[ppi] [ppiindia] Politicisation Vs "Purity" Debate Comes to a Head

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http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=31958

WORLD SOCIAL FORUM:


Politicisation Vs "Purity" Debate Comes to a Head
Humberto Márquez 

CARACAS, Jan 28 (IPS) - Politics, especially party politics, on which 
representative democracy is based, is in crisis. But not even the social 
movements brought together under the umbrella of the World Social Forum (WSF) 
are doing enough to respond to the demands of the societies in which they are 
active. 

This debate has cut through the discussions on other issues addressed by the 
seminars, workshops and panels at the sixth WSF, which opened on Tuesday and 
ends Sunday in Caracas. 

This year's annual WSF civil society gathering was polycentric, with a Forum 
held in Bamako, Mali last week and another scheduled for late March in the city 
of Karachi in southern Pakistan. 

"This is a political forum. The participating organisations take a political 
approach to the world and to their presence in it," social science professor 
Edgardo Lander, a member of the Venezuelan WSF organising committee, told IPS. 

As seen in Latin America, "politics is in crisis, and that has to do with the 
lack of representation of the people by their elected officials, who tend to 
represent themselves more than the interests of society in this region," said 
Pedro Santana with the Colombian organisation Vía Ciudadana. 

"It is in response to that crisis of representativity that social movements 
emerge, like feminism, environmentalism, ethnic movements, or groups that fight 
discrimination," said Santana. 

In some cases, "these movements voice their grievances and demand solutions 
directly from the state itself, since the political class ignores them," he 
said. 

Juan Carlos Monedero with the Complutense Institute of International Studies, 
in Spain, said "the divorce between political parties and social movements is 
similar to the one between reform and revolution, and bogged down 
transformational thinking throughout the entire 20th century." 

In Monedero's view, "political parties are a necessary evil, and social 
movements arise for noble purposes but are short-lived and corruptible." 

"Today, political parties behave like cartels, although the name sounds ugly, 
because there are rules of the game, and those who do not stick to them are 
pushed out," he added. 

Monedero pointed to the loss of the traditional functions of political parties, 
which he said no longer play a role of helping to build political and social 
values, and do not inform the citizens, but use the media as a tool to maintain 
support for the cartel. 

As an example of the complexity of the exercise of democracy, he noted that 
while only 25 percent of voters took part in Venezuela's December legislative 
elections, a regional annual poll known as the Latinobarómetro found that 
Venezuela is the country with the highest level of confidence in the democratic 
system, with 70 percent of respondents saying they trusted the system. 

In the view of Roberto Savio, founder and president emeritus of the Inter Press 
Service (IPS) international news agency and a member of the WSF international 
committee, "In Latin America there is a divide between political institutions 
and civil society, and to close it, civil society must focus on concrete 
agendas." 

This is because, in his view, "the region experiences a swing of the pendulum 
from the right to the left approximately every ten years, and different 
policies are established in each decade. Civil society should take advantage of 
the present years," in which there is a clear inclination towards social 
concerns. 

According to Lilian Celiberti of the Uruguayan women's rights organisation 
Articulación Femenista Marco Sur, "the political parties have a responsibility 
to incorporate the demands and struggles of social movements, and it is 
important for governments to create mechanisms for participation that can 
translate these demands into public policies." 

In addition to the relationship between civil society and political parties, 
the participants in the Caracas session of the WSF - some 70,000 people 
representing 2,200 organisations - have also devoted considerable discussion to 
the politicisation of this annual event, and its potential conversion into a 
launching pad for political action. 

Addressing around 15,000 Forum participants on Thursday night, host country 
president Hugo Chávez declared that "it would be tragic if the WSF became 
merely folkloric or just another tourist gathering. I don't understand why this 
is still being debated and no conclusion has been reached. In the face of the 
challenges from the empire, there is no time to waste." 

Santana noted that "one sector of the WSF believes that this is a civil society 
initiative that should not be confused with political society and must reaffirm 
its autonomy, but without refusing to take part in the dialogue critical for 
implementing the changes discussed in this meeting space." 

Others, however, maintain that the Forum "should remain pure and 
uncontaminated, because they perceive any association with politics as sinful, 
and maintain that social movements are the actors historically destined to 
bring about changes." 

Then there are those who take a middle-ground approach, and advocate 
maintaining the autonomy of the Forum while developing "an open and clear-cut 
policy on the relationship between the WSF and social movements on one hand and 
political society and governments on the other." 

Yet another current has emerged in support of transforming the WSF into a 
full-fledged political movement. 

Savio recalled that the Forum "was born with the notion of serving as an open 
space for sharing, comparing, learning and creating networks among 
organisations." 

"This has worked, but I believe we need to redefine it, so that it is less 
dispersed and there is more discussion around the thematic areas of debate," he 
commented. 

"Every day it becomes more urgent to take action on issues. The last five years 
(since the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States) have not been 
conducive to the causes of peace, justice and international cooperation," he 
stressed. 

"There has been a strengthening of the domination by the ruling systems, and a 
weakening of the United Nations. Globalisation has been discredited in cultural 
terms, yet maintains elements of power, and on an international level, it is 
relations of force that prevail," Savio added. 

Between the two extremes of politicisation and "purity", Savio advocated a more 
moderate approach, calling on "the organisations that come to the Forum, and 
the ones that don't come, to adopt concrete propositions on specific issues and 
an agenda of concrete actions

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]



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