World

On March 15, the candidate of the left-wing Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN), Mauricio Funes, won El Salvador’s presidential elections — despite significant fraud carried out by the right-wing Arena party.

A March 20 Sydney Morning Herald article reported that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is now predicting that world economic growth for 2009 will be negative for the first time in more than 60 years — shrinking by as much as 1%.

“From now begins a new chapter in the history of El Salvador. The victory of the FMLN [Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front] presidential team is based on the whole Salvadoran people”, Salvador Sanchez Ceren, newly elected vice-president for the FMLN, told a cheering crowd of thousands of red T-shirt-wearing party supporters at a huge rally on the night of the March 15 presidential elections.

The article below is combined from reports published at http://www.tamilnet.com.

The “long march” of lawyers and pro-democracy activists, who faced-down state repression including hundreds of arrests, won its key demand on March 16 when the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) backed down in the face of huge resistance and, following five days of mass protests, restored the chief justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudry and other sacked judges to their positions.

The article below is an abridged translation of the resolution adopted by the General Union of Workers of Guadeloupe (UGTG) at its 12th Congress, April 2-5, 2008. The UGTG republished the resolution on March 8.

The article below following is abridged from the March editorial of Eslabon, a monthly bulletin produced by the Argentinean Union of Militants for Socialism (UMS). It has been translated by Federico Fuentes. A UMS founding member and leader, Luis Bilbao, will be a feature speaker at the World at a Crossroads conference held in Sydney from April 10-12. Visit http://www.worldatacrossroads.org for more information or to register.

An Iraqi court sentenced journalist Muntadar al-Zaidi to three years in prison on March 12.

In some countries, the severe crisis of capitalism has resulted in a realignment of respective governments with the imperialist powers — and the adoption of different forms of cut backs that affect the living conditions of the majority.

The second Campaign Against Climate Change Trade Union Conference brought together 160 trade unionists and climate change activists. The purpose of the event was to allow trade unionists to develop working class solutions to the threat that big business has created for humanity.

On March 20, anti-war and international solidarity activists globally will mark the sixth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq by the US-led “coalition of the willing”.

The article below is reprinted from Tamilnet.org, which has also published the full text of the resolution.