www.dailytimes.com.pk Walden Bello

Since Seattle, the anti-corporate globalisation movement has attained critical mass globally, in the sense that its ability to mass forces at significant junctures, such as the December 1999 Seattle WTO ministerial and the July 2001 Genoa meeting of theG-8, enabled it to effect international developments and acquire a high ideological and political profile globally

The World Social Forum (WSF), to be held on January 23-28 for the third year in Porto Alegre, Brazil, has become the prime organisational expression of a surging movement against corporate-driven globalisation. Since the events of September 11, 2001, it has also acquired a strong anti-war dimension, and opposition to US plans to launch a war on Iraq is expected to dominate this year’s proceedings.

The Porto Alegre phenomenon has had its share of critics, even among progressives. One prominent American intellectual has characterised it as a gathering mainly of people who want to “reform” globalisation. Another has blasted it as a forum dominated intellectually and politically by Northern political and social movements.

These criticisms have not, however, deterred the WSF from drawing widespread adherence globally. This year, some 100,000 people are expected to show up, up from 75,000 in 2002 and this year’s meeting will be the culmination of an exciting year-long global process. A number of cities, including Buenos Aires and Caracas, have held Porto Alegre-style social forums. It was, however, the regional social forums that were the exciting innovation of the year. The European Social Forum (ESF), held in Florence, Italy, on November 6-9, 2002, drew over 40,000 people, more than three times the expected number. Even more amazing was the ESF-sponsored million-person march on November 9 against the planned US war on Iraq, which took place with not one of the incidents of mass violence that scare mongerers like Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci had predicted.

Equally impressive was the recently concluded Asian Social Forum (ASF) that took place in the historic city of Hyderabad, India, from January 2 to 7, which drew over 14,400 registered participants, mostly from the host country, though there was representation from 41 other countries. Topics included resistance to the World Trade Organisation (WTO), Dalit (outcaste) rights, the threat of fundamentalist movements, women’s empowerment, food sovereignty, big dams, the Palestinian struggle, natural resource theft, and alternative economics.

Former president of India K.R. Narayanan characterised the message of the ASF as a “voice for human rights, against violence, and against imperialism, and it is only right that it has come from India because it was India that sounded the death knell for an empire on which the sun was never supposed to set.”

One of the main reasons the Porto Alegre process is gaining such momentum is precisely that is provides a venue where movements and organisations can find ways of working together despite their differences. While the usual ultra leftist groups remain defiantly outside it, the Porto Alegre process in Brazil, Europe, and India has brought to the forefront the common values and aspirations of a variety of political traditions and tendencies.

The Porto Alegre process may be the main expression of the coming together of a movement that has been wandering for a long time in the wilderness of fragmentation and competition. The pendulum, in other words, may now be swinging to the side of unity, driven by the sense that in an increasingly deadly struggle against unilateralist militarisation and aggressive corporate globalisation, movements have no choice but to hang together or they will hang separately.

There is another development that is equally significant. Since Seattle, the anti-corporate globalisation movement has attained critical mass globally, in the sense that its ability to mass forces at significant junctures, such as the December 1999 Seattle WTO ministerial and the July 2001 Genoa meeting of theG-8, enabled it to effect international developments and acquire a high ideological and political profile globally.

Yet being a global actor did not necessarily translate into being a significant actor at the national level, where traditional elites and parties continued to be in a commanding position.

Over the last year, however, the movement has achieved critical mass at the national level in a number of countries, most of them in Latin America.

Not only has espousal of neoliberal policies been a sure fire path to electoral disaster, but political parties or movements promoting anti-globalisation policies have achieved electoral power in Ecuador and Brazil, joining the Hugo Chavez government in Venezuela at the forefront of the regional anti-neoliberal struggle. Perhaps most inspiring is the case of Luis Inacio da Silva or Lula in Brazil, who won 63 per cent of the presidential vote last October. Lula is the prime figure in the Workers’ Party (PT), and as everyone knows, the Workers’ Party is the main pillar of the WSF.

Not surprisingly, many of those trekking to Porto Alegre this year will be coming with one question uppermost in their mind: What can the victory of Lula and the PT teach us about coming to power in our countries?

Many personalities of the international progressive movement are slated to come to Porto Alegre. By far the most interesting, most popular, most sought after will be Lula, the personification of the new Latin American left. And this year’s meeting will be, in many ways, a celebration of a movement that, by achieving a remarkable measure of political unity amidst diversity, has changed the face of Brazilian politics. —DT-IPS

Walden Bello is professor of sociology and public administration at the University of the Philippines and executive director of the Bangkok-based Focus on the Global South

frontpagemag.com By Adrian Karatnycky The Wall Street Journal | January 20, 2003

Our confidence in the judgments and objectivity of the United Nations is set to be shaken yet again. Today, Libya is certain to be elected to the chairmanship of the U.N. Commission on Human Rights by its 53 member states over vociferous U.S. objections.

