Republican News · Thursday 30 January 2003

A tale of two worldviews

In the last few days, world's attention has centred on two cities: Porto Alegre in southern Brazil and Davos in Switzerland.

At Porto Alegre's World Social Forum, representatives of 5,480 organisations from over 126 countries got together under the motto "Another World is Possible" to celebrate diversity and look for social and economic alternatives. They want a different world - as renowned linguist and media critic Noam Chomsky put it at last year's forum, "this may be the world's first true globalisation meeting".

Meanwhile, in affluent Davos, at the World Economic Forum, the indifferent, rich and powerful met to decide how to keep everything going to become more prosperous.

Porto Alegre and Davos are the two sides of the same coin. While in Porto Alegre participants enjoyed a very positive and festive mood, Davos is a city of "law and order", where armed guards with rifles in the snow took "control of the situation", violating the rights of thousand of people to demonstrate against corporations and their representatives in various governments.

So, while in the Brazilian city, the Social Forum was about participation, in Switzerland it seemed to be about keeping people off the streets, as police used water cannon mounted on trucks, tear gas and even small tractors to push back the crowds who had come to stand in the snow and voice their opposition to the policies of the Bush administration and the neo-liberal economic policies the WEF is felt to represent. The protest - against military action against Iraq - coincided with the arrival at Davos of US Secretary of State Colin Powell on Saturday 25 January.

In Porto Alegre, thousands marched in support of the Social Forum and its goals of helping to make "another world" possible. While many marched outside throughout the day, representing various causes and organisations (the Brazilian Landless Workers Movement or MST; the Argentinean "piqueteros", those struggling for justice and equality for the Palestinian people, women, and child labourers), even greater numbers strolled between the many venues of this year's WSF, attending workshops and conferences, greeting old friends from far away, or simply taking in the countless presentations by prominent social theorists and political activists.

But what really links both sides of the coin is Lula da Silva, a former trade unionist who is now the newly inaugurated Brazilian president. Lula travelled to Porto Alegre before flying on to Davos, and brought part of the Social Forum spirit to the world of corporate economics.

Lula faced criticism from Brazilian activists for his decision to attend the World Economic Forum in Davos. While Lula did make it clear that he would go to Porto Alegre first, before going to Davos, the critics held firm. But in an address in front of a 100,000-strong audience in Porto Alegre, Lula made clear both the reasons for his choice and its implications for the meetings in Davos: "We have forced the meetings in Davos to deal with social issues. And now I am going to Davos to make sure they deal with those issues, not to give credibility to Davos."

Lula conveyed to the World Economic Forum the same message that demonstrators could not because of police repression: the need for economic equity and opposition to an attack against Iraq.

The new Brazilian president reiterated his commitment to improving the lives of the 45 million Brazilians who live under the poverty line. "We decided to make our major priority a war on hunger," he said. "We are determined to ensure that all Brazilians have their breakfast, their lunch and their dinner every day." He also reminded his audience of his own background: "I first ate bread when I was seven years old."

In spite of his popularity among a majority of Brazilians (he won with a nearly two-thirds majority in a closely monitored election), Lula has had some harsh critics in the United States. Prominent Congressman Henry Hyde wrote a letter to US President George Bush calling Lula a part of "an axis of evil in the Americas", labelling Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and Cuba's Fidel Castro as the other two prongs. Hyde's letter, though written to Bush, somehow found its way into a large daily newspaper in Caracas that same week, where the US has been helping to foster anti-Chavez sentiment, and just as voters were going to the polls in Brazil. Many seasoned Latin America watchers noted the similarity to the US pressure on Nicaraguans to vote against Daniel Ortega in 1990, amplified by the December 1989 invasion of Panama.

Porto Alegre

The state of Rio Grande do Sul and the city of Porto Alegre have often been held up as models of alternative governance. Run for many years by elected members of the Brazilian Workers Party (or PT), both city and state governments (though the PT lost the governorship of Rio Grande do Sul in the last election) are exemplary in their use of participatory decision-making that truly involves citizen input. Programmes from the support of organic farming to the use of compact fluorescent lights in public and private enterprises have shown that a government can lead and support its citizens toward a more sustainable lifestyle without creating undue burdens on those at the bottom of the economic ladder.

Porto Alegre embraces the world, declare posters across this prosperous harbour town on the southern coast of Brazil. It is easy to see why. Host for the third year in succession to the World Social Forum, the city welcomed over 20,000 delegates representing 5,500 organisations from 126 countries, in addition to 80,000 spectators from all over the world.

The first World Social Forum was organised in 2001, with the aim of opposing the neo-liberal policies of the World Economic Forum, which was meeting on the same dates in Davos. Since then, the initiative has come to represent the single most significant global coalition of social movements and organisations committed to exploring alternative ways of life, thought and action. It has also facilitated the creation of regional social forums.

The third meeting of the Forum was the largest so far, with discussions revolving around five themes - democratic sustainable development; human rights, diversity and equality, media, culture and counter-hegemony; political power, civil society and democracy, the democratic world order and the fight against militarism.

India will be hosting the Forum when it travels out of Brazil for the first time next year.

Davos

The World Economic Forum's annual summit, held in a remote alpine ski resort, drew executives from the largest transnational corporations to network and strategize on the expansion of their free market economic policies. A few handpicked representatives from labour unions and civil society also were allowed to participate, though they had no influence over the meeting agenda or discussions. Reports from inside the meeting tell of open disagreement with the looming unilateral US military action against Iraq. Despite this, when US Secretary of State Colin Powell addressed the gathering on Sunday, 26 January, forum attendees applauded the Bush administration representative as one of their own.

In 1971, Klaus Schwab, professor of business management at the University of Geneva, organised a two-week symposium in Davos to introduce European executives to US management techniques. These conferences took place yearly and became known as the "Davos Symposium" until the mid-'80s, when the name was changed to "Annual Meeting".

The more than 2,150 participants at this year's Annual Meeting included leaders from many different fields: 37 religious leaders; 71 NGO representatives; 172 academic experts; 239 public figures; 264 press and media representatives; and more than 1,300 business representatives. Some of the participants were Peter Sutherland (British Petroleum Company PLC), Phillip Watts (Chairman Royal Dutch/Shell Group of Companies), William H. Gates III (Microsoft), Lord Robertson (Secretary-General, NATO), Pat Cox (President of the European Parliament), Alvaro Uribe (President of Colombia), Ronald K Noble (Secretary-General, Interpol) and Mary Harney (26-County Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment).