www.euractiv.com Date: 24/01/2003 08:30 

In short: The 2003 World Economic Forum meeting in Davos kicked off on 23 January, with the participants expressing their worries about the threat of a war against Iraq.   Background: This year's World Economic Forum (WEF) meeting (from 23-28 January in Davos) brings together around 2,000 business executives, economists and political leaders to discuss the theme of building trust in institutions, companies and NGOs (see EurActiv 21 January). At the same time, a World Social Forum is being held in Porto Alegre, Brazil, as a counter-summit to the Davos "Summit of the Rich".

Issues: Some of the attendees of this year's WEF include Microsoft's Bill Gates, US Secretary of State Colin Powell, Brazil's recently elected President Lula da Silva and former US President Bill Clinton. At their opening day, many speakers expressed concern about a possible war between the US and Iraq and its repercussions on the global economy.

Positions: The Forum's founder, Klaus Schwab, underlined that never in the event's 33-year history has the world been so fragile, complex and dangerous. "A war on Iraq could wipe out any fragile signs of growth", stated Gail Fosler, chief economist at the influential US-based Conference Board. Former Australian Foreign Minister Gareth Evans, who now leads the International Crisis Group strongly criticised American unilateralism.

More optimistic news on the global economy came from a study unveiled at the WEF summit by PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PWC). According the the company's sixth annual Global CEO Survey, international CEOs seem to be quite confident on the economic outlook for 2003, despite all the threats. PWC interviewed 1,000 business leaders in 43 countries and found that CEOs are:

• gaining confidence in their own growth prospects if not in the economy as a whole. Yet that confidence is fragile and could easily be derailed by another major terrorist action or war in the Middle East or North Korea;
• building trust among investors, customers, employees and other key stakeholders. Yet that trust is provisional and could be eroded by more corporate scandals or high-profile bankruptcies;
• claiming responsibility for being good corporate citizens and good shepherds of the global environment. Yet the dedication to corporate social responsibility is still relatively new and largely untried and will be put to the test in times ahead as leaders reconcile profitability demands with a more progressive commitment to sustainability.

Next Steps: The participants at the Porto Alegre Summit decided that the next World Social Forum in 2004 will be held in India.

Links:

Official documents:

• World Economic Forum Davos
• The Public Eye on Davos
• World Social Forum Porto Alegre
• Porto Alegre 2003

EU Actors'   positions:

• PriceWaterhouseCoopers: CEO Survey. Leadership, Responsibility and Growth in uncertain times

Press dossiers:

• OneWorld: Special report World Social Forum
• Yahoo France: Forum Economique Mondial
• Yahoo Germany: Globalisierung und Weltwirtschaft
• Neue Zürcher Zeitung: Dossier Davos 2003
• Die Zeit: Dossier Globalisierung

Press Articles: BBC News, Financial Times, Yahoo US, International Herald Tribune, OneWorld/IPS, Yahoo/AFP France, Libération, Le Monde, Yahoo/dpa Germany, Financial Times Germany, and Neue Zürcher Zeitung.

www.timesofmalta.com Harry Vassallo

Arnold Cassola has given 14 years of his life to politics, to the service of his country. In all these years, he has never benefited from a single cent of public funds. On many occasions, he has been generous in financing Alternattiva Demokratika, through which he has served the common good according to his lights.

Had he been madly ambitious or power hungry, he would have gravitated towards one of the other two parties who retain a 50/50 chance of being the next government at every election. He is consistent, persistent and persuasive. He would be an asset to any political party. Instead, he has been unflinchingly loyal to the Greens and the value of their message to his country.

Lobbying for his election to the post of secretary general of the European Federation of Green Parties (EFGP) in 1999 I was glad to realise that his standing with the representatives of 10 million European Greens was every bit as good as it is with Alternattiva Demokratika. They chose him to be the key person at the heart of their transnational organisation.

Returning from the EFGP Council in Bratislava, the extent of our achievement began to sink in: it was the first time that any Maltese politician had held such a post. It was an honour for the Maltese Greens. It was an honour for Malta. Imagine what a victory it would have been for the MLP to place one of their own as head of the secretariat of the PES, or for the PN to do the same with the PPE. We'd never hear the end of it.

Arnold quietly became the heart of the matter in his office at the European Parliament building in Brussels. Thanks to e-mail, the internet and his frequent visits, his participation in the AD committee decisions went up another notch in quality. We had first-hand information throughout the EU membership negotiations process. If we wanted to check something out, we would ask Arnold to get the facts from the horse's mouth.