The election of Libya -- ruled by Col. Moammar Gadhafi, the dictator best known for his country's links to the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland -- will deal a major blow to the credibility of the U.N. system. In recent years, Libya has jailed and tortured hundreds of peaceful political dissenters. Political trials are held in camera. It is a country that has well documented links to international terrorism. It was for this reason that President Bush recently renewed an economic embargo.

What can possibly explain the fact that Libya stands on the verge of chairing the U.N. Commission on Human Rights? Under the U.N. system of regional blocs, members rarely overrule a region's nominee for a top post. States frequently trade favors and rarely apply objective criteria to the selection process.

So this time it is Africa's turn to chair the commission and, because Gadhafi has been helping bankroll the fledgling African Union, that body has made Libya its choice. More surprisingly, while more than three-fifths of the members of the rights commission are democracies, they do not represent a cohesive bloc and appear at the moment unwilling to challenge the status quo.

A recent study of voting patterns at the Human Rights commission found that from 1995 to 2000 most of the world's most repressive states, including Belarus, China, North Korea, Laos, Pakistan, Syria, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Vietnam and Libya, successfully avoided any censure.

If Libya takes over the leadership of the commission today, the action will embolden dictators like Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe, whom Gadhafi has staunchly defended, as well as Hugo Chavez, who has proposed Libya as an arbiter for Venezuela's mounting strike and protest movement. The U.N. deserves better.

Secretary General Kofi Annan has been making efforts on behalf of human rights. And the U.N. Development Program last year issued a report that emphasized the links between democracy, transparency and human development, and a report focused on the democracy deficit in the Arab world. Yet such efforts are being undermined by the business-as-usual attitude of member states, including a large number of established democracies. The member states of the European Union will likely abstain in today's vote.

The U.S. State Department has wisely decided to challenge Libya's election and call for an open vote. This first step, in challenging tyrannies, should be followed up with the establishment of a democracy caucus at the U.N. If such a course is taken, the lamentable recent record of the U.N. Commission on Human Rights will be reversed. And the selection of Libya to serve as its head will have become a wake-up call to democracies that it is time to work together to ensure the U.N. reflects the values of its charter.

Mr. Karatnycky is the president of Freedom House.

www.dailytimesofnigeria.com Emmanuel Majebi

The characteristics of people and their politics differ from place to place. The Prime Minister of Belgium for example rides a bicycle from his residence to work, but I am quite sure you would not recommend that for our own President here. You would not even expect the US President to be so careless as to ride a bike to work. Nor would you expect the British Prime Minister; in the light of the ever present threat from the I.R.A, to do such a careless thing. The amiable late General Murtala Muhammed tried to lay a good example for future Nigerian leaders, by being a simple zero - protocol head of state and he paid with his life. Even our own dear Uncle Bola Ige who chose to be a very simple Minister who shunned all protocol paid with his life. So under our own peculiar circumstances a Minister driving himself to work all alone might be suicidal.

Dr Utomi believes that we have a disconnected state where the leaders do not know what their people go through. I beg to disagree. In a poverty-stricken country like Nigeria, no person no matter how highly placed would not have one or two of his relatives who are living in penury and who keep pestering you for help. So to say that there are government officials who do not know what the majority of the people are going through would be putting things too far. I believe that the real problem is that even if one knows what the people are going through, there is virtually nothing he may be able to do. If for example a person is the Minister for Sports and Culture or a Legislator, what can he do about the roads to his village? So when I hear our people say that when a man was in power he did nothing for his people it is very clear that our understanding of governance is still very faulty. That is the very reason why every village would insist that one of it’s indigenes must be appointed into government. When most people say that their parts of the country have been marginalised, what they really mean in essence is that not enough people from that area have been appointed into government! The reasoning is that unless someone from your village is in power nothing would be done for your area! But in real sense governance is supposed to be a collective endeavour where the person holding power and even the governed decide on how the country should be run. This type of sophistication in governance is not something that can be achieved in 4 years but through constant practice of democratic principle and the agreement by majority of Nigerians; both leaders and the led that we should run the country in a better way. The theory that I always like to put across to people whenever they lay the entire blame for our backwardness on the doorsteps of office holders, is to remind them of the fact that a people would only get the type of government that they deserve. I honestly believe that our country is still the way it is because the majority of us have not yet decided that our country should be better. The day a large majority of us decide that our country should be better that is the day it would be better! And there after any leadership that comes to be in Nigeria would have no option but to follow the wishes of the people. In this regard I would like to tell Dr Utomi that the politicians know exactly what their people want, that is why they do what they do! A quick perusal of our past governments show that the governments like those of Gowon, IBB and Abacha that were very corrupt were the ones that had lasted longest. Others like those of Murtala and Buhari which sought to put things right were quickly terminated! If you want to test my theory just do a simple test. In your place of work or small community you just stand out and decide that you are going to fight for things to be done properly and according to laid down rule and see how unpopular you would be in the shortest time possible. You would be labelled with all sorts of names like radical, e.t.c and if you are too much of a pest with your crusades you would either be sacked, settled or eliminated. The truth of the matter is that Nigeria as a nation (I mean majority of us) are not yet ready for an honest leadership.

