Modi’s Party Earned More Last Year Than All Its Rivals Combined

Archana Chaudhary, Bloomberg•January 17, 2020


1 / 2

Modi’s Party Earned More Last Year Than All Its Rivals Combined



(Bloomberg) -- India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling party more than doubled its income to $339 million in the financial year ended March 2019 ahead of federal elections, which is more than twice that of its five major rivals put together.

About two-thirds of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s income, or 14.50 billion rupees ($204 million), came from opaque financing instruments called electoral bonds. These bonds allow individuals as well as corporations -- including those partly owned by foreign entities -- to fund political parties anonymously, according to a report by the Association for Democratic Reforms, which cited the latest data from the Election Commission of India.

The BJP swept to a second term in office in May 2019, winning more than 300 seats out of 545 in India’s Lok Sabha or lower house of Parliament, giving Modi a powerful mandate.

The BJP’s largest rival, the Indian National Congress, reported 41.7% of its total income of 9.18 billion rupees came from electoral bonds, the report said. The only other national party to report income from electoral bonds was the All India Trinamool Congress, which received half its revenue of 1.92 billion rupees through the instrument.


Although the ruling BJP’s income jumped to 24.10 billion rupees from 10.27 billion rupees in 2017-18, its political competitors reported higher percentage hikes. The main opposition Congress party earned four-and-a-half times more in the financial year before the national elections. The biggest jump in income, 40-fold, was reported by the Trinamool Congress, which dominates West Bengal, a state that is due to go to the polls early 2021. India’s largest left party the Communist Party of India (Marxist) was the only national grouping to report a fall in income by 3.7% compared with 2017-18, according to the report.

Gopal Krishna Agarwal, BJP’s spokesman for economic issues, and Abhishek Manu Singhvi, Congress’ spokesman, didn’t immediately respond to messages seeking comment.

Sharp Rise

Indian political parties have shown a sharp rise in income after the government introduced electoral bonds in 2017-18. Although the BJP has consistently accounted for the highest income in Indian politics, its declared revenues have soared in 2018-19 by 148% from 9.70 billion rupees in 2014-15, the year Modi first came to power. The Congress, which had seen its income drop after 2014-15 when it lost power, reported a rise in income after the anonymous donations system of electoral bonds was introduced.

Despite the name, the bonds bear little resemblance to the promissory notes investors are familiar with where buyers are paid interest. Anyone can buy an electoral bond at the government-owned State Bank of India. They are then delivered to a political party, which can exchange them for cash. They don’t carry the name of the donor and are exempt from tax.

BJP’s former finance minister Arun Jaitley, who first announced plans for the electoral bonds in 2017, had argued they would improve transparency because they are banking instruments and every political party has to disclose how much it received. Prior to this, Indian political parties received most of their donations in cash.

India’s campaign finance overhaul began in 2017, when Parliament approved an amendment that made it easier for companies to donate to political parties, including removing a cap on corporate donations -- the maximum used to be 7.5% of a company’s average net income over three years. Requirements for companies to disclose how much they donated and to which party were also eliminated.

The latest income declarations are part of the audited income tax filings submitted to the independent Election Commission of India.


©2020 Bloomberg L.P.

Political Turmoil to Be ‘New Normal’ for 2020, Risk Firm Says

Iain Marlow and Hannah Dormido,Bloomberg•January 15, 2020



1 / 7

Political Turmoil to Be ‘New Normal’ for 2020, Risk Firm Says

(Bloomberg) -- The violent protests and political upheaval that marked 2019 and challenged governments from Hong Kong to Chile is set to stay and is now the “new normal,” according to a global risk firm.

Verisk Maplecroft, which advises corporate clients on political risk around the world, said in a new report released Thursday that it predicts “continued turmoil in 2020” as administrations around the world continue to be surprised by demonstrators and ill-prepared to address the underlying social grievances that spur them.

“We all need to buckle up for 2020,” said Miha Hribernik, the Singapore-based head of Asia risk insight for Verisk Maplecroft. “The rage that caught many governments off-guard last year isn’t going anywhere and we’d all better adapt.”

Many governments were caught by surprise by the scale and ferocity of the protests and ended up attempting to crackdown on the movements, deploying what human rights group have said were arbitrary arrests and indiscriminate violence. That response has ended up further radicalizing protesters and provoking more violent demonstrations, Verisk Maplecroft said in its Political Risk Outlook 2020.

Rising Unrest

Of the countries seeing significantly more angry protests than usual, some of the steepest increases on firm’s unrest index were in Chile and Hong Kong. Chile rose from 91st place to 6th on the index as simmering social strife transformed Latin America’s richest and most stable nation into a focal point of chaotic protests that caused some $2 billion of property damages and killed more than two dozen people.

Hong Kong similarly rose from 117th to 26th after seven months of pro-democracy street protests, the firm said. Although prompted by a since-withdrawn bill that would have allowed extraditions to mainland China, Verisk Maplecroft added that the “root cause of discontent has been the rollback of civil and political rights since 1997.”

India and Iraq, which have both seen determined protests recently, ranked much lower on the list of worsening hot spots because they began last year with heightened levels of unrest. In New Delhi, Prime Minister Narendra Modi now faces the most significant challenge to his rule since being first being elected in 2014, as protesters take to the streets criticizing his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party for its anti-Muslim policies.


Many governments have “reacted with a combination of repression and limited concessions” which achieved little because resilient protest movements have adapted rapidly to police tactics, Hribernik said.

“During 2019, governments worldwidescrambled to find an effective response to protests,” he said. “We don’t see much changing during 2020, and January has so far borne this out -- protesters have continued to turn out in their thousands in Iran, Iraq, India, Chile, Hong Kong and Lebanon -- to name just a few places.”

To contact the reporters on this story: Iain Marlow in Hong Kong at imarlow1@bloomberg.net;Hannah Dormido in Hong Kong at hdormido@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Brendan Scott at bscott66@bloomberg.net, Muneeza Naqvi

©2020 Bloomberg L.P.

How a Chilean dog ended up as a face of the New York City subway protests

Alexandra Isfahani-Hammond, Associate Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature, University of California San Diego

A man holds a sign with an image of Negro Matapacos, in Santiago, Chile.
MARTIN BERNETTI/AFP via Getty Images

A black Chilean dog wearing a red bandana made his mark during the New York City subway protests beginning in November 2019.

The protests were ignited by videos documenting police assaults on black and brown youth in the subways. For example, in one, an officer punches a 15-year-old unarmed African American teenager in the face.

Stickers bearing the dog’s image jumping a turnstile appeared on subway walls and trains. They also surfaced in social media illustrations announcing his arrival in New York City.

Who is this dog – and how did he end up in New York City protests?