His presence in Brussels has been invaluable to AD at this crucial time. Many times we knew more than the government did of the EU reaction to Maltese proposals.

Whenever anybody else wanted a contact or information on any issue connected with EU accession, he was available to AD, to the PN, the MLP or any private citizen or NGO.

At times we were able to exploit the personal contacts he developed over many years as AD delegate to the EFGP. His friends and colleagues had become MPs, MEPs and Green government ministers.

Over the past three years, he has travelled extensively around Europe and the world. He has been a key element in the formation of political alliances and the mending of rifts in Spain, Portugal, Bulgaria and Slovenia.

He has met with politicians, ministers and heads of state across the continent. He represented the EFGP at the Global Greens Conference in Canberra in 2001 and has been the representative of the European Greens since.

Every month we hear of Green parties formed or Green parties taking on government responsibility in countries around the world.

Green ministers took office in Kenya and Brazil in recent weeks. We are in touch with Greens in Mexico, Morocco and Venezuela.

The US Greens attend our council meetings. Thanks to e-mail, the global Green family exchanges information and ideas and coordinates its actions.

As one of the largest political formations in the European Parliament, the Green Group/EFA is a major asset to Greens worldwide who rely on its advocacy, support and example.

I am inordinately proud that a Maltese is one of the most influential figures in this global change.

Not so the Malta Labour Party, who have filed an objection to his registration as a voter in Malta. They hope to prove that he has been away for more than six months in the last 18 months and thereby to eliminate him as a voter and as a potential candidate in Maltese elections.

Alternattiva Demokratika has never, in its 14 years of existence, filed a single objection to eliminate any voter. The other two parties keep databases to classify voters by party loyalty and at every election proceed to eliminate as many of the rivals as possible. It's disgusting.

Hundreds of people are summoned to court to defend their most basic democratic right: if they fail to appear for whatever reason, they are struck off.

People who have been away on business or study are struck off regardless of whether their future lies in Malta and will be determined by the outcome of the election.

In the run-up to the EU referendum the Nationalist Party even attempted to exercise its right to eliminate as many elderly voters as it could on the grounds of mental infirmity. It was an affront to human dignity.

It's the law, of course. And we are all very legalistic about it. Are we all Shylocks demanding our pound of flesh from our rivals and trying to get our friends off the hook?

The law deprives some Maltese citizens of their most fundamental political right. So far AD has allowed the PN and MLP to battle it out among themselves.

We have refused to take part in the shameful exercise. We believe that if any Maltese citizen stills cares enough about his or her country to take the trouble to vote, nobody should prevent it.

The attempt to eliminate Arnold Cassola as a voter and as a candidate illustrates the stupidity of the law and leaves us no choice but to challenge it.

We propose to make a common cause of it and reach out to all those who have been struck off their country's electoral register to join us in making the country truly democratic.

We would also be delighted to have the support of those of our political rivals whose sense of fairness survives electoral hysteria and blind party interest.

Dr Vassallo is chairman of Alternattiva Demokratika - The Green Party

www.alternattiva.org.mt

www.guardian.co.uk AP in Porto Alegre Friday January 24, 2003 The Guardian

Around 100,000 anti-globalisation activists gathered last night for the World Social Forum in the southern Brazilian city of Porto Alegre for a six-day protest against the World Economic Forum taking place simultaneously at the Swiss ski resort of Davos.

Tens of thousands were expected to open the social forum with a march against a war on Iraq. In between protests, participants will hold talks on alternatives to tame the excesses of global capitalism.

The forum is now in its third year and Brazil's new leftwing president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, is to address the gathering on Friday. Venezuela's embattled president, Hugo Chavez, is expected to attend on Sunday. After the Brazilian leader speaks, he will fly to Davos to participate in the economic forum, which is expected to attract 2,000 business and government leaders.

Social forum participants say their opposition to American-style capitalism should strike a chord. The summit follows a year of unprecedented business scandals involving multinational corporations.

Prominent activists attending include the actor Danny Glover, and Aleida Guevara, the daughter of Ernesto "Che" Guevara.

www.witness.co.za DUNCAN DU BOIS 

A recent international survey placed Kenyans at the top of the poll in terms of their optimism for the future. The success of the opposition alliance in smashing the ruling party's 39-year grip on power has rekindled Kenya's hope for the future - hope for better governance.