On Dr Utomi’s doomsday prediction that Nigeria is headed for the Sierra Leone experience, I say God forbid. Firstly for the umpteenth time, I would like to say that the Nigerian situation is different from that of other nations, Sierra Leone inclusive. Countries like Sierra Leone are so small that one man or a group of men can hold them to ransom. A few selfish leaders whose personal agendas have been truncated by their fellow oppressors instigate most wars in Africa. They quickly work people to a frenzy by either playing the religious or tribal joker which always get the masses on the run fighting for causes they know little or nothing about. Bu here in Nigeria, God has blessed us with a little more sophistication.

Concluded.

Majebi wrote in from Lagos.

Ever since Ojukwu led the Igbo nation, under the guise of emancipation, to a near Hara kiri and later cleverly fled to Abidjan with is family under the guise of going to seek for fresh foreign backing for the war efforts, whilst leaving the common Igbo man to face the wrath of the Federal troops with their bare hands and hungry stomachs, I think the masses of Nigeria have learn a bitter lesson. Anytime anyone comes to you telling you to go and start some war or fracas, be sure to tell him to let his own children or grand children lead the charge whilst you follow behind. The only part of Nigeria where leaders still seemingly have a hold on the psyche of their people is in the North where the selfish leaders always play the religious cards to get their people to commit atrocities on their behalf! And even in this part of Nigeria, they days of deciet would soon pass and the masses would come to understand that they are just being exploited under the guise of religion.

I pray that just as divine intervention in the form of a sudden increase in the price of Crude Oil foiled Utomi’s doomsday prediction on the economy, his prediction on us going the way of Sierra Leone would also go unfulfilled. The type of near misses we have recorded as a nation should tell us that God loves us and that He has a purpose for our nation and I honestly believe that a second civil war is not one of those purposes! The economies of many nations have gone through serious recession between year 2000 and year 2002 so I do not know why Utomi is making heavy weather of the fact that the economy is not doing well. Even the US economy has not been as strong as it used to be. The United States Dollar according to the CNN is suffering form a 3-year low against all the world’s major currencies. CNN also reported that a record 186 American companies in the year 2002 filed for bankruptcy with an estimated 4billion US dollars worth of investment in jeopardy! BBC TV reported that almost all the world’s major stock exchanges are yet to recover from the last 3years decline and that this year 2002, they suffered their lowest returns in those 3 years. The Asian economies are not doing any better The economy of Japan; a hitherto well renowned powerhouse of healthy economies, continued to suffer recession throughout 2002. In Europe many of the economic powerhouses like Germany and Britain have had a bad year. In Italy the car making giant, Fiat, is in trouble and they are at the verge of being taken over by American company GM Motors. In Britain, according to reports from BBC, over 25 billion Pounds Sterling was wiped out of the profits of Britain’s top companies in 2002. The Brazilian Economy was so bad that for the first time in decades Brazilians in a move of desperation elected into government, a leftist leaning government of Lula Da Silva’s Workers Party, with the hope that it would be able to turn round the economy. In Argentina the economy of the country totally collapsed and in the ensuring palaver Argentina had 5 Presidents in a space of 2 months!! The Nigerian economy, like most other parts of our national life had been taken to the cleaners under the recklessness of the last 3 military regimes that we have had in this country for about 15 good years, so with the strides we have made so far under the Obasanjo government inspite of the global decline in the world economy, I think that we heave not fared too badly.

In conclusion I would like to point out to Dr Utomi and others that feel like him that whilst we must agree with them that we could be doing better as a nation, we must not make the type of statements that make others outside Nigeria feel that our nation is about to go up in flames. We have not always had governments who are focused; sometime we get some that are relatively better and at other time we get down right useless governments. The people too have not yet developed to a stage where they would demand certain things from their governments, and to support any leader who can provide for such demands regardless of such said leader is from their village or the same religion with them. One of these days we are going to achieve that type of sophistication as a people and then we would have the type of leaders that we deserve! But the fact that we have not yet reached that state of political awareness that de-emphasizes religion, tribe and creed and we are still floundering on the way to development does not mean that we are a failed nation! I refuse to agree with such apocalyptic judgement.

EMMANUEL MAJEBI

LEGAL PRACTITIONER

N0 1 ODUNUGA STREET

OPEBI - IKEJA

www.nytimes.com By LARRY ROHTER

ÔRTO ALEGRE, Brazil — When groups critical of globalization decided three years ago to organize a World Social Forum as an alternative to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, this seemed a logical place to gather. Brazil's Workers Party, one of the main sponsors of the event, was in power here and considered the state of Rio Grande do Sul an ideal showcase for its brand of "post-Marxist" democracy and social revolution.

Last October, the leader of the Workers Party, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, was elected president of Brazil, and in that capacity he is scheduled to open the third World Social Forum here on Jan. 23. But in the same election, voters here in this prosperous state of 10.5 million people gave his party a drubbing, electing a governor who says he embraces globalization and will try to attract the multinational corporations that the Workers Party had shunned.

"We are seeking to form partnerships and to minimize confrontations," the new governor, Germano Rigotto of the centrist Brazilian Democratic Movement Party, said in a recent interview here in the state capital. "Radicalization and polarization are not the way for this state to grow more and attract new investments."

During the election campaign, Mr. Rigotto repeatedly criticized the Workers Party government led by Olívio Dutra for reneging on an agreement that would have brought a Ford Motor Company plant here and created thousands of jobs. The party objected to the tax breaks and other incentives offered to Ford.

"Not one cent of the taxpayers' money is going to go to those who don't need it," Mr. Dutra announced when he took office four years ago. "These funds are necessary for health, education and agriculture."

The Ford plant was eventually built in the state of Bahia, along with 17 other factories that supply glass, plastic, leather and other components for automobiles. Though David Stival, state president of the Workers Party, still defends the decision, saying "the contract was totally unfavorable and would not have resolved our social problems," the new state administration believes that voters have made it clear that they want a more vibrant private sector to reduce the state's social burden.

"Lula talks about Zero Hunger, and we agree with that," said Luiz Roberto Andrade Ponte, secretary of development and international affairs in the new state government, which took office on Jan. 1. "But we think the best way to combat hunger is creating jobs for people, through productive employment rather than a wage paid by the state."

The forum itself also seems to have played a role in the Workers Party's defeat. At the first session in 2001, the most prominent participant, received personally by Mr. Dutra and praised warmly, was José Bové, the French farmer and globalization opponent whose best-known exploit is vandalizing a McDonald's.

Mr. Bové had barely arrived here when he and members of the Landless Movement, associated with the most radical wing of the Workers Party, raided a Monsanto company experimental farm where genetically modified soybeans and corn were grown, destroying seeds and documents. He was later detained and expelled from Brazil, generating a protest by forum delegates who chanted, "We are all José Bové."

Since the state's interior is dominated by thousands of small farmers, the image of private property being destroyed did not sit well with landholders. But the affinity the Workers Party showed for Mr. Bové also rankled because he is one of the European Union's most outspoken supporters of restrictions on agricultural imports. Rio Grande do Sul is a major exporter of meat and grain that wants those barriers removed.

"It was a paradox that the populace was quick to perceive," said Carlos Sperotto, president of the state agricultural federation. "You had the Workers Party making common cause with the same guy who impedes the entry of our products in the French market, and that had a lot of impact."

The Workers Party has also been weakened by a corruption scandal linking a campaign fund-raiser close to Mr. Dutra with an illegal numbers game popular across Brazil. During an official parliamentary inquiry into that connection, a former party official testified that numbers game kingpins had donated $500,000 toward the purchase of the party's new headquarters here. But the inquiry's highlight was the playing of a tape on which the fund-raiser, claiming to speak for Mr. Dutra, could be heard urging the then chief of police to go easy on numbers runners.

"This sort of thing happens regularly in other parts of Brazil, but it had more impact here because this time the Workers Party was involved," said Celi Pinto, a professor of political science at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul here. "They had set themselves up as the guardians of morality, with a monopoly on virtue and ethics in politics, so it really hurt them."

In the end, though, Mr. Dutra's administration was considered so disastrous that he was unable even to win the Workers Party's primary vote last year. Instead, the nomination went to Tarso Genro, an admirer of the neo-Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramcsi and then the mayor of this city of 1.5 million, who lost to Mr. Rigotto by more than 300,000 votes.