His name is Negro Matapacos. The dog attained celebrity status for uniting with the protesters during the 2011 uprising in Chile for education reform, facing the police alongside the students.

I have studied animals’ consciousness, as well as connections between violence against nonwhite people and violence against other species.

I see Negro Matapacos’ legacy as providing a dramatic contrast to the use of dogs to suppress dissent. In my view, as someone who takes animal agency seriously, he joined the front lines voluntarily to defend the protesters against the police.
Rise to fame

Negro Matapacos first became famous for protecting students from police brutality in Santiago, Chile in 2011.


He lived most of his life on Santiago’s streets. In 2009, a resident of the university district, Maria Campos, invited Negro Matapacos into her home. He thrived under her care, but was determined to remain independent. Though he slept at Campos’ house, she honored his choice to move freely about Santiago.

Negro Matapacos began spending time on the university campuses in Campos’ neighborhood. Along with a population of free-roaming dogs, he developed friendships with the students.

In 2011, the students organized marches demanding free, quality public education. Riot police used tear gas and water cannons against them.

Campos reported that on protest mornings, Matapacos waited desperately to be let out. She said a prayer, traced a cross on his forehead and kissed him on the snout before opening the door. He then raced in the direction of the demonstrations.

Negro Matapacos – a name the dog received as he attained notoriety – literally translates to “Black Cop Killer.” In Latin America, it is not uncommon to use an animal’s color as their name. “Matapacos” has a specific local meaning, referencing the infamous brutality of the Chilean police. Negro Matapacos never killed anyone, but snarled, lunged and barked when the police threatened and assaulted the protesters.
Going international

Negro Matapacos died of natural causes in 2017, surrounded by caregivers. However, he continues to represent indignation against oppression.

In October 2019, massive protests erupted in Chile, sparked by a 4% subway fare increase. The demonstrators want socioeconomic equality and free education and health care. They oppose the right-wing president, Sebastián Piñera.

Negro Matapacos’ image has appeared throughout the protests, gracing banners, posters, decals, murals and papier mâché and metal sculptures.

The Chilean demonstrators’ hashtag, #EvasiónMassiva, references subway fare evasion. Stickers appearing in New York City depict a smiling Negro Matapacos jumping a turnstile atop the word “evade.”

In addition to New York City, Negro Matapacos’ image is featured in a mural in Malinarco, Mexico.

At Shibuya Station in Tokyo, a red bandana much like the one Negro Matapacos wore adorns Hachiko’s statue. Hachiko is a famous dog who awaited his guardian’s return from work long after his death.

An enduring image

These far-flung images of Negro Matapacos reflect the universality of his social justice message.

In a documentary about him, sociologist Jaime Rodriguez observed that the Chilean demonstrations beginning in 2011 responded to the absence of a social safety net. Chile’s free-roaming dogs epitomize exposure to harm: “There is nothing more precarious than a dog in the street,” Rodriguez said.

One student protester speculated to director Víctor Ramírez about why dogs like Negro Matapacos joined the students. He speaks to the shared vulnerability of free-roaming dogs and students to institutional violence.

Another protester references Matapacos’ yearning for recognition, which he got from the students: “We are marching for the things we need, and the dogs unite themselves to our cause. They unite themselves with us because they need our love and affection.”

[ You’re smart and curious about the world. So are The Conversation’s authors and editors. You can read us daily by subscribing to our newsletter. ]

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts.

Read more:
When Trump calls someone a dog, he’s tapping into ugly history

Countries to watch in 2020, from Chile to Afghanistan: 5 essential reads

Alexandra Isfahani-Hammond does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

From the Conversation 

THIS IS NOT THE ONLY PROTEST DOG DOCUMENTED AS JOINING PROTESTERS 

AGAINST THE POLICE, AN INHERENT TRAIT OF DISTRUST OF UNIFORMS FROM MEMORY OF ABUSE

'Alarm' over climate change rising among Americans, survey shows

By Ellen Wulfhorst, Thomson Reuters Foundation, Reuters•January 16, 2020

NEW YORK, Jan 16 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - The share of Americans "alarmed" over climate change has hit a new high, research showed on Thursday, spurred in part by growing media coverage and by Democratic presidential contenders paying attention to the issue.

A majority of Americans now say they are "concerned" or "alarmed" about climate change, with those "alarmed" increasing almost threefold in the last five years, according to research by Yale University.

Fueling that concern has been the prominence of the issue among Democratic candidates seeking their party's nomination to try to unseat Republican President Donald Trump in November, said Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication.

For Democrats, "this is one of the top voting priorities among their base, and that has never been true in American political history before," Leiserowitz told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Each of the Democratic candidates - now numbering a dozen - has called for concerted action to address global warming and for the United States to remain in the 2015 Paris climate accord.

The Trump administration is in the process of pulling the United States - one of the world's biggest emitters of planet-warming greenhouse gases - out of the agreement adopted by nearly 200 nations with the aim of limiting global warming.

Climate change is likely to drop from political headlines once the Democratic nominee is chosen later this year and faces off with Trump, however, because it will be just one of many ways in which the candidates differ, Leiserowitz predicted.

Yale's research on attitudes about climate change sorts respondents into six categories - from "alarmed" to "dismissive", a grouping for those who do not think global warming is taking places or that it is caused by human action.

The latest results, from November 2019, found the "alarmed" segment at a high of 31%. The "dismissive" and "doubtful" categories stood at 10% each.

The data has been collected from an average of about 1,250 online respondents twice a year since October 2014 by Yale and the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication.

Growing concerns about climate change also were fueled by a report on dire global warming risks facing oceans and ice issued by the United Nations-backed Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change last year, Leiserowitz said.

Growing media attention as more news organizations cover the topic has played a role as well in changing attitudes, he said.

In addition, more Americans are starting to directly experience climate change impacts - from wildfires to floods or other extreme weather - or have seen them on television, he said.

For a growing number of Americans, "this isn't far away in time and space anymore. This is here and now and it's real." (Reporting by Ellen Wulfhorst, Editing by Laurie Goering

---30---

Chilean university admissions tests hit by fresh protests

By Natalia A. Ramos Miranda,Reuters•January 6, 2020



1 / 10
Chilean university admissions tests hit by fresh protests
Protests against Chile's government in Valparaiso

By Natalia A. Ramos Miranda

SANTIAGO (Reuters) - University entrance exams to be taken by 300,000 students around Chile were disrupted in some cities on Monday by fresh protests over inequality and elitism, with some students blocking access to test sites and burning exam papers.

The authorities suspended the university selection test - known locally as the PSU - in 64 of more than 700 exam centers around the country, citing in a statement the safety of students, staff and exam materials.

The test had been suspended twice since November amid widespread social unrest in Chile that has left more than 27 people dead, thousands injured and thousands more arrested.

