COMMENTARY: By Jeremy Rose

At the beginning of last month, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum stood in front of an estimated 600,000 supporters in Zócalo Square and reflected on the achievements of her first year in office and the seven years since the Morena Party, which she heads, came to power.

It was quite a list: 13 million people lifted out of poverty; the minimum wage increased by 125 percent; Indigenous and Afro-Mexican communities allocated budgets to run their own affairs; a locally produced people’s electric car about to roll off production lines; a new fast rail system crossing the country; a national park spanning 5.7 million hectares across Mexico, Belize, and Guatemala; a 37 percent drop in homicides — and on it went.

Sheinbaum is Mexico’s first woman president, its first Jewish president, and a climate scientist who was part of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize–winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change team.

In short, she has a story to tell, but it’s not one our media pays enough attention to.

That speech — where she declared the end of neoliberalism in Mexico — barely rated a mention in the world’s English-language press.

The grope that trumped the anti-Trump
In fact, Sheinbaum’s extraordinarily popular first year in office — El País reports she has an approval rating of over 70% — has been largely ignored by the English-language media, with three notable exceptions: when she was groped by a man on the streets of Mexico City last November, it made front-page news around the globe; a much-hyped series of “Gen Z” protests; and her dignified, and at times witty, responses to bellicose threats to Mexico’s sovereignty from the US president — which have seen her labelled the anti-Trump.

So why the lack of interest? Some possibilities, none of them edifying, spring to mind: if it doesn’t involve violence, Latin America rarely rates a mention in the media; Sheinbaum is a woman; and she’s leftwing.

But for each of those, there’s at least one counter-example that suggests this isn’t always the case.

Argentina’s right-wing libertarian president, Javier Milei, is widely reported on despite coming from a country with little over a third of Mexico’s population and GDP. Milei is a poster boy for right-leaning pundits from Auckland to London.

Former New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern — leader of a country of just five million people compared to Mexico’s 130 million — was widely reported on while in office, and with the recent publication of her memoir has been the subject of more feature articles in recent months than Sheinbaum has generated in a year in office.

And finally, and perhaps most interestingly, there was the saturation coverage of Zoran Mamdani’s run and eventual victory in the New York mayoral election.

Sheinbaum’s successful campaign to become the equivalent of mayor of Mexico City — with a population significantly larger than New York’s — in 2018 was barely reported, despite running on a similarly leftwing, if notably more ambitious, platform.

Mamdani’s campaign and victory were newsworthy but, on any metric, less significant than Sheinbaum’s time in office.

World’s most popular leader
She is arguably the world’s most popular leader, delivering on promises more far-reaching and consequential than anything on offer in the Big Apple.

A promise by Mamdani to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should he visit New York — something he almost certainly cannot deliver on — was widely reported, while Sheinbaum’s support for resettling Palestinian children orphaned by Israel’s genocide in Gaza barely rated a mention. (Mexico has also joined South Africa’s International Court of Justice genocide case against Israel.)

The contrast between the saturation coverage of Mamdani and the paucity of coverage of Sheinbaum holds true for both conservative and liberal media.

The Wall Street Journal ran 50-plus editorials and op-eds criticising Mamdani in the run-up to his election but just three or four on Sheinbaum in her first year in office, all focusing on her alleged failure to tackle violence and the cartels. (In fact, homicides are down, though still extremely high.)

Even Jacobin magazine, one of the few US outlets to provide in-depth coverage of Mexico’s so-called “Fourth Transformation,” has given far more coverage to Mamdani, with a recent podcast declaring New York the epicentre of global socialism.

Whatever the explanation for the scant coverage of Sheinbaum, the achievements and popularity of the Morena movement are worth talking about.

The Donroe Doctrine’s threat to Mexico
There’s little doubt we’ll be hearing more about Mexico over the coming months, but the focus will almost certainly be on the threat from the north, not the achievements and promise of the Fourth Transformation.

After the illegal abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro on January 3, President Trump turned his sights on Mexico, declaring Sheinbaum to be a “tremendous woman, she’s a very brave woman, but Mexico is run by the cartels”.

Having designated the Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation cartels as terrorist organisations at the beginning of his second term in office, Trump had already signalled the possibility of military intervention in Mexico.

Sheinbaum’s response to both the Venezuelan intervention and the implied threat to Mexican sovereignty was resolute and principled:

“We categorically reject intervention in the internal affairs of other countries. The history of Latin America is clear and compelling: intervention has never brought democracy, never generated well-being, nor lasting stability.

“Only the people can build their own future, decide their path, exercise sovereignty over their natural resources, and freely define their form of government.”

Trump has other ideas, recently declaring that the US military could attack the cartels without congressional approval.

“I don’t think we’re necessarily going to ask for a declaration of war,” he said. “I think we’re just gonna kill people that are bringing drugs into our country. We’re going to kill them. They’re going to be, like, dead.”

Trump has dubbed the new era the Donroe Doctrine — a reference to his regime’s embrace of the Monroe Doctrine, named for President James Monroe, who declared the Western Hemisphere an area of US influence in the 1820s.

200 years of brutal interventions
It was the beginning of more than 200 years of brutal interventions by the US state, including a war on Mexico that resulted in the US taking over approximately 1.36 million sq km of Mexican territory — about 55 percent of the country.

Last year Trump hung a portrait of the country’s 11th president James Polk in the White House. Polk was responsible for the Mexican-American war of 1846-1848 which ended with the ceding of California, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, and parts of Colorado and Wyoming to the USA, in exchange for $15 million.

Trump has pointed to the portrait and told visitors: “He got a lot of land.”

His play on words with the Donroe Doctrine is characteristically narcissistic but also painfully accurate. It is the geopolitics of a gangster state.

In a world reeling from the criminal actions of that gangster state — from its continued bankrolling of genocide, to the extrajudicial killing of alleged drug smugglers, to SS-like round-ups of “foreigners” on its city streets, to threats to take over the sovereign territory of an ally — Mexico and its president, Claudia Sheinbaum, are a beacon of hope.

There is plenty I haven’t even touched on:

• The election of an Indigenous lawyer, Hugo Aguilar Ortiz, as head of the Supreme Court;
• The construction of 1.1 million affordable homes over the next six years, generating hundreds of thousands of jobs;
• The launch of SaberesMX, a free national online platform designed to democratise access to knowledge and provide lifelong learning opportunities across Mexico; and
• Sheinbaum’s daily morning press conferences, where she speaks directly to the nation.

If past experience is anything to go by, the mainstream media’s ignoring of Morena’s successes is unlikely to end any time soon.

The good news is that there are alternatives. Mexico Solidarity Media is a great source of original articles, translations from local media, and podcasts, and Substack writer and former Boston Globe and LA Times journalist Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez regularly writes about Mexico from a progressive perspective.

Jeremy Rose is a Wellington-based journalist and broadcaster and his Towards Democracy blog is at Substack. This article was first published at Towards Democracy and is republished with permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

ANALYSIS: By Susan St John

With the coalition government’s second Budget being unveiled, we should question where New Zealand is heading.

The 2024 Budget laid out the strategy. Tax cuts and landlord subsidies were prioritised with a focus on cuts to social and infrastructure spending. Most of the tax package went to the well-off, while many low-income households got nothing, or very little.

Even the tiny bit of the tax package directed to low-income people fell flat. Family Boost has significantly helped only a handful of families, while the increase of $25 per week (In Work Tax Credit) was denied all families on benefits, affecting about 200,000 of the very poorest children.

In the recession, families that lost paid work also lost access to full Working for Families, an income cut for their children of about $100 per week.

No one worked out how the many spending cuts would be distributed, but they have hurt the poor the most. These changes are too numerous to itemise but include increased transport costs; the reintroduction of prescription charges; a disastrous school lunch system; rising rents, rates and insurance; fewer budget advisory services; cuts to foodbank funding and hardship grants; stripping away support programmes for the disabled; inadequately adjusted benefits and minimum wage; and reduced support for pay equity and the living wage.

The objective is to save money while ignoring the human cost. For example, a scathing report of the Auditor General confirms that Oranga Tamariki took a bulldozer to obeying the call for a 6.5 percent cut in existing social services with no regard to the extreme hurt caused to children and struggling parents.

Budget 2025 has already indicated that Working for Families will continue to go backwards with not even inflation adjustments. The 2025 child and youth strategy report shows that over the year to June 2024 the number of children in material poverty continued to increase, there were more avoidable hospitalisations, immunisation rates for babies declined, and there was more food insecurity.

Human costs all around us
We can see the human costs all around us in homelessness, food insecurity, and ill health. Already we know we rank at the bottom among developed countries for child wellbeing and suicide rates.

Abject distress existing alongside where homes sell for $20 million-$40 million is no longer uncommon, and neither are $6 million helicopters of the very rich.

At the start of the year, Helen Robinson, CEO of the Auckland City Mission, had a clear warning: “I am pleading with government for more support, otherwise what we and other food relief agencies in Auckland can provide, will dramatically decrease.

“This leaves more of Auckland hungry and those already there become more desperate. It is the total antithesis of a thriving city.”

The theory held by this government is that by reducing the role of government and taxes, the private sector will flourish, and secure well-paid jobs will be created. Instead, as basic economic theory would predict, we have been handed a long and protracted recession with few signs of growth and prosperity.

Budget 2025 signals more of the same.

It would be a mistake to wait for simplistic official inequality statistics before we act. Our current destination is a sharply divided country of extreme wealth and extreme poverty with an insecure middle class.

Underfunded social agencies
Underfunded and swamped social agencies cannot remove the relentless stress on the people who are invisible in the ‘fiscally responsible’ economic narrative. The fabricated bogeyman of outsized net government debt is at the core, as the government pursues balanced budgets and small government-size targets.

A stage one economics student would know the deficit increases automatically in a recession to cushion the decline and stop the economy spiralling into something that looks more like a depression. But our safety nets of social welfare are performing very badly.

Rising unemployment has exposed the inadequacy of social protections. Working for Families, for instance, provides a very poor cushion for children. Many “working” families do not have enough hours of work and face crippling poverty traps.

Future security is undermined as more KiwiSavers cash in for hardship reasons. A record number of the talented young we need to drive the recovery and repair the frayed social fabric have already fled the country.

The government is fond of comparing its Budget to that of a household. But what prudent household would deliberately undermine the earning capacity of family members?

The primary task for the Budget should be to look after people first, to allow them to meet their food, dental and health needs, education, housing and travel costs, to have a buffer of savings to cushion unexpected shocks and to prepare for old age.

A sore thumb standing
In the social security part of the Budget, NZ Super for all at 65, no matter how rich or whether still in full-time well-paid work, dominates (gross $25 billion). It’s a sore thumb standing out alongside much less generous, highly targeted benefits and working for families, paid parental leave, family boost, hardship provisions, accommodation supplement, winter energy and other payments and subsidies.

Given the political will, research shows we can easily redirect at least $3 billion from very wealthy superannuitants to fixing other payments to greatly improve the wellbeing of the young. This will not be enough but it could be a first step to the wide rebalancing needed.

New Zealand has become a country of two halves whose paths rarely cross: a social time bomb with unimaginable consequences. It is a country beguiled by an egalitarian past that is no more.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

A Hamilton couple convicted of exploiting Pacific migrants have had their convictions quashed after the New Zealand’s Court of Appeal ruled there had been a miscarriage of justice.

Anthony Swarbrick and Christina Kewa-Swarbrick were found guilty on nine representative charges of aiding and abetting, completion of a visa application known to be false or misleading and provision of false or misleading information, at a trial in the Hamilton District Court in February 2023.

A month later, Kewa-Swarbrick, who originally came from Papua New Guinea, was sentenced to 10 months home detention. She completed nine months of that sentence.

Swarbrick served his full eight months of home detention.

In February this year the Court of Appeal found that in Swarbrick’s case, the trial judge’s summing up of the case was “not fair and balanced” leading to a “miscarriage of justice”.

It found the trial judge “undermined the defence” and “the summing up took a key issue away from the jury.”

“Viewed overall, the Judge forcefully suggested what the jury would, and impliedly should, find by way of the elements of the offence. The Judge made the ultimate assessment that was for the jury to make. The trial was unfair to Mr Swarbrick for that reason. We conclude that this resulted in a miscarriage of justice,” the decision states.

It ordered Swarbrick’s convictions be quashed and a retrial.

Charges withdrawn
It came to the same conclusions for Kewa-Swarbrick in April, but the retrial was abandoned after the Crown withdrew the charges in May, leading to the Hamilton District Court ordering the charges against the couple be dismissed.

Immigration NZ said it withdrew the charges after deciding it was no longer in the public interest to hold a re-trial.

The couple, who have since separated, are now investigating redress options from the government for the miscarriage of justice.

“We lost everything. Our marriage, our house. I lost a huge paying job offshore that I couldn’t go back to because we were on bail,” Swarbrick told RNZ.

“It’s had a huge effect, emotionally, financially. We had to take our children out of private school.”

Swarbrick had since been unable to return to his job and now had health issues as a result of the legal battles.

Kewa-Swarbrick said the court case had “destroyed” her life.

