Portuguese march against austerity, want government out

உலக மறுபங்கீடே,  சமகால  சர்வதேச அரசியலை  இயக்கும் விதி. ENB

Portuguese march against austerity, want government out

By Andrei Khalip
LISBON | Sat Mar 2, 2013 2:37pm EST

LISBON (Reuters) - Hundreds of thousands of Portuguese poured into the streets of Lisbon and other cities on Saturday to demand an end to austerity dictated by an international bailout and the resignation of the center-right government.

The rallies, which follow the introduction of the biggest tax hikes in living memory, mark the greatest public show of discontent since demonstrations last September forced the government to adjust some of its austerity measures.

More than 200,000 protesters in Lisbon packed the vast imperial Praca do Comercio square, home to the Finance Ministry, and surrounding streets, chanting: "It's time for the government to go".
Organizers said as many as 500,000 people took part in the rallies around Lisbon, which would make the protest bigger than in September, but the numbers could not be independently confirmed. Police, as is customary, would not provide estimates.

Many carried banners with slogans such as "Austerity kills" and "Screw the troika, power to the people!", aimed at the so-called troika of lenders from the European Commission, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund.

"Grandola", the signature tune of the 1974 "Carnation revolution" that overthrew the fascist dictatorship of Antonio Salazar after the army rebelled, reverberated through the crowds in Lisbon, which has a population of about 3 million, and elsewhere where protesters gathered. Many cried as they sang.

Protesters have used the song increasingly in the past month to interrupt government ministers speaking at public events.

"We are in a new dictatorship. Everything that the revolution achieved is being destroyed," said one elderly protester in Lisbon who did not give his name.

The rallies, which coincide with a quarterly review by the EU/IMF bailout inspectors, are the first large protests since the government acknowledged last month the economic downturn this year will be nearly double its earlier predictions.

The forecast 1.9 percent decline will further deepen the worst recession since the 1970s, already in its third year.

Tax hikes and spending cuts ordered by the terms of the 78 billion euro ($101.3 billion) bailout agreed in mid-2011 have slashed consumer demand and pushed unemployment to record levels of 17 percent, causing thousands of small businesses to go bust.

"This government has left the people on bread and water, selling off state assets for peanuts to pay back debts that were contracted by corrupt politicians to benefit bankers," said Fabio Carvalho, a movie-maker, protesting on Lisbon's main Liberdade thoroughfare.

"If not today, things have to change tomorrow and we need to remain in the streets for the government to fall."

The rallies were organized in Lisbon, Porto and several dozen other cities via the Internet by a group of activists known as Que Se Lixe a Troika, or Screw the Troika.

Veronica Pereira, an unemployed mother who says she has no means to send her daughter to college said: "Our people have the habit of letting things happen, but I think this is changing radically now. We need to protest to change things," she said.

Echoing her words, Bob Dylan's 1964 anthem "The Times They are a-Changin'" blared from a car with loudspeakers.

A woman gestures during a march against government austerity policies in Lisbon March 2, 2013.
Credit: REUTERS/Jose Manuel Ribeiro

PATIENCE RUNNING OUT

Portugal had shown a tolerance for austerity compared with countries like Greece with its frequent protests and strikes, but opposition has begun to rise in recent weeks as the economic outlook has worsened. Protests have largely been peaceful, but one Lisbon rally in November ended in clashes with police.

On Friday, the main opposition Socialists hardened their stance on the bailout, demanding an end to the austerity which they said pushed the country into a recessive spiral - the position they outlined to visiting EU/IMF bailout inspectors.

Socialist leader Antonio Jose Seguro said he felt the lenders were more open to his proposals of a growth-oriented strategy but doubted they would act soon enough.

The government's strategy, that has been praised by Brussels, is to cut the budget deficit as quickly as possible in order to exit the bailout as scheduled in the middle of 2014 after regaining full access to debt markets.

The government says it is likely to request an extra year to meet budget goals under the bailout, but political opponents and some business leaders say much more time is needed.

(Additional reporting by Miguel Pereira; Editing by Stephen Powell)
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Obama formally orders "deeply destructive" cuts

A poster replicating a notice of job termination for 750,000 Americans due to the impending
sequestration, is pictured during a news conference by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (not
pictured) Credit: REUTERS/Jason Reed

*U.S Government agencies will now begin to hack a total of $85 billion from their budgets between Saturday and

October 1.

 

*At the heart of Washington's persistent fiscal crises is disagreement over how to slash the budget deficit and the $16 trillion national debt, bloated over the years by wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and government stimulus for the ailing economy.



* The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office predicts 750,000 jobs could be lost in 2013, and federal employees throughout the country are looking to trim their own costs.

Obama formally orders "deeply destructive" cuts, blames Congress

By Richard Cowan and Alistair Bell
WASHINGTON | Sat Mar 2, 2013 1:04am EST

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama formally ordered broad cuts in government spending on Friday night after he and congressional Republicans failed to reach a deal to avert automatic reductions that could dampen economic growth and curb military readiness.

As the United States staggered into another fiscal crisis, the White House predicted that the spending cuts triggered by the inability of Obama and lawmakers to forge a broader deficit-reduction agreement would be "deeply destructive" to the nation's economic and national security.

"Not everyone will feel the pain of these cuts right away. The pain though will be real. Beginning this week, many middle-class families will have their lives disrupted in significant ways," Obama told journalists after his meeting with Republican and Democratic congressional leaders.