With the unrest dwindling to a handful of smaller protests each week, the test had been rescheduled to this week, only to face calls for a boycott by student union groups that claim the admissions system privileges those who attend better schools, in better areas and have better resources to prepare for it.

"We will continue to fight against market education and for a country where poor and working-class children can study without competition or segregation," the Coordinating Assembly of Secondary Students (ACES) said in a statement on Twitter.

Students protested outside exam centers in cities around the country, including Santiago, the capital, the coastal city of Valparaiso and Calama to the north. Students carried banners calling for a more equitable education system.

In some cases, students blocked access to the sites, disrupted the exams, vandalized classroom furniture and burned exam papers. Eighty-one people were detained for damage and public disorder, the Interior Ministry said in a statement.

Education undersecretary Juan Vargas said those affected by the suspensions would be able to complete the test later.

"That group of young people who have been affected ... will have a solution, an alternative, to take the PSU," he told reporters in Santiago.

In recent years protests by Chilean students over the country's highly privatized education system have made global headlines and brought pledges of reform including making higher education free of charge, improving quality and widening access to more people.

Since October, Chile has been rocked by broader protests that started over a hike in public transport fares and broadened to include calls for better pensions, healthcare and education.




(Reporting by Natalia Ramos; writing by Aislinn Laing; Editing by Leslie Adler)

View reactions (2)

Crossing continents to cover protests

Reuters•January 7, 2020

 Crossing continents to cover protests

FILE PHOTO: A man reacts in front of Haitian National Police (PNH) officers during clashes with protesters marching to demand the resignation of Haitian President Jovenel Moise, in the streets of Petion Ville, Port-au-Princ

BEIRUT (Reuters) - One moment, photographer Andres Martinez Casares was out on the streets of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, dodging teargas canisters as crowds called for the resignation of President Jovenel Moise and his government.

The next, he was in Beirut which was packed with protesters chanting for the political elite to be ousted.

Journalists have to live with sharp transitions as they move from story to story. Martinez Casares had to travel 10,500 km (6,500 miles), in just over a day, from the unrest in the heart of the Caribbean to mass protests in the Middle East.

The photographer - who had been working in Haiti since 2010 - had been asked to fly from Port-au-Prince to Guadeloupe to Paris and then Beirut to join the local team who had been covering the Lebanese demonstrations for weeks.

Reuters has a string of international bureaus well placed to report on developments on their patch, but on particularly long-running stories, they welcome reinforcements.

"Part of the job is to be a quick responder," said the 37-year-old from Leon, Spain.

"On my first day in a new place, I always like to be with somebody who is familiar with the situation and can help me to understand it on the ground."

Picture editors Cynthia Karam and Maria Semerdjian brought him up to speed on the latest developments in Beirut and showed him the main locations.

RULES OF ENGAGEMENT

From then on it was a question of following an adaptable set of rules of engagement - wearing the right protective gear, checking for exit routes, watching the behaviour of security forces and protesters.

"I've always tried to work with somebody that I can trust, a motorcycle taxi driver in Haiti, for example, or other colleagues - keeping an eye on them and vice versa in case there is a problem so we can assist each other.

"And when I’m taking pictures, it's about being respectful, responsible and accurate, not exaggerating or minimizing, and being honest and fair."

It's also about telling the story of individuals caught up in political unrest.

The last pictures he took in Haiti showed members of the national cycle team training in the backstreets as the protests raged around them.

Among the first he took in Lebanon showed life in the street camps that sprang up during the demonstrations - women chatting on the roof of an abandoned cinema, tents in a downtown square.

Three weeks on, those protests had died down in Beirut.

But just over 13,500 km southwest on another continent, thousands more people were heading out on the streets, many of them calling for the resignation of their own president. Martinez Casares got on another plane, heading for Santiago, Chile.

(Editing by Andrew Heavens)

Evelyn Yang, wife of presidential candidate Andrew Yang, tells CNN she was sexually assaulted by her doctor

Raechal Shewfelt Editor, Yahoo Entertainment, Yahoo TV•January 16, 2020


Andrew Yang’s wife Evelyn reveals she was sexually assaulted by her doctor

Evelyn Yang is ready to tell her story.

The wife of Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang revealed Thursday to CNN that, while pregnant with her first child in 2012, she was sexually assaulted by her obstetrician-gynecologist at Columbia University.

She realizes now that it began when her physician, Dr. Robert Hadden, asked her inappropriate questions during visits.

"There was absolutely no premise for that line of questioning, and it seemed like he just wanted to hear about me talking about sex,” she said. “What I kept sticking to was this: ‘OK, so my doctor is pervy. I have a pervy doctor, but I’m going to focus on having a healthy baby,’ and the idea of changing doctors was overwhelming for me.”

It got worse.

“The examinations became longer, more frequent, and I learned that they were unnecessary most of the time,” Yang said.

Evelyn Yang, wife of presidential candidate Andrew Yang, says she’s a survivor of sexual assault by a doctor who has been accused of abusing dozens of his patients, most of whom were pregnant at the time.https://t.co/5BXCqjAiz7

— OutFrontCNN (@OutFrontCNN) January 17, 2020

When Yang was seven months pregnant, her doctor did something even more extreme.

“I was in the exam room, and I was dressed and ready to go. Then, at the last minute, he kind of made up an excuse,” she said. “He said something about, ‘I think you might need a C-section,’ and he proceeded to grab me over to him and undress me and examine me internally, ungloved.”

Yang said she knew it was “wrong” as it happened: “I knew I was being assaulted.”

But Yang didn’t run or fight, like she had always thought she would.

“I just kind of froze like a deer in headlights, just frozen. I knew it was happening. I could feel it,” she explained. “I remember trying to fix my eyes on a spot on the wall and just trying to avoid seeing his face as he was assaulting me, just waiting for it to be over.”

She remained silent about the traumatizing incident, not even telling her husband for months afterward. Instead, she found a new doctor.

Hadden’s attorney has denied Yang’s accusations in legal filings, according to CNN.

Yang said she didn’t stop blaming herself for what happened until she received a letter saying Hadden had left his practice. She began searching online and discovered another accusation of sexual assault against him.

That’s when she told her husband — he cried — and decided to find a lawyer. It turned out that the Manhattan district attorney’s office was looking into the stories of 17 other women with similar experiences. Yang eventually testified in front of a grand jury, and Hadden was indicted. He ended up agreeing to a plea bargain and entered guilty pleas to one count of forcible touching and one count of third-degree sexual abuse. While he did lose his license, Hadden escaped prison time.

Yang was disappointed, to say the least.

She felt betrayed by the district attorney’s office and by the university, the latter of which had allowed Hadden to return to work after being arrested, when another women accused him of licking her vagina during an examination. The arrest happened six weeks before Yang was assaulted.

“What happened to me should have never happened. He was arrested in his office," Yang said. “I mean at the very least, the bare minimum would be to make sure that what happened to me could have been prevented.”

Yang and 31 other women are now suing the university and its affiliates, for enabling Hadden, as well as Hadden himself.

Hadden denies the accusations in court papers, CNN reports. Columbia has reportedly “contested the suit on procedural grounds.”

Yang decided to tell her story now, she said, because she’s felt a strong connection with the many people she’s met during her husband’s campaign.

“Something about being on the trail and meeting people and seeing the difference that we’ve been making already has moved me to share my own story about it, about sexual assault,” she said.

Candidate Yang supported his wife on social media after she shared her story.
I love my wife very very much.
— Andrew Yang🧢 (@AndrewYang) January 17, 2020

---30---

Chile Shuns Copper Giant Investment as Social Problems Mount

Eduardo Thomson Bloomberg January 6, 2020


(Bloomberg) -- Chile’s government ruled out fresh funds for its strategic copper producer, as it plans to spend $3 billion this year to contain a wave of nationwide protests.

Codelco, as the world’s largest copper producer is known, needs billions of dollars to upgrade its mines but will need to find other sources of financing, according to Finance Minister Ignacio Briones.

“We’re not talking about a capital injection,” Briones said in an interview with Radio Pauta Bloomberg on Monday. “The state has always supported Codelco in such a way that it can access financing via capitalization or international markets.”

The government of President Sebastian Pinera is increasing spending to boost the economy and counteract the impact of more than two months of social unrest that have shuttered shops and delayed investments. Officials are also evaluating the costs of a healthcare overhaul, Briones said.

That has left Codelco to fund a $20 billion investment program on its own, or see output slump as copper grades decline. For a company already weighed down by $19.4 billion of debt, that is a tall order

Codelco, or Corporacion Nacional del Cobre de Chile, has been able to keep its output steady over the past few years, but the ore it’s extracting is of increasingly lower quality, boosting processing costs. Without access to government funds, the company’s debt could soar to $21 billion, former Chief Executive Officer Nelson Pizarro said last year. It stood at $18.4 billion at the end of the third quarter, up from $15.5 billion at the end of 2018.

Credit Downgrade

The nationwide protests began in October over a rise in the price of metro fares before ballooning to include much broader demands. Pinera initially called in troops and established a curfew before reversing course and agreeing to a plebiscite on a new constitution.

Still, his actions were too late to prevent a hit on one of Latin America’s richest economies. Economic activity has contracted for two months in a row, the central bank has warned of an all-out recession and the peso plunged to a record low before policy makers intervened.

Yet Chile’s government is not expecting a sovereign credit rating downgrade, as the country has a relatively low level of debt compared to other countries, Briones said in the interview. The nation’s debt levels should stabilize in 2024 after rising for several years, he said.

Read More: Chile Seeks to Spend its Way Out of Crisis at a Hefty Price

Taxes will rise gradually, though there’s no room to lift them to levels seen in Europe, he said, adding that Chile’s tax system must be simple, fair and pro-investment. The government plans to call a panel of experts to advise on a long-term tax strategy. That body will seek to establish a path for tax collection that’s in line with future economic growth, he said.

(Adds details throughout)

--With assistance from Philip Sanders.

To contact the reporter on this story: Eduardo Thomson in Santiago at ethomson1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Daniel Cancel at dcancel@bloomberg.net, ;Walter Brandimarte at wbrandimarte@bloomberg.net, Matthew Malinowski

For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com

©2020 Bloomberg L.P.

Why Latin America’s Bloody Protests Won’t Die Out Anytime Soon

Eduardo Thomson, Ezra Fieser and Stephan Kueffner,
Bloomberg•January 8, 2020



1 / 3

Why Latin America’s Bloody Protests Won’t Die Out Anytime Soon



(Bloomberg) -- It’s called Italy Plaza, a vast traffic circle in the Chilean capital of Santiago. To the north and east live the country’s ultra-wealthy. One way of describing those out of touch with the rest of the country’s grim reality is to say they’ve “never been below Italy Plaza.”

The spot is ground zero for furious street demonstrations that have turned Chile from Latin America’s richest and stablest nation into a test case of profound social unrest. The area, which demonstrators have renamed Dignity Plaza, is coated in layers of graffiti, with most shops looted and shuttered.

The case of Chile — $2 billion in property damage, 26 dead — has shocked the investor world because it was supposed to be a regional model. But the virus of discontent was already spreading elsewhere, with streets in Colombia, Ecuador and Bolivia turning into scenes of pot-banging fire-setting fury.

Numerous factors are at play. Among the most significant are economic inequality, ethnic tensions and police brutality. While the most violent protests have for now dissipated, these forces continue to gnaw away at social cohesion and could once again spark unrest unexpectedly and suddenly. Institutions and the rule of law are fragile and economies are expected to have another tough year.

Here are snapshots of three issues in three countries.

Chile’s Inequality

Every Friday, after David Vargas completes his shift as a technician at a credit-card company in the upscale Santiago neighborhood of Nueva Las Condes he heads to nearby Italy Plaza to join the protests.

Vargas, 38, embodies Chile’s socio-economic divide. He comes from a poor family and works among the well-to-do. And while he once watched the gap shrink, lately he’s seen it stagnate. He was struck when he saw the difference in how the authorities treated his work neighborhood from the one where he lives.

The area around his company “was packed with soldiers,” he said. “They were guarding everything when absolutely nothing had happened. But if you went downtown or to other parts of Santiago, it was pure chaos. They just guarded from Italy Plaza to the rich neighborhoods.”

Vargas’s father, a former factory worker, collects a monthly disability pension of just 80,000 pesos, about $100. His mother cleaned houses.

“I’m protesting mostly because of the pensions and to show solidarity because right now I have privileges that many don’t have,” Vargas said. “I know what it is to live in a poor neighborhood, I know what it is to wait for eight hours at public hospitals for service, I know what it means that the elderly receive extremely low pensions and don’t have enough to live or to buy food.”

A few blocks away is where it all began. In early October at a subway station, students plotted ticket evasions sparked by a fare increase of 30 pesos. They coordinated on social networks and dangled their feet over the tracks to force trains to stop. Things got nasty, fast. Police special forces clashed with the protesters, and groups set dozens of stations on fire.

Stunned, the government declared a state of emergency and a curfew, sending the army to the streets. Protests morphed into the biggest social unrest since at least the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet in the 1970s and 1980s. They were now against every injustice imaginable: low pensions, school debts, health services, public education, police brutality, women’s rights, even replacing the Pinochet-era constitution, which President Sebastian Pinera has agreed to in an attempt to calm the situation.