“It’s affected my home, my marriage, my children.”

Not able to return to PNG
She had not been able to return to Papua New Guinea since the case because she had received death threats.

“My health has deteriorated.”

The couple estimated they had spent at least $90,000 on legal fees, but their reputation had been severely affected by the case and media reports, preventing them from getting new jobs.

The couple’s ventures came to the attention of Immigration NZ in 2016 and charges were laid in 2018. The trial was delayed until 2023 because of the covid-19 pandemic.

Immigration NZ alleged the couple had arranged for groups of seasonal workers from Papua New Guinea to work illegally in New Zealand for very low wages between 2013 and 2016.

The trial heard the workers were led to believe they would be travelling to New Zealand to work under the RSE scheme in full time employment, receiving an hourly rate of $15 per hour, but ended up being paid well below the minimum wage.

However, Kewa-Swarbrick and Swarbrick argued they always intended to bring the PNG nationals to New Zealand for a cultural exchange and work experience.

“They fundraised $1000 each for living costs. We funded everything else. And when they got here they just completely shut us down,” said Kewa-Swarbrick.

She said it was “a relief” to finally be exonerated.

“The compensation part is going to be the last part because it will help us rebuild our lives.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

More than 300 companies operating in Papua New Guinea are facing penalties and will be issued infringement notices for not adhering to the country’s labour laws, Deputy Prime Minister John Rosso has announced.

He said on Thursday that pending the official release of the full report of the National Capital District (NCD) Combined Labour Inspection Programme (CLIP), 431 companies were inspected and the findings were:

• about 18 companies were identified as paying 444 workers below the K3.50 minimum wage in the wholesale and retail industry, and
• 228 companies were not remitting Nasfund contributions affecting 2457 employees with about 20 of them non compliant.

Within 51 days, 431 companies or establishments were covered.

Out of the 431 companies, only 425 companies provided information of their total number of employees within their establishment, which comprised of the overall total of 13,410 employees covered.

Out of the 431 companies, only 421 companies provided their minimum wage information.

And out of the 421 responses, 403 responded to have their employees paid on and above K3.50 the national minimum wage, while only 18 companies paid below the national minimum wage of K3.50, which in total affects 444 employees.

Industries varied
“For companies that have been issued infringement notices of non-compliance and charged under OSH and OWC, we are yet to receive the amount charged, and also to confirm which companies have paid and those that are yet to pay or remit respectively,” Rosso said.

The number of industries varied, but a high number of wholesale and retail industries totaling to 249 companies under this industry were covered to confirm that “we have a high number of this industry that operates within the nation’s capital city”.

Others included trade, hotels and restaurants (27), transport, storage and communication (9), manufacturing (15), primary production (3), building and construction (11) and security (6).

Also a total of K878,200,00 was generated in revenue for the DLIR during the inspections in NCD in the last two months in the specific areas of statutory fees collected from occupational, safety and health regulations, and workers compensation insurance policy payments.

Rosso released this during the handover takeover ceremony of the Labour Ministry to Rai Coast MP Kessy Sawang on Thursday.

“All of these offending companies were issued notices to comply with the Department of Labour and Industrial Relations requirements, and other government statutory requirements such as the Bank of Papua New Guinea regulations on Nasfund contributions,” he said.

“This proves a point I have made many a time, that the department has the potential to generate revenue in the non-tax regime, provided sufficient recurrent funding is made available in the DLIR annual allocations,” Rosso said.

Strengthening laws
He said that in his capacity as the Deputy Prime Minister, he would work with Minister Sawang to ensure DLIR was adequately supported to continue this exercise and others.

“Strengthening to the existing legislature and fees and fines are also areas I focused on, and Minister Sawang is tasked with carrying on this activity and similar, like, freeing up 10,000 jobs presently held by foreign workers through up-skilling of local talent.

Other notable achievements during his time with the department include the launching of the National Training Policy 2022 to 2023 and the Labour Market Information Policy 2022-2023, and the ratification of three important International Labour Organisation (ILO) Conventions which were the Violence and Harassment Convention 2019 (No. 190), the Tripartite Consultation Convention 1976 (No. 144), and the Labour Inspection Convention 1974 (No. 81).

Rosso congratulated Sawang on her appointment as minister, and said he looked forward to her leadership of the Department of Labour and Industrial Relations for a smart, secure, fair and decent work environment for PNG.

Gorethy Kenneth is a senior PNG Post-Courier reporter. Republished with permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz