The Economist | February 9, 2002
Porto Alegre - Last year, protesters trashed a McDonald's restaurant and wrecked a multinational's plantation of genetically-modified crops. This year's World Social Forum, an anti-establishment counterpoint to the World Economic Forum in New York, was both more crowded--51,000 delegates, three times as many as last year, the organisers claimed--and more sedate. Delegates, gathering for a second year in the southern Brazilian city of Porto Alegre under the banner "Another world is possible", aimed to prove that they are not just noisy rebels but can offer alternative policies to create a fairer, greener world.
"We don't just oppose any more, we propose," said a panellist at the start of a debate on "International Organisations and the Architecture of World Power". But despite exhortations from the chairman (sorry, "animator") for more specifics, three hours of talking produced little detail on what should take the place of those stock villains, the IMF, World Bank and World Trade Organisation, and how their replacements would be financed. That old favourite, a worldwide tax on financial speculation, was suggested. Speakers wasted much time on whether, since they object to their movement being called "anti-globalisation", the term "de-globalisation" would do. How about "earth democracy"? mused one. The forum undermined its self-professed democratic credentials by rejecting the World Bank's offer to send an official to debate and (pushed by the French left, who helped organise the forum) by turning away Guy Verhofstadt, Belgium's centre-right prime minister. Although Mary Robinson, the United Nations' human-rights commissioner, paid a visit, as did several French presidential candidates, few heavyweight politicians attended.
Anxious to avoid being labelled as extremists in the wake of September 11th, the organisers this time left Colombia's FARC guerrillas off the guest-list. Nor did they invite Jose Bove, a French farmer famous for attacking a McDonald's back home, who was the star of last year's conference for his efforts to destroy genetically-modified crops. He came anyway, and behaved himself this time.
Though Susan George of ATTAC, one of the forum's founding organisations, told delegates that they represent up to 90% of the world, voters do not seem to agree. Just look at recent elections in Latin America. Last June, Peruvians rejected Alan Garcia, a left-wing former president, and chose Alejandro Toledo, a centrist former World Bank economist who has put a former IMF official in charge of the economy. (Mr Toledo went to the meeting in New York, not the one in Brazil.) In October's congressional elections in Argentina, despite the country's gathering crisis and revulsion against its political establishment, little progress was made by those representing leftist, alternative policies.
In November, both Honduras and Nicaragua chose conservative businessmen as their presidents, as Mexico had done in 2000. In places like Chile, moderate centre-left groups have won elections by promising to continue orthodox economic policies. Apart from Cuba's Fidel Castro, the region's leading anti-orthodox figure is Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, whose "Bolivarian revolution" has been disastrous and faces increasing public anger.
And what of the forum's hosts, Brazil's left-wing Workers' Party? Although its leader, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, leads the polls ahead of this October's presidential elections, Roseana Sarney, a conservative pro-government candidate, has been catching up. Mr da Silva and his aides are doing their utmost to project a "left-lite" image and, in his speeches to the Porto Alegre forum, he disappointed some delegates by rejecting re-nationalisation, debt defaults and trade protectionism.
The speakers at Porto Alegre, like those in New York, were preaching to the converted. Last year, a televised link-up between the two forums ended with a protester at the Brazilian end screeching "Child killer!" at George Soros. This year, no link-up happened. But other sorts of dialogue are being encouraged. Kofi Annan, the secretary-general of the United Nations, visited the New York gathering and sent a letter to Porto Alegre. Among the delegates at Porto Alegre was Tom Spencer, a former British MP, whose group, the Commission on Globalisation, has invited key figures from both sides to sit down, out of the limelight, and try to find common ground. Relieved of the bother of having to play to their respective galleries, he reckons, they may get somewhere.
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