The message was clear. The neglected middle class in South America’s richest country was very mad. It was a taste of the frustration of similar populations across the region in recent years.

Paulina Astroza, professor of political science at Chile’s Universidad de Concepcion, said Chile’s economic model worked when commodity prices were soaring but has failed since.

“The issue is distrust of the political class, of the church, even of union and labor leaders,” she said. “There has to be a change in the model for more wealth redistribution or the grotesque inequality and the discontent will continue. If we want to avoid other unrest movements in one, two or even five years, we have to see a redistribution of power.”

Colombia’s Police Brutality

Dilan Cruz wasn’t much for politics. An 18-year-old with a broad smile and a big group of friends, Cruz joined Colombia’s anti-government demonstrations in late November to protest for more funding for education.

“He believed he could get ahead if he could get a chance to study,” said Alexa Beltran, a close friend. He was about to graduate high school and planned to study business administration, she said.

Cruz was killed by riot-control police at one of the demonstrations. His death was a flash point and an example of aggressive police tactics that have inflamed protests in countries across the Andes.

Dozens of demonstrators have been killed and thousands injured by state forces from Bogota to Santiago. The violence has been most prominent in Chile, where thousands have been hurt, including more than 200 who sustained eye injuries from the use of pellet shotguns by authorities, according to human-rights groups.

“There are similarities in the way the police units are behaving,” said Silvia Otero Bahamon, a professor at Universidad del Rosario in Bogota who studies inequality and political violence.

Dictatorship, war and high levels of violence in the past have led to heavily militarized police forces. Abuses are common. Colombians, who lived through decades of armed conflict, have become so accustomed to them that few of the more than 40 killings of demonstrators by anti-riot police in the last two decades have been investigated, Otero Bahamon said.

“Repression of protest by police is common in Colombia,” she said. “That’s why what’s happened with Dilan Cruz has been surprising.”

Cruz’s death sparked fresh protests and anger. Marchers carried signs bearing his likeness and broke out into spontaneous chants of “Dilan didn’t die, he was murdered.” Protest leaders are demanding the government dismantle the national police’s Mobile Anti-Disturbance Squadron, known by its Spanish acronym ESMAD.

President Ivan Duque has ruled out such a move. Cruz’s death is under investigation by the attorney general’s office.

Sometimes provoked but other times not, ESMAD agents have been seen clubbing protesters, kicking a woman in the face and casually tossing tear gas into peaceful demonstrations.

Cruz came from a broken home; his father died years ago and his mother was in jail. He lived with his older sister in a hardscrabble neighborhood, taking day jobs selling fast food. He’d joined a few peaceful protests in the past, but none of them compared with the demonstrations that shook Colombia starting on Nov. 21, when hundreds of thousands took to the streets in a broad-based rejection of government policies.

Two days after the protests began, Cruz was on the street. He picked up a teargas canister, threw it at anti-riot police and ran, video footage from cellphones and street cameras shows. An officer shot a projectile, hitting Cruz in the head.

Cruz collapsed in front of an internet cafe on a normally busy commercial street. Two days later, he died in a hospital. His sister Denis attended his graduation ceremony in his place. In a video she posted, she said, “No more violence. Dialogue and love will always be our best weapons.”

Ecuador’s Indigenous Tensions

When President Lenin Moreno announced the end of gasoline and diesel subsidies in October to comply with an International Monetary Fund program, the reaction was so violent that he fled the capital, Quito, and moved the government to the coastal business center of Guayaquil. At the heart of the protests were indigenous tribal groups, among the most affected.

Round-the-clock roadblocks, achieved by felling trees, burning tires and rolling boulders, paralyzed large areas. Some ransacked flower plantations and farms. Others caused $140 million in damage by sabotaging oil production. Looting and street riots culminated in the arson of the Office of the Comptroller General and several deaths, leading Moreno to repeal his decree. The indigenous umbrella group CONAIE called off the demonstrations. The government is back in Quito. But tension remains high.

Jaime Vargas is a 40-year-old indigenous leader who wears a necklace ending in a jaguar’s tooth he said he pulled from a live cat himself, along with a brightly feathered crown typical in swathes of the Amazon where he is from. “People have been carrying a heavy load. Of the violence, there are justifications,” he said.

The indigenous, who make up about 10%-20% of the country’s 17 million inhabitants by various estimates, mirror the marginalized poor across South America. Their cultures are as diverse as their homelands, ranging from sweltering rain forests to icy, windswept mountains capped with receding glaciers. Some came into contact with Western civilization only when the oil industry showed up in the 1960s and 1970s, while most descend from people who fought both invading Incas and Spanish conquistadors hundreds of years ago.

Many have moved to urban areas for education and jobs, only to find both elusive. They live in marginal areas, exposed to crime, drugs and prostitution.

CONAIE leaders, wearing traditional ponchos and felt hats and carrying hardwood spears, have toppled several elected governments in Ecuador in the past. Moreno has responded cautiously while trying to move the economy to more of a market orientation.

Luisa Lozano, the 43-year-old head of CONAIE’s women’s organization — who has already beaten back charges for her role in previous anti-government protests including blocking highways — wears a wide-brimmed black and white hat she says is a symbol of the sun worshiped as a deity before the Spaniards arrived.

“The more repression, the greater the adrenaline to resist,” she said in reference to the October protests and clashes over fuel prices. “The more blood, the stronger the peoples’ reaction. When it comes down to it, people will react because we know everything we’ve achieved has come through struggle after struggle.”

(Added link to podcast)

To contact the authors of this story: Eduardo Thomson in Santiago at ethomson1@bloomberg.netEzra Fieser in Bogota at efieser@bloomberg.netStephan Kueffner in Lima at skueffner1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Daniel Cancel at dcancel@bloomberg.net, Ethan BronnerMelinda Grenier

For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com

©2020 Bloomberg L.P.

Amazon's HQ2 was a showdown between a union city and a tech giant

FOLKS DON'T ASSOCIATE THE BIG APPLE WITH TRADE UNIONISM BUT SAMUEL GOMPERS FIRST PRESIDENT OF THE AMERICAN FEDERATION OF LABOR STARTED OUT AS A CIGAR MAKER UNION ORGANIZER IN NYC.

Max Zahn Reporter Yahoo Finance February 15, 2019

View photos

Jeff Bezos headshot, as Amazon founder and CEO, watches on stage during a news conference unveiling the new Blue Origin rocket at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Cape Canaveral, graphic element on gray. Source: Associated PressMore


Amazon gave up its Big Apple dreams on Thursday—even though a poll released two days earlier showed a majority of city and state residents supported the plan for a headquarters in Long Island City, Queens.

The incongruity left many scratching their heads, but the cause is clear: a months-long opposition campaign that pressured the tech giant to make concessions or leave.