Kenya's political turnaround is significant for democracy and for governance. It shows that despite four decades of political baasskap and corruption, hope of deliverance remained in the minds of the majority of Kenyans. It also indicates that dictators like Daniel arap Moi can be removed from power and that they are not ordained to rule indefinitely. In 1991, Zambians celebrated when Frederick Chiluba replaced Kenneth Kaunda as president after 27 years. Ten years of Chiluba, however, failed to reverse the terminal decline that Kaunda had inflicted on Zambia. Will Mwai Kibaki, who once served as Arap Moi's vice-president, succeed in reviving Kenya's slumped economy and in transforming its corrupt civil service?

Closer to home, Zimbabwe's tragic situation cries out for governance and deliverance from tyranny. Although free elections in Zimbabwe would see the opposition MDC sweep to power, the damage caused by Mugabe's systematic rape of the country has so retarded it that tangible economic upliftment will take years. That is the shocking legacy of Mugabe's abuse of power. Although he died in 1986, Mozambique is still paying the price of Samora Machel's ruinous rule. While it now posts record economic growth rates, it is only progress to recover what once was rather than growth beyond that level.

Although Kenyans are jubilant now, only time will tell whether they have exchanged one oppressive government for another. The history of post-colonial Africa in this regard is not encouraging. As historian Basil Davidson stated in his book, The Black Man's Burden: Africa and the curse of the nation-state (1992): "The state was not liberating and protective of its citizens; on the contrary, its gross effect was constricting and exploitative "

Disillusionment with governments is not peculiar to Africa. It's a worldwide reality. Only 40% of Americans bothered to vote in the 2002 mid-term elections. Germans are anything but enamoured with the Schr‰der government, which seems to know only how to raise taxes while the economy stagnates and 10% of Germans are unemployed.

In Venezuela and Argentina, citizens seething with anger against their governments have taken to the streets in protest. Their plight is universal as governments serve themselves. It's become the purpose of their existence. From their arrogance and contempt for criticism, it is obvious that they see electorates only as a means to the gravy train as they pay lip service to good governance.

With the emergence of sophisticated power blocs such as the EU, the whole edifice of government has become more powerful, self-serving and isolated from those it claims to represent. Ask UK residents how they see their relationship with the European Parliament in Strasbourg. It's simply another tax at the price of another slice of national sovereignty. Governments have become closed, cloned clubs. They no longer function as Abraham Lincoln envisaged - being of the people, for the people and by the people.

Locally, the SADC is a case in point. It pays lip service to criteria like good governance, democracy and independent judiciaries, while it shelters rogues like Mugabe. Indeed, he enjoys protection and even favour from the SADC and the Non-Aligned Movement, while he terrorises and starves Zimbabweans. At the ANC's national conference in Stellenbosch last month, Mugabe's brutal regime was actually praised for being "progressive", which is newspeak for advancement of collectivist baasskap. Consistent with this mockery of the ideal of good governance is Mbeki's decision this week to support Libya's election to the chair of the UN Commission on Human Rights, notwithstanding the Gaddaffi regime's involvement in international terrorism and its denial of human rights in Libya itself.

How long has the euphoria of the 1994 election lasted in South Africa? The same survey that placed Kenyans on a high of optimism found Thabo Mbeki's ratings at an all-time low. By-election results reflect a huge decline in voter turn-out for the ruling party. It's probably one of the reasons it was anxious to avoid the snap election the IFP/DA recently threatened to call in KZN. The same mistake of not "liberating its citizens" is being made in the new South Africa as elsewhere. Worldwide, what people want is good governance. Instead, they are being dished out more government, more bureaucracy, more centralisation, more control, less freedom - and all for more money. Ninety percent of the taxes this government collects are spent on maintaining itself. Exacerbating the situation is the nanny-state socialism to which the ANC has always been partial.

Doing nothing, as Edmund Burke warned over 200 years ago, is not an option because it facilitates the process of enslavement, in this case to big government. The solution lies, as Thomas Jefferson once said, in less government and in the devolution of power into the hands of the electors. Then, as is the case in the Swiss canton system, governance, rather than government, prevails.

• Duncan du Bois is a DA Durban Metro ward councillor. He writes in his personal capacity.

Publish Date: 24 January 2003

www.witness.co.za DUNCAN DU BOIS 

A recent international survey placed Kenyans at the top of the poll in terms of their optimism for the future. The success of the opposition alliance in smashing the ruling party's 39-year grip on power has rekindled Kenya's hope for the future - hope for better governance.

Kenya's political turnaround is significant for democracy and for governance. It shows that despite four decades of political baasskap and corruption, hope of deliverance remained in the minds of the majority of Kenyans. It also indicates that dictators like Daniel arap Moi can be removed from power and that they are not ordained to rule indefinitely. In 1991, Zambians celebrated when Frederick Chiluba replaced Kenneth Kaunda as president after 27 years. Ten years of Chiluba, however, failed to reverse the terminal decline that Kaunda had inflicted on Zambia. Will Mwai Kibaki, who once served as Arap Moi's vice-president, succeed in reviving Kenya's slumped economy and in transforming its corrupt civil service?

Closer to home, Zimbabwe's tragic situation cries out for governance and deliverance from tyranny. Although free elections in Zimbabwe would see the opposition MDC sweep to power, the damage caused by Mugabe's systematic rape of the country has so retarded it that tangible economic upliftment will take years. That is the shocking legacy of Mugabe's abuse of power. Although he died in 1986, Mozambique is still paying the price of Samora Machel's ruinous rule. While it now posts record economic growth rates, it is only progress to recover what once was rather than growth beyond that level.

Although Kenyans are jubilant now, only time will tell whether they have exchanged one oppressive government for another. The history of post-colonial Africa in this regard is not encouraging. As historian Basil Davidson stated in his book, The Black Man's Burden: Africa and the curse of the nation-state (1992): "The state was not liberating and protective of its citizens; on the contrary, its gross effect was constricting and exploitative "

Disillusionment with governments is not peculiar to Africa. It's a worldwide reality. Only 40% of Americans bothered to vote in the 2002 mid-term elections. Germans are anything but enamoured with the Schr‰der government, which seems to know only how to raise taxes while the economy stagnates and 10% of Germans are unemployed.

In Venezuela and Argentina, citizens seething with anger against their governments have taken to the streets in protest. Their plight is universal as governments serve themselves. It's become the purpose of their existence. From their arrogance and contempt for criticism, it is obvious that they see electorates only as a means to the gravy train as they pay lip service to good governance.

With the emergence of sophisticated power blocs such as the EU, the whole edifice of government has become more powerful, self-serving and isolated from those it claims to represent. Ask UK residents how they see their relationship with the European Parliament in Strasbourg. It's simply another tax at the price of another slice of national sovereignty. Governments have become closed, cloned clubs. They no longer function as Abraham Lincoln envisaged - being of the people, for the people and by the people.

Locally, the SADC is a case in point. It pays lip service to criteria like good governance, democracy and independent judiciaries, while it shelters rogues like Mugabe. Indeed, he enjoys protection and even favour from the SADC and the Non-Aligned Movement, while he terrorises and starves Zimbabweans. At the ANC's national conference in Stellenbosch last month, Mugabe's brutal regime was actually praised for being "progressive", which is newspeak for advancement of collectivist baasskap. Consistent with this mockery of the ideal of good governance is Mbeki's decision this week to support Libya's election to the chair of the UN Commission on Human Rights, notwithstanding the Gaddaffi regime's involvement in international terrorism and its denial of human rights in Libya itself.

How long has the euphoria of the 1994 election lasted in South Africa? The same survey that placed Kenyans on a high of optimism found Thabo Mbeki's ratings at an all-time low. By-election results reflect a huge decline in voter turn-out for the ruling party. It's probably one of the reasons it was anxious to avoid the snap election the IFP/DA recently threatened to call in KZN. The same mistake of not "liberating its citizens" is being made in the new South Africa as elsewhere. Worldwide, what people want is good governance. Instead, they are being dished out more government, more bureaucracy, more centralisation, more control, less freedom - and all for more money. Ninety percent of the taxes this government collects are spent on maintaining itself. Exacerbating the situation is the nanny-state socialism to which the ANC has always been partial.

Doing nothing, as Edmund Burke warned over 200 years ago, is not an option because it facilitates the process of enslavement, in this case to big government. The solution lies, as Thomas Jefferson once said, in less government and in the devolution of power into the hands of the electors. Then, as is the case in the Swiss canton system, governance, rather than government, prevails.

• Duncan du Bois is a DA Durban Metro ward councillor. He writes in his personal capacity.

Publish Date: 24 January 2003