Left Politics

Fujimori Also Cried Fraud In 2016

June 8, 2021 Kawsachun News. Educate! Elections, Electoral Politics, Left Politics, Peru

Peru’s far-right presidential candidate Keiko Fujimori is making allegations of electoral fraud, as leftist candidate Pedro Castillo has maintained the lead in the official count. This is not the first time she’s made unsubstantiated claims, however there is far more at stake for Keiko in this election. Today’s sequence of events have been remarkably similar to the presidential election in 2016, in which Keiko Fujimori also failed in the second round run-off, at that time against liberal candidate Pedro Pablo Kuczynski. Like in this election, exit polls showed Fujimori ahead by a tiny margin within a statistical margin of error. Once the votes were counted, that small lead was reversed to deliver a narrow victory to her opponent.

Rural Teacher Pedro Castillo Poised To Write A New Chapter In Peru’s History

June 8, 2021 Medea Benjamin and Leonardo Flores, Popular Resistance. Create! Elections, Left Politics, Neoliberalism, Peru

With his wide-brimmed peasant hat and oversized teacher’s pencil held high, Peru’s Pedro Castillo has been traveling the country exhorting voters to get behind a call that has been particularly urgent during this devastating pandemic: “No más pobres en un país rico” - No more poor people in a rich country. In a cliffhanger of an election with a huge urban-rural and class divide, it appears that the rural teacher, farmer and union leader is about to make history by defeating--by less than one percent--powerful far-right candidate Keiko Fujimori, scion of the country’s political “Fujimori dynasty.” Fujimori is challenging the election’s results, alleging widespread fraud. Her campaign has only presented evidence of isolated irregularities, and so far there is nothing to suggest a tainted vote.

Peru: Exit Poll Shows Technical Tie

June 7, 2021 Orinoco Tribune. Educate! Elections, Left Politics, Neoliberalism, Peru

The pollster Ipsos published this Sunday the exit polls of the second round of the presidential elections in Peru. With a difference of 0.6% of votes, the candidate Keiko Fujimori, from Fuerza Popular, and her rival, Pedro Castillo, from Peru Libre, are in a technical tie, considering that the margin of error of the study is +/- 3 %. “We have a statistical tie, within the margin of error, a very tight tie. There is no way to declare a winner at this moment,” the director of Ipsos Peru, Alfredo Torres, told América TV channel. Alderman Carlos Ramirez-Rosa from Chicago, who is in Peru monitoring the elections, recalled a similar incident in the 2016 presidential election in Peru, when Keiko Fujimori, candidate that time also, had a similar advantage in exit polls, and a few hours later Pedro Pablo Kuczynski had won.

Peru Elections: Will There Be A Left-Wing Resurgence?

June 6, 2021 Peoples Dispatch. Resistance Report Elections, Latin America, Left Politics, Peru

On June 6, 25 million Peruvians will elect their next president and two vice presidents for the period 2021-2026. Leftist candidate Pedro Castillo of the Free Peru political party will face off against far-right candidate Keiko Fujimori of the Popular Force party. All major polls have predicted a victory for Castillo. With inputs from Daniela Ramos of ARG Medios who is in Lima.

‘The White Republic’: A Response By Gerald Horne

May 24, 2021 Gerald Horne, Organizing Upgrade. Educate! Left Politics, Settler colonialism, White Nationalism, White Supremacy

The good news is that Comrade Bob Wing’s analysis represents a step forward in terms of the U.S. Left’s understanding of the nation—“republic”—in which it struggles. The bad news is that the U.S. left has not necessarily kept pace with the U.S. ruling class in terms of similar issues, or even with non-radical African-Americans, for that matter. Consider the multi-part series on HBO Max (a member in good standing of the much reviled “corporate media”) that premiered recently, i.e. Black filmmaker Raoul Peck’s “Exterminate All the Brutes,” a sweeping analysis and condemnation of settler colonialism (a term curiously absent from ordinary discourse on the left) and white supremacy. His other credits include the superb docu-drama “The Young Karl Marx.”