Late on Friday, Obama signed an order that put in effect the across-the-board government spending cuts known as "sequestration." Government agencies will now begin to hack a total of $85 billion from their budgets between Saturday and October 1.

Half of the cuts will fall on the Pentagon. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said the reductions put at risk "all of our missions.

Congress and Obama could still halt the cuts in the weeks to come, but neither side has expressed any confidence they will do so. Both Democrats and Republicans set the automatic cuts in motion during feverish deficit-reduction efforts in August 2011.

MARKETS SHRUG OFF CRISIS

Friday's events marked the first budget showdown in Washington of many in the past decade that was not somehow resolved at the last minute - often under pressure from rattled financial markets. Markets in New York shrugged off the stalemate in Washington on Friday as they have for months.
Democrats predicted the cuts could soon cause air-traffic delays, meat shortages as food safety inspections slow down, losses to thousands of federal contractors and damage to local economies across the country, particularly in the hardest-hit regions around military installations.

At the heart of Washington's persistent fiscal crises is disagreement over how to slash the budget deficit and the $16 trillion national debt, bloated over the years by wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and government stimulus for the ailing economy.

Obama wants to close the fiscal gap with spending cuts and tax hikes. Republicans do not want to concede again on taxes after doing so in negotiations over the "fiscal cliff" at the New Year.
Public outrage, if it materializes, would be the most likely prod for a resolution as the impact of the spending cuts starts to be felt in the coming weeks and months.

As a percentage of total government spending every year, $3.7 trillion, the actual spending reductions are small. But because safety-net programs such as Social Security and Medicare will be untouched, the brunt falls mostly on federal government employees rather than direct recipients of aid.

The U.S. government is the nation's largest employer, with a workforce of roughly 2.7 million civilians spread across the country. If the cuts stay in place, more than 800,000 of those workers could see reduced work days and smaller paychecks between now and September.

Furlough notices warning employees and their unions started to go out earlier this week and the pace picked up on Friday after it became clear that talks at the White House between Obama and congressional leaders would be fruitless.

While the International Monetary Fund warned that the belt-tightening could slow U.S. economic growth by at least 0.5 of a percentage point this year, that is not a huge drag on an economy that is picking up steam.

'THE SPENDING PROBLEM'

Many Republicans accuse the Obama administration of overstating the effects of the cuts in order to pressure them into agreeing to a solution to the White House's liking.

A deal proved elusive as Obama met at the White House with House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner, the top Republican in Congress, and Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, as well as the top two Democrats in Congress, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi.

"The discussion about revenue, in my view, is over. It's about taking on the spending problem," Boehner said after the meeting.

Asked why he did not just refuse to let congressional leaders leave the room until they had a deal, Obama told reporters: "I am not a dictator. I'm the president. So, ultimately, if Mitch McConnell or John Boehner say, 'We need to go to catch a plane,' I can't have Secret Service block the doorway, right?"

The across-the-board cutbacks were mandated by a deficit reduction law, structured to be so disruptive that Congress would ultimately replace them with more targeted savings. But partisan gridlock has prevented agreement on where to save.

The White House budget office sent a report to Congress detailing the spending cuts. Some 115,000 employees of the Department of Justice - including prosecutors and the FBI - were among the first to get the official word of furloughs.

The government also sent letters to several state governors advising them of cuts to services like the Head Start education program in California and military facilities in Virginia.

Canadian Finance Minister Jim Flaherty expressed rare public frustration with the United States for lurching from crisis to crisis.

One reason for the inaction in Washington is that both parties still hope the other will either be blamed by voters for the cuts or cave in before the worst effects predicted by Democrats come into effect.

A Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Friday showed 28 percent of Americans blamed congressional Republicans for the sequestration mess, 18 percent thought Obama was responsible and 4 percent blamed congressional Democrats. Thirty-seven percent blamed them all, according the online poll.

The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office predicts 750,000 jobs could be lost in 2013, and federal employees throughout the country are looking to trim their own costs.

"The kids won't go to the dentist, the kids might not go to the doctor, we won't be spending money in local restaurants, local movie theaters," said Paul O'Connor, president of the Metal Trades Council, which represents 2,500 workers at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, Maine.

After weeks of White House warnings about the cuts causing disruption, Obama acknowledged it might be a while before effects fully kicked in. "We will get through this. This is not going to be an apocalypse," Obama said.

In the absence of any deal at all, the Pentagon will be forced to slice 13 percent of its budget between now and September 30.

In his first Pentagon news conference since he was sworn in on Wednesday, Hagel struck a more moderate tone than many other defense officials who have said the spending reductions would be devastating or could turn the U.S. military into a second-rate power.

"America ... has the best fighting force, the most capable fighting force, the most powerful fighting force in the world," he said. "The management of this institution, starting with the Joint Chiefs, are not going to allow this capacity to erode."

Most non-defense programs, from NASA space exploration to federally backed education and law enforcement, face a 9 percent reduction.

Moving to head off a new budget crisis later this month, Boehner said the Republican-led House would move a "continuing resolution" to fund government through the rest of the fiscal year, thus hopefully averting a government shutdown.

(Additional reporting by Steve Holland, Roberta Rampton, Deborah Zabarenko and Jeff Mason in Washington and David Ljunggren in Ottawa; Editing by Peter Cooney and Will Dunham)