The outcome shows the strength of labor unions, which represent a greater proportion of workers in New York than any other state in the country. Even though organized labor split over the project, many of the community groups and elected officials at the heart of the anti-HQ2 campaign have close ties to the state’s most powerful and well-funded unions. The showdown between a bastion of organized labor and one of the nation’s largest companies will likely ripple through business and political circles nationwide for years to come.

View photos

Protesters carry anti-Amazon signs during a coalition rally and press conference of elected officials, community organizations and unions opposing Amazon headquarters getting subsidies to locate in the New York neighborhood of Long Island City, Queens, Wednesday Nov. 14, 2018, in New York. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews)More

The company’s unwillingness to promise neutrality toward a union drive at its Staten Island warehouse became a lightning rod for critics, with talks between the company and labor leaders on the issue reportedly continuing on Wednesday morning, a day before Amazon’s decision to pull out of New York.
Unions were divided over Amazon HQ2

“Clearly, it was decisive,” said Shaun Richman, program director of the Harry Van Arsdale Jr. Center for Labor Studies at SUNY Empire State College and a former organizing director with the American Federation of Teachers, of the role of organized labor.

“There was the idea that it would be unacceptable to the labor movement—and to politicians loyal to the labor movement—for Amazon to come into New York City and operate on a completely non-union basis.”

But unions in New York have been divided over the HQ2 project since soon after it was announced last November, showing that some of the political players fostered and even funded by the unions were more resolutely opposed than the unions themselves.

SEIU 32BJ, an influential local that represents over 163,000 property service workers, supported the deal in part because a reported agreement with developers at the headquarters would have added members to the union. Hector Figueroa, president of SEIU 32BJ, also lauded the improvements the project could bring to New York City, saying the city’s progressive politics could optimize the benefits of the deal.

The Building and Construction Trades Council also vowed support for HQ2, celebrating the construction jobs that it would create and acknowledging the group had reached a deal with Amazon.

Union opposition to HQ2 was led by the Retail, Wholesale, Department Store Union (RWDSU), which had launched a union drive at an Amazon warehouse facility in Staten Island. For months, RWDSU President Stuart Appelbaum criticized the nearly $3 billion in city and state tax subsidies and Amazon’s labor practices, especially its unwillingness to remain neutral toward the Staten Island unionization effort.

View photos

George Miranda, vice president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, left, and Stuart Appelbaum, president of the Retail Wholesale Department Store Union (RWDU), speak during a protest against Amazon outside of City Hall in New York, U.S., on Wednesday, Jan. 30, 2019. Photographer: Sangsuk Sylvia Kang/Bloomberg via Getty ImagesMore

A tentative plan was settled between RWDSU and Amazon on Wednesday morning to address the neutrality concerns, Appelbaum told Bloomberg. Even RWDSU, it appears, was coming around to a deal, though the price may have been too great for Amazon.
‘We work closely with all unions’

But the support of some unions for the deal was outweighed by a political environment that they themselves helped create: one replete with pro-labor allies at the grassroots level and in elected office who led the opposition to the headquarters.

Three of the citywide community groups at the forefront of the anti-HQ2 campaign—ALIGN, Make the Road New York, and New York Communities for Change—receive funding from the state’s largest unions and tout their relationships with labor.

Appelbaum, the RWDSU president, is on the board of ALIGN.

“We work closely with all unions,” ALIGN Executive Director Maritza Silva-Farrell said. “Building trades, [SEIU]32BJ, RWDSU, public sector unions. We have longstanding relationships with many unions in the state.”

“This is a union town,” Silva-Farrell added. “You can’t come to New York and say we’ll build with union jobs and try to pin unions and community against each other.”

Similarly, advocacy group Make the Road New York looked past the divide among labor unions in its opposition to HQ2.

“What we saw here was first RWDSU really taking a stand,” said Co-executive Director Deborah Axt, adding that “[SEIU] 32BJ is a close ally of ours and stands for the same things that most do on issues. I believe their commitment is incredibly strong to transforming this country.”

Axt said funding from unions makes up “a tiny, tiny percentage of our budget, but we’re grateful for it.”

The most outspoken critics of HQ2 in elected office also retain close ties with organized labor.

In 2018, labor unions made tens of thousands in donations to the campaign fund of State Senator Mike Gianaris, a vocal opponent of HQ2 who serves the Long Island City-neighborhood that was set to host Amazon. In recent months, Gianaris has repeatedly called the company “anti-union.”

Queens City Councilman Jimmy Van Bramer, who has received large donations from top unions and has aggressively criticized the HQ2 project, tweeted on Thursday, “Jeff Bezos clearly couldn’t handle talks of unionization,” in reference to the labor neutrality discussions that happened the day prior.

Mark Jaffe, president of the Greater New York Chamber of Commerce, lamented the loss of HQ2 and blamed the advocacy groups and elected officials for Amazon’s departure, calling them “a very small percentage of elected officials and community advocates that feel billionaires should pay for all their programs.”

But even he acknowledged the influence of unions in New York.

“Labor is a strong, powerful group,” he said. “It knows how to organize.”

Read more:

Amazon’s decision to ditch H2Q is a black eye for NYC’s tech scene

Amazon and the brewing war on corporate America

Amazon’s breakup with New York sets other cities up for gains

Max Zahn worked at New York Communities for Change in 2012.

He is a reporter for Yahoo Finance.

Colombia protests to intensify this year, union leader says
By Luis Jaime Acosta,Reuters•January 17, 2020

BOGOTA (Reuters) - Protests against the social and economic policies of Colombian President Ivan Duque will restart with more intensity this year, a top union leader said.

Marchers in the Andean country held mass demonstrations in November and December last year to demand a varied laundry list of concessions from Duque's right-wing government.

New protests will open on Tuesday with cacerolazos, Central Union of Workers (CUT) chief Diogenes Orjuela told Reuters late on Thursday, referring to a traditional Latin American form of dissent.

"I think (the protests) will be stronger. When we say stronger, they are demonstrations and strikes far from any violent intent," Orjuela said. "The first strong action - like the one on Nov. 21, it will be similar - will take place in March."

Protests last year were largely peaceful, but were marked by looting and attacks against public transport during their first few days, leading Cali and Bogota to institute curfews.

Five people died in connection with the demonstrations, which followed upheaval in other Latin American countries such as Ecuador, Chile and Bolivia.

The death of teenage protester Dilan Cruz, injured by a projectile fired by riot police, became a rallying cry for many marchers, who have demanded the force be dissolved. The squad is now banned from using the weapon that killed Cruz.

The National Strike Committee, comprising unions like the CUT and student groups, initially presented the government with 13 demands in talks - including stepped-up efforts to stop the murder of human rights activists and implement a peace deal with leftist rebels.

Protesters had asked the government scrap a tax reform proposal, especially a provision to cut taxes for corporations, but the bill was passed by Congress just before Christmas.

Demonstrators also opposed rumored increases to the pension age and cuts to the minimum wage for young people - policies Duque denies supporting.

The committee later increased its demands to 104 points, including opposition to fracking.

Most demands are things already agreed with students, indigenous communities and other groups, but not implemented, Orjuela said.

The committee has demanded one-on-one talks with the government, but Duque has insisted on wider participation by civil society, including business groups.

"What the strikes and marches have expressed is there is another opinion in Colombia," Orjuela said. "It is very important for us that the government understand it must listen to that opinion."

The committee and the government may meet in the coming days, he added.


(Reporting by Luis Jaiem Acosta; Writing by Julia Symmes Cobb; Editing by Richard Chang)

Chile's Pinera announces key pension fund reform after protests

AFP•January 16, 2020


Demonstrators run as a riot police vehicle sprays water during a protest against Chilean President Sebastian Pinera's government in Santiago on January 10 (AFP Photo/CLAUDIO REYES)More

Santiago (AFP) - Chile's President Sebastian Pinera has announced plans to reform the country's pensions system, a key measure aimed at easing the South American country's three-month old social crisis.

In an address to the nation late Wednesday, Pinera said he will send a bill to Congress this week that proposes a gradual increase of mandatory contributions from 10 to 16 percent, with employers contributing the increase.

The move "will mainly benefit women, middle class and older adults with severe dependence," Pinera said in the address.

A 2018 proposal to raise pensions by four percent was rejected as insufficient.

The new measures seek to improve the plight of cash-strapped Chilean pensioners who on average receive pensions equivalent to between 30 and 40 percent of their final salary.

The majority of pensioners have to live on around $400 a month in retirement, below the minimum wage.

Pinera's proposal comes almost three months to the day after the eruption in mid-October of widespread, often-violent social protests that left 29 dead and thousands injured.

One of the key demands of protesters was reform of the pensions system, managed by for-profit Pension Fund Administrators.

Pinera said that the reform would increase pensions by around $91 a month for women, and about $73 for male pensioners.

In the midst of the crisis in early December, Congress passed a bill proposed by Pinera to gradually increase minimum pensions by 50 percent.


Chile's Pinera proposes reform of pension system that has fueled protests

By Fabian Cambero, Reuters•January 15, 2020


FILE PHOTO: Chile's President Sebastian Pinera addresses the 74th session of the United Nations General Assembly at U.N. headquarters in New York City, New York, U.S.More

By Fabian Cambero

SANTIAGO (Reuters) - Chilean President Sebastian Pinera said on Wednesday that he will send a bill to Congress this week to reform the country's pension system, which leaves many retirees living in poverty and has been one of the main complaints of protesters in months of demonstrations.

In a radio and television broadcast, Pinera said he will propose a 6% increase in the pension contribution per worker.

Chile's pension system is a defined contribution scheme in which workers pay at least 10% of their wages each month to for-profit funds, called the Pension Fund Administrators (AFPs). The proposed adjustment implies a 3% increase in the employer's contribution.

In addition, employers would contribute another 3% to a state fund that would go toward improving current and future pensions.

The pension system and the AFPs have been harshly criticized in protests that began in mid-October and have left at least 27 people dead, thousands arrested and swaths of property damaged.

Many Chileans live on pensions that are significantly lower than the minimum wage, even if they have worked for most of their lives.

Pinera said the reform would mean that no pensioner will now fall below the poverty line and no one who has paid into the pension system for more than 30 years will be living on amounts below the present minimum wage.

"This new reform represents a structural change and creates a new pension system," Pinera said, adding that it will benefit a million pensioners.

Pinera, whose brother introduced the present system during the era of Augusto Pinochet, said soon after the protests began that he would increase the ambition of an existing pension reform bill making its way through Congress.

Pinera said that reform also opens the opportunity for new pension bodies to compete with the criticized AFPs.

In his address on Wednesday, Pinera said the reform would imply a "significant" cost for the state, without disclosing the figures.

(Reporting by Fabian Cambero; additional reporting by Aislinn Laing; writing by Cassandra Garrison; Editing by Leslie Adler)

Chile president launches health care reform project

AFP•January 5, 2020


Chile's President Sebastian Pinera has announced a raft of measures aimed at appeasing protesters and ending months of chaos (AFP Photo/HO)More

Santiago (AFP) - Chile's President Sebastian Pinera launched on Sunday a reform project to create a "universal health plan" following months of protests against social inequality and his leadership.

"This plan is based on what the people have asked us for," said Pinera as he presented the project.

A poor public health system and sky-high private costs were among the main gripes of demonstrators.

Congress sat on Sunday to deal with a number of projects as part of Pinera's "social calendar" aimed at appeasing protesters.

The new health plan would benefit the 14.5 million people who rely on public services as well as the three million using private care.

Congress has tried to rush through social projects to help defuse the protest movement that began on October 18, initially as a reaction to a modest metro fare hike.

Twenty-nine people have died during the worst social unrest to hit Chile since the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship ended 30 years ago.

One of Pinera's main policy changes has been to enact a law allowing the South American country to hold a referendum on changing the Pinochet-era constitution.

His new health plan will include "a guaranteed maximum waiting time (and) a drop in the price of medicines," as well as other changes, Pinera said.

He said the government would subsidize "the 200 main" medicines used for chronic conditions such as hypertension and diabetes, resulting in a 60 percent reduction in costs.

---30---

Climate change is cost of society’s ‘addiction to coal and oil,' says Robert Kennedy Jr.
Max Zahn  Reporter, Yahoo Finance•January 16, 2020

Environmental advocates have sounded an urgent alarm about the climate crisis for decades. In recent days, the business community voiced a similarly strident tone, as BlackRock (BLK) CEO Larry Fink warned climate change will reshape global finance and a World Economic Forum survey of hundreds of businesspeople put the issue at the top of a list of current economic risks.

In a newly released interview, longtime environmental lawyer Robert Kennedy Jr. warns it’s nearly too late.

Kennedy Jr. castigates fossil fuel companies, throws his support behind the Green New Deal, and says that every Democratic presidential candidate has an environmental agenda better than that of President Donald Trump.

“There are going to be major disruptions not just to humanity, but ultimately to civilization,” says Kennedy Jr, the son of former U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy and nephew of former President John F. Kennedy. “This is part of the cost that we're paying for our longtime deadly addiction to coal and oil.”

“Right now, we have a market that is governed by rules that were written by the carbon incumbents to reward the dirtiest, filthiest, most poisonous, most toxic, most war-mongering fields from hell, rather than the cheap, clean, green, wholesome and patriotic fields from heaven,” Kennedy adds.

On climate change, Kennedy Jr. voiced his support for a Green New Deal proposal put forward by Queens Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez but primarily called on governments to divest from fossil fuels and impose a tax for carbon emissions.

“I think the Green New Deal — and all that stuff — is important,” Kennedy Jr. says. “We ought to be pursuing it. My approach is more market-based than kind of top down dictates. You know, I believe that we should use market mechanisms like carbon taxes and the elimination of subsidies.”

Last October, a study released by the climate advocacy and research firm Climate Accountability Institute found that the 20 largest fossil fuel companies — among them Chevron (CVX), Exxon (XOM), and BP (BP) — have accounted for 35% of global carbon emissions since 1965. An International Monetary Fund report put out last year estimated a total of $5.2 trillion in fossil fuel subsidies distributed in 2017 alone.

17-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg, who will speak at the World Economic Forum conference in Davos, Switzerland next week, called on all participating public and private sector institutions at the conference to divest from fossil fuels.

Kennedy Jr. made the comments during a conversation that aired in an episode of Yahoo Finance’s “Influencers with Andy Serwer,” a weekly interview series with leaders in business, politics, and entertainment. 

For over three decades, Kennedy Jr. served as a chief prosecuting attorney for top environmental groups, including the Sierra Club and Riverkeeper, an organization dedicated to the protection of the Hudson river. More recently, Kennedy Jr. has questioned the safety of vaccines and campaigned against their use.

Kennedy Jr. sharply criticized the environmental record of President Donald Trump, calling it a “cataclysm” but attributing it to a shift within the Republican Party over the past several decades.

“He’s simply the radical step of a process that's been happening in our country and in the Republican Party from the past — really, since 1980 — which is a growing hostility towards the environment, a growing orientation to representing the concentrated corporate power and power, particularly of the oil industry and the chemical industry and some of the other large polluting industries.”

Each of the Democratic presidential candidates has a better environmental policy agenda than Trump, Kennedy Jr. said.

“All of them have a better environmental platform than the current president,” he says. “I think all of them would do well on the environment.”

“Most Democrats are just looking for a candidate who is able to beat Donald Trump, which is a very formidable task,” he adds.

Attorneys Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. arrives for a hearing challenging the constitutionality of the state legislature's repeal of the religious exemption to vaccination on behalf of New York state families who held lawful religious exemptions, during a rally outside the Albany County Courthouse Wednesday, Aug. 14, 2019, in Albany, N.Y. (AP Photo/Han Pennink

---30---

From Chile to Hong Kong, the World Saw a Lot of Protests in 2019. Here's Why That Trend Is Going to Continue

Ciara Nugent, Time•January 16, 2020




With high-profile protests raging across Chile, Colombia, Hong Kong, Sudan, Algeria, Lebanon, India, Spain, France and more, last year it often felt as if much of the world was out in the streets.

A lot of it was. A report published Thursday by risk consultancy Verisk Maplecroft finds that a quarter of the world’s countries experienced a “surge” in civil unrest in 2019. And, the report’s authors say, that unrest is unlikely to die down in 2020.

Last year’s protests, spanning South America, Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Europe, have been compared to the late 1960’s, when civil rights, anti-war and anti-colonial movements, combined with the growth of a youth-led counter culture, prompted dramatic street protests in dozens of countries.

To understand what’s driving the current wave of discontent, and why it’s unlikely to recede this year, Verisk Maplecroft looked at what happened before protests broke out in the 47 countries that experienced an uptick of unrest in 2019.
- ADVERTISEMENT -


Governments in many of those countries implemented similar policies in the run up to the unrest, which could help to predict future outbreaks. The weakening of mechanisms for expressing discontent — such as restrictions on labor unions, or attacks on freedom of the press — was the number one predictor, taking place in 12 of the 47 countries. A series of authoritarian measures introduced in Russia in 2019, including a new law tightening restrictions on the internet and new limits placed on opposition candidates in local elections, inspired the country’s largest demonstrations in eight years.

The second most common indicator that people were about to take to the streets was cuts to fuel or food subsidies, with governments in 9 of the 47 countries making these. In Haiti, the government’s plans to lower fuel subsidies, which meant a 38% hike in gasoline prices and 47 % increase for diesel, set off anger over a long-running corruption scandal. In Iran, a fuel price hike prompted by U.S. sanctions sparked protests in a dozen cities, resulting in a bloody government crackdown.

As in Russia, Haiti and Iran, the protests in most countries have underlying causes that long pre-date triggers such as subsidy cuts or crackdowns. Often these grievances were very specific to the context and history of an individual country — as in Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement, where fears that Beijing is seeking to undermine the territory’s special freedoms from China fueled outrage over a proposed bill to allow Hong Kong residents to be extradited to the mainland.

But many of the grievances are linked to global political and economic trends, Miha Hribernik, head of Asia Research at Verisk Maplecroft, tells TIME. “Stagnating incomes, growing income inequality, corruption, the loss of faith in established elites, and the erosion of civil and political rights were all among concerns that motivated people to protest in the 47 countries, although to varying degrees.”

Those issues may have boiled over in 2019, but they are “deeply entrenched” and it’s going to be hard for governments to address them, Verisk Maplecroft’s analysts found. “Policymakers across the globe have mostly reacted with limited concessions and a clampdown by security forces, but without addressing the underlying causes,” the report finds.

Some governments, as in Russia and Spain, have rejected protesters’ central demands outright: greater freedoms for dissent opposition parties and the option for the Catalan region to secede from Spain. Others have tried to mollify protesters by reversing the moves that triggered outrage — such as the Haiti’s fuel price hike, Hong Kong’s extradition bill, or Lebanon’s plan to tax WhatsApp calls.

But few leaders have offered the fundamental improvements on economic equality, corruption, political freedoms that many of the protest movements are demanding. Chile’s government has called a referendum on remaking the country’s dictatorship-era constitution in response to student-led protests over inequality and high costs of living. Even there, though, analysts say unrest will continue; the socioeconomic situation is unlikely to change enough to satisfy protesters in the short term, while fierce repression by security forces has angered the public further.

“According to our predictions, on average, 80% of [the 125 countries Verisk Maplecroft analysed] will see an uptick in protests over the next two years,” Hribernik says.

Already in the first two weeks of 2020, mass protests have returned to Chile, Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, Hong Kong, France, India and more. Last year’s global unrest may be about to become the new normal.

---30---

Winter storm to make travel 'hazardous' across U.S.

After walloping the West Coast with rain and snow as a "bomb cyclone," the storm will move across the Plains, Midwest and the Northeast, forecasters said.

What the forecasts say »

THEY WILL BLAME CANADA FOR WHAT WE KNOW IS AN ARCTIC BLAST
FROM THE POLAR VORTEX WE HAVE BEEN UNDER FOR A WEEK NOW