Gulf between rich and poor is now an ocean

www.iol.co.za January 24 2003 at 05:27AM By Andrew Gumbel

Los Angeles - The stage is set for another classic showdown between the rich world and the poor.

Once again, the lords of global capitalism are meeting in the tightly sealed cocoon of a luxury hotel.

Outside, their critics - representing the disenfranchised of both the First and the Third Worlds - rise up in vocal opposition to their tightening grip on world affairs.

This time, though, there will be no direct clash along the lines of Seattle in 1999 or Genoa in 2001, since the two sides are separated by an ocean - literally and figuratively.

Anti-globalisation movement could be set to achieve 'critical mass'For the third year running, the World Economic Forum in Davos, arguably the world's most exclusive club of political and corporate leaders, faces a direct challenge from the anti-globalisation movement gathering at the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil.

And this year the challenge will resound louder than ever.

Organisers of the Brazilian event, which kicked off on Thursday, expect at least 100 000 attendees, almost double last year's number.

For all the speculation about the decline of the anti-globalisation movement in the wake of September 11, there is no doubt that the World Social Forum is being taken in deadly earnest.

On both sides of the Atlantic, discussion will be dominated by the same themes:

• the looming war against Iraq;

• the crisis in corporate capitalism triggered by Enron's collapse and associated scandals;

• the burden of debt in the Third World, and the growing gulf between the rich elites of the world and the almost 3 billion people who live on less than $2 (about 17,44) a day.

Indeed, the whole tone of the Davos meeting has altered over the past couple of years, in part because of the pressure from Porto Alegre.

This year's theme, "rebuilding confidence", says it all.

Perhaps most significantly, the man who inspired and inaugurated the World Social Forum, Luis Ignacio Lula da Silva, has now become the president of Brazil.

From Porto Alegre, where his Workers Party has for the past few years run a highly successful experiment in participatory democracy, antithetical to the prescriptions of the IMF and World Bank, he will travel to Davos to address his fellow world leaders on Sunday.

For the first time, there will be direct dialogue between the two sides at the highest level.

Lula's pleading for responsible populist reform based on the interests of all parties, not just the bankers and corporate chiefs looking to fatten their own bottom line, is unlikely to make much immediate impression on the Bush administration.

It seems more interested in dominating the world through force than through consensus.

But at least the battle lines will be drawn, more clearly perhaps than they have been since the end of the Cold War.

Much of the impetus for this year's meeting stems from the growing worldwide opposition to war with Iraq - a wedge issue with the rare power to unite the often disparate strands of the anti-globalisation movement.

It is one thing that Argentinian anti-IMF protesters, protectionist US steel unions, save-the-whale campaigners and Noam Chomsky - a star speaker at Porto Alegre - can all agree on.

But the issues raised by global capitalism have not gone away.

"Critical mass" has always been the dream of the anti-globalisation movement. In Porto Alegre, over the next few days, it may just attain it. - Independent Foreign Service