Chile Is Reborn: A (Political) Earthquake Emerged From The Streets

May 23, 2021 Patricio Zamorano, Council on Hemispheric Affairs. Resist! Chile, Elections, Left Politics, Neoliberalism

What happened in Chile this past weekend seems to be one of those historic events that cannot but follow its inexorable course. It is like an enormous, powerful tsunami wave whose size cannot be appreciated on the high seas, until it comes crashing into the coast, stunning everyone with its massive strength. This happens with processes of change from the left and the right, in times of democracy and times of dictatorship. Could any human force have stopped the inexorable onslaught of that immoral showman Donald Trump on his path to the U.S. presidency? Who would have believed that someone so dysfunctional on so many levels could have governed the most powerful country on the planet for four years?

Chile: Left, Independent Forces Win Majority Of Constituents

May 17, 2021 Telesur English. Create! Chile, Constitution, Elections, Left Politics

While the nationwide results for governors, mayors and councilors will not be known until later Sunday night, and final results may not be known for another week, the vote for Chile's constitutional convention has been tallied and announced this Sunday night. In a surprise for Chile's left and independent parties, the center-left Apruebo list has received 24 seats while the left-wing Communist-Broad Front Apruebo Dignidad list has finished in second with 28 seats. With three milion votes counted, representing just 15% of the registered electorate, the Nueva Constitución list has received 9 seats whereas the Del Pueblo list has received 21. 17 of the 155 seats have been reserved for indigenous people and 15 other seats have been won by a mix of other independent parties.

In Kerala, The Present Is Dominated By The Future

May 7, 2021 Vijay Prashad, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. Strategize! Elections, India, Kerala, Left Politics

Kerala, a state in the Indian union with a population of 35 million, has re-elected the Left Democratic Front (LDF) to lead the government for another five years. Since 1980, the people of Kerala have voted out the incumbent, seeking to alternate between the Left and the Right. This year, the people decided to stay with the Left and give the Communist Party of India (Marxist) leader, Pinarayi Vijayan, a second term in office as the Chief Minister. Health Minister K. K. Shailaja, popularly known as Shailaja Teacher, won her re-election with a record-breaking tally of over 60,000 votes, far exceeding her closest contender. It is clear that the people voted the Left government back in for three reasons...

US Role Behind The Defeat Of Ecuador’s Leftist Presidential Candidate

April 28, 2021 Roger Harris, Orinoco Tribune. Educate! Ecuador, Elections, Left Politics, US Regime Change

The US role in the defeat of leftist Andrés Arauz in Ecuador’s presidential contest on April 11 was not overt because it did not need to be, according to a high-ranking Latin American diplomat. We met with the diplomat and others on an official election observation delegation with CODEPINK. Names of some sources remain anonymous due to a hostile political environment towards progressives. This setback for the Citizens Revolution movement, founded by Rafael Correa, will have profound implications for Ecuador and beyond, fortifying the US-allied reactionary bloc in Latin America. Former President Correa left office with a 60% approval rating. He had been twice elected president on the first round; unprecedented for Ecuador, which had a turnover of seven presidents in the previous decade.

Tankie, Conspiracy Theorist, And Other Pejorative Tools Of Narrative Control

April 7, 2021 Caitlin Johnstone. Educate! Left Politics, Propaganda, Tankie, US Imperialism

Bloomberg pundit Noah Smith had a very revealing interaction on Twitter the other day that I've been meaning to write about ever since. It began with Smith sharing a screenshot of an article by journalist Yasha Levine which condemns US imperialist escalations against China and ties them to the sudden spike in anti-Asian hate crimes we've been seeing. Smith shared his screenshot with the caption, "I hold by my prediction that the American Left is going to split into A) social democrats, and B) foreign-policy-obsessed pseudo-tankies." "How do we stop the B group from driving the narrative?" one of Smith's followers asked him. "Well, first we teach everyone the word 'tankie'!" Smith replied, with a Substack article he authored explaining that any leftist who opposes western imperialist agendas against China should be branded with that label and dismissed.

Ecuador’s Socialists Set To Defeat Neo-liberalism

April 4, 2021 Lee Brown, Labour Outlook. Educate! Ecuador, Elections, Left Politics, US Regime Change

A young left-wing economist, Andres Aruaz, is favourite to win Ecuador’s presidential election later this month, in what would be the latest victory for progressives in Latin America after elections in Mexico, Argentina and Bolivia in recent years. But with a left victory likely, there are growing concerns that elites in Ecuador and abroad are conspiring to sabotage the electoral process. This has become an all too common response of the Latin American right-wing to progressive victories. In Bolivia, when socialist Evo Morales was elected in 2019, a military coup ousted him after exploiting trumped-up charges of fraud that were later found to be wholly false.

Syria War: Who Are The Real Anti-Imperialists?

April 1, 2021 Joseph Massad, Middle East Eye. Strategize! Left Politics, Noam Chomsky, Syria, US Imperialism

In the history of post-World War Two US imperialism, there have been various cases of aggression against countries and regimes that many anti-imperialist, socialist leftists around the world have considered reactionary, or at least not worthy of their support. In some cases, there was a consensus that while the regime in question was not to be defended, the imperialist aggression against it was not intended to save people from its dictatorial predations, but rather to secure imperialist hegemony and economic profits that would continue to oppress people. Even in cases when anti-imperialists thought the targeted regime deserved defence, their efforts mostly focused on opposing intervention.

There Are So Many Lessons To Learn From Kerala

March 30, 2021 Vijay Prashad, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. Create! Food and Agriculture, Kerala, Left Politics, Women

Indian farmers and agricultural workers have crossed the hundred-day mark of their protest against the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. They will not withdraw until the government repeals laws that deliver the advantages of agriculture to large corporate houses. This, the farmers and agricultural workers say, is an existential struggle. Surrender is equivalent to death: even before these laws were passed, more than 315,000 Indian farmers had committed suicide since 1995 because of the debt burden placed on them. Over the next one and a half months, assembly elections will take place in four Indian states (Assam, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and West Bengal) and in one union territory (Puducherry).

Revolutionary Workers Mount Election Campaign In Chile

March 8, 2021 Left Voice. Organize! Chile, Constitution, Elections, Left Politics

On April 11, Chile will elect a convention to write a new constitution, which will replace the constitution of 1980, written by the far-right dictator Augusto Pinochet. Left Voice spoke with two candidates running to join the Constitutional Convention, Joseffe Cáceres and Daniel Vargas, both from the Revolutionary Workers’ Party (PTR). Joseffe Cáceres is a leader of the union of cleaning workers at the Metropolitan University of Educational Sciences near Santiago. She is a member of the national leadership of the PTR and a spokesperson of the women’s group Pan y Rosas (Bread and Roses). She is a candidate in one of the districts on the periphery of Santiago made up of slums. She is 33 years old and a mother. She joined the PTR when she was a young hip-hop activist. Daniel Vargas is a lawyer who, during Chile’s October 2019 rebellion, became well known for defending people who had been arrested.

Neither Washington Nor Beijing?

February 23, 2021 Carlos Martinez, Invent the Future. Educate! China, Imperialism, Left Politics, United States

A newcomer to politics would likely assume that members of the global left support the People’s Republic of China. It is after all led by a communist party, with Marxism as its guiding ideology. During the period since the Communist Party of China (CPC) came to power in 1949, the Chinese people have experienced an unprecedented improvement in their living standards and human development. Life expectancy has increased from 361 to 772 years. Literacy has increased from an estimated 20 percent3 to 97 percent.4 The social and economic position of women has improved beyond recognition (one example being that, before the revolution, the vast majority of women received no formal education whatsoever, whereas now a majority of students in higher education institutions are female).

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