 2008. After accepting the loan, then president Zatlers cut public-sector wages and pensions and increased VAT. The country's economy shrank by over a quarter between 2008 and 2010, while unemployment has surged.

Left wins in French senate elections: Progressive parties wrested the French Senate from President Nicolas Sarkozy's Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) and its neoliberal allies in indirect elections. The opposition Socialist Party and a left-wing electoral alliance took the majority of seats in the upper house of parliament for the first time since the foundation of the Fifth Republic in 1958. The Socialists and the Left Front, which unites the French Communist Party, the anti-capitalist Left Party and two smaller left-wing factions, together won at least 26 seats from the UMP and centre-right parties - giving progressive forces a historic majority in the 348-member Senate seven months before presidential elections. The Senate, which can initiate bills and slow down their passage, is elected by regionally and locally elected officials under a system that favours rural districts over urban ones.

Teachers protest in France: State and private school teachers staged a joint 24-hour strike and rallied with pupils and parents in towns across France to press the government to stop cutting education jobs. In an unprecedented show of unity, public and private-sector unions worked together to organise 100 demonstrations from Paris to Toulouse, Guadeloupe to French Guiana. The strike and protests sought to press French president Nicolas Sarkozy's rightwing government to reject a proposal in the draft 2012 budget to throw another 14,000 education professionals on the scrap heap in the name of deficit reduction. The government has already scrapped 65,000 jobs in education since 2007. Unions warned that the government's drive to cut deeper will "degrade education" and compromise the country's long-term economic strength by dumping down the French workforce.

50,000 march against EU austerity: About 50,000 trade unionists from around Europe marched through the Polish town of Wroclaw to press European finance ministers to ditch neoliberal dogma in favour of economic policies that foster growth and social justice. The peaceful march was staged as ministers from the 27 European Union member states met to try to find "possible ways to restore confidence in European markets and improve financial stability." Working-class activists came from Spain, Portugal, Italy, Germany, Norway, Hungary, Lithuania and Slovenia to participate in the rally.

Massive protests in Israel: Nearly 500,000 marchers took to the streets across Israel on 3 September in protest at the country's housing crisis and the high cost of living. The country's media estimated that 300,000 had demonstrated in Tel Aviv alone. Taken together the protests were the largest in Israel's history and represent the high point so far of a summer of grass-roots activism under the slogan "The people demand social justice." The movement has seen repeated demonstrations and mushrooming "tent cities" across the country.

Joint appeal by Israeli and Palestinian organisations: Israeli and Palestinian organisations have issued a joint appeal for principled unity in the struggle for social justice and national self-determination. The clarion call came in a statement released by 18 progressive political parties and groups ranging from the Communist Party of Israel and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine to the Democratic Women's Movement in Israel and the Union of Palestinian Working Women. It hailed the unprecedented upsurge of popular protest activity in Israel this summer which has seen millions of Israeli citizens, both Arab and Jewish, take to the streets in towns across Israel to condemn the hawkish Netanyahu government's failure to tackle rising social inequality as exemplified by soaring rents. The Palestinian and Israeli groups hailed the umbrella J14 social protest movement for mobilising people around bread-and-butter demands for affordable housing and improved state health care. But they warned that progressive advance within Israel will remain elusive until Tel Aviv complies with international law and ends the occupation of Palestine. The signatories called upon the J14 social protest movement in Israel to connect its struggle with the one against the illegal settlements and the occupation in order to prevent the Netanyahu administration from attempting to sideline the struggle in the face of "outside security threats" such as the vote on recognition of Palestinian statehood at the UN. The organisations called for the broadest possible unity in the battle to “liberate the peoples of the Middle East from colonialism and hegemony, particularly that of zionism, halting the occupation and Israeli military aggression and supporting the just struggle of the Palestinian people for fulfilment of its right for self-determination”.

Mugabe asks mining firms to sell shares: Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe called on mining transnationals operating in the country to sell at least 51 per cent of their shares to black citizens in line with the 2008 Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment Act. The government has given mining privateers with a net asset value of at least $1 (88p) – including Rio Tinto and Anglo American Platinum – up to the end of this month to sell majority stakes to black citizens. Mugabe assured investors that their investments in the country remain safe and urged them to maintain compliance with the country's laws. However, Movement for Democratic Change ministers in the government say that the indigenisation law is a cover for plunder by Mugabe's political allies.

Chavez orders to accelerate land reforms: Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez ordered to accelerate the nationalisation of 12,000 hectares of Venezuelan land currently owned by Irish transnational Smurfit Kappa. Two years ago Chavez ordered the expropriation of a eucalyptus tree farm owned by the company, which is Europe's biggest producer of corrugated packaging. That land takeover involved 3,700 acres, leaving Smurfit Kappa in control of a remaining 29,650 acres. The Venezuelan state has taken control of four million hectares of privately owned land and turned it over either to small farmers or state farms and research laboratories since Chavez was first elected to office 12 years ago. Under Venezuela's 2001 Land Law any lands reported by residents to be fallow or held illegally without title are subject to a technical inspection by the National Land Institute (INTI). If INTI deems the land to be unproductive or the alleged owner of the terrain is unable to prove legitimate title, the plots in question automatically come under government control to be distributed to organised landless farmers, or campesinos. Article 15 of Venezuela's constitution guarantees the right of individuals to own private property but affirms that the state shall place restrictions and obligations on that property “in the service of the public or general interest”. Article 15 also guarantees “fair compensation” for all expropriated property. Last year Venezuelan MPs passed a reform to the land law that bolstered the ability of campesinos to obtain land, as well as the ability of the state to convert large, idle estates into land farmed for the common weal.