But both Mr. Dutra and Mr. Genro quickly landed on their feet. They were appointed to highly visible cabinet posts in the new Workers Party national government, Mr. Dutra as minister of urban affairs and Mr. Genro as minister of economic and social development.

Mr. Rigotto said that despite the change of administration, he hopes that the forum will continue to meet here because it "projects Rio Grande do Sul throughout the whole world" and generates tourist revenue. "I think, though, they could be more pluralistic and open to more currents of thought," he added, "but it's the organizers who decide who to invite and what to discuss, not us."

inthesetimes.com By Gregg Zachary | 1.17.03 print | email | comment

 When the handpicked candidate of aging “big man” Daniel arap Moi was defeated by Mwai Kibaki in Kenya in December, the change was greeted with the usual hosannas that flow forth from the rich world whenever a corrupt, dangerous and deteriorating African regime loses power. But the West has a guilty conscience: Its leaders bemoan having to give permanent assistance to Africa, and it is all too ready to see turning points in the spectacle of African political failure.

Kibaki, Kenya’s new president, is speaking the language of reform, but lacks experience in doing. A sitting member of Kenya’s parliament for 40 years, Kibaki broke with outgoing President Moi a decade ago, only to lose two straight presidential elections against him. His win in December benefited from the deepening crisis now faced by Kenya, which, in diplomatic protest against Moi’s erratic and self-defeating role, has seen foreign assistance greatly reduced in recent years. But Kibaki’s victory was also a rejection of Moi’s chosen successor, the son of Kenya’s legendary independence leader Jomo Kenyatta.

In most of sub-Saharan Africa, elections remain family feuds, and democratic transition often means a game of musical chairs between members of an elite cut off, courtesy of corruption, from the grim reality of ordinary African life.

For the moment, Kibaki talks the language of reform. “Corruption will now cease to be a way of life in Kenya,” he said at his inauguration in December. “I call upon all those members of my government and public officers accustomed to corrupt practices to know and clearly understand that there will be no sacred cows under my government.”

These words are designed to bring aid donors back to the table, but corruption in Kenya is deeply rooted: Payoffs are essentially a tax against the low wages paid to civil servants and the high level of joblessness tolerated by a government without conscience. An indication of the limits of Kibaki’s options came soon after the New Year, when parents—taking seriously the president’s call for an end to primary school fees—rushed the academies with their children, only to find the places full and the government caught short with no plans or funds to expand school enrollment.

Kibaki may indeed find a way to improve conditions in Kenya, the cradle of humanity that still contains a remarkable range of wildlife. The country exports specialty vegetables to Europe, is a prime tourist destination for many (as the recent terrorist attack on Israeli visitors to Nairobi underscored) and is the transportation hub of East Africa. But with 30 million people and a generation of unmet social and infrastructure needs, Kenya does not require a 71-year-old political hack who compares favorably only to a tyrant. What it needs—along with much of sub-Saharan Africa—is a mass movement for social and economic justice.

There is no sign of one coming, not even a flawed campaign of the people. The next big election in Africa comes on April 19 in Nigeria, the most populous country on the continent, home to about 150 million people. The election, if it comes off, will be the first time in Nigeria’s 43-year history that a legally elected government has completed its term and stood for re-election.

Surely this is cause for cheer. But the sitting president, Olusegun Obasanjo, is a former military dictator who, while a man of rare principle in Nigerian politics, has presided over the implosion of what ought to be the jewel of West Africa. He has failed to curb Islamic fundamentalism in the northern region of the country, where strife between Muslims and Christians has taken hundreds of lives. And he has neglected the country’s crucial oil industry, allowing regional inequities to fester—the people of the oil-producing Niger Delta are impoverished, while oil wealth goes to ethnic groups elsewhere in the country, including Obasanjo’s own Yoruba people.

Obasanjo was even impeached by his own parliament and forced to survive a re-nomination challenge within his own party. Yet his likely chief challenger in the coming election is not a Brazilian-style “Lula”—a man who can speak to the grinding poverty of Lagos, the violent gangs of Iboland or the capricious injustices of the North. Obasanjo’s challenger is another former military dictator, Muhammadu Buhari, who ruled the country for 20 months nearly 20 years ago.

To those who understand the sham politics of democracy in Africa, two former dictators running against one another, in a country with perhaps more immediate social conflicts and economic injustices than Brazil, makes perfect sense. “Obasanjo is an elected dictator,” says Melford Okilo, a member of Nigeria’s Senate. “So perhaps experience as a dictator is a qualification for the presidency.”