PHA-Exchange> Fearless five stand - Renegade leaders speak their mind and earn grateful applause

[Aviva]

From: "UNNIKRISHNAN P V (Dr)" <unnikru at yahoo.com>


The following are some of the boldest statements made at Jo'burg:

"The 21st century demands equality of people. If whites think they are
superior, we condemn them and reject them. We are equal to Europe and if you
don't think that, then to hell with you. You can keep your money. We will
develop our Africa without your money."

"The focus is profit, not the poor; the process is globalisation, not
sustainable development, while the objective is exploitation, not
liberation."

"The people are going to launch a massive resistance movement against double
talk," he said, summing up what all the world leaders may feel but none
dared say.

(Read the full article from the Guardian....)

Fearless five stand against the bland blue tide

Renegade leaders speak their mind and earn grateful applause

John Vidal  : Thursday September 5, 2002
The Guardian

The East Timorese foreign minister, Jose Luis Guterres, became the last of
109 heads of state and 80 senior politicians to stand before the world
yesterday and mourn for five minutes that humanity was in terrible shape and
that Something Had to Be Done.
Few people had heard of him, fewer heard him, and fewer still could
distinguish between him and most of the other world leaders who in the past
three days have wrung their hands for five minutes and flown home.

As a collective group they proved to be remarkably similar, down to the
colour of their suits (uniformly dark blue), their eyesight (most wear
rimless glasses), their silk ties and their rhetoric. Politically, too, they
have more or less spoken as one, embracing capital markets, trade and more
cooperation between countries.

Only five outspoken renegades, a dwindling salon de refusés, have bucked the
trend and offered a different analysis. They may be out of step with the
rest of the world, but the summit's unofficial clapometer suggests that they
have deep support and could all earn a living on the boards.

We must fight


President Hugo Chavez, of Venezuela, was the first and, in the absence of
Fidel Castro, was widely regarded as the ring-leader.

"We must confront the elites," he began. The bureaucrats in the audience
laughed and shifted uneasily.

"Neo-liberalism is inhuman," he continued. "It disintegrates life. It is
guilty of all the disasters in the world. We have to fight it. We do not
pretend to fight fires by respecting those who light them. Unless we realise
this there will be children here in 40 years' time who will debate the same
things and there will be even more poverty and disasters. We are going in
the opposite direction."

He was loudly cheered, and followed just 10 countries later by Comrade Dr
Sam Nujoma of Namibia. After a quiet start, he had the many African
delegates in the conference and press halls in stitches as he waved first
one then both fists and attacked colonialism in general and Tony Blair in
particular. Well over his five minutes and departing radically from his
official speech, he laid into Europe.

"The 21st century demands equality of people. If whites think they are
superior, we condemn them and reject them. We are equal to Europe and if you
don't think that, then to hell with you. You can keep your money. We will
develop our Africa without your money."

Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe devoted only part of his speech to attacking Tony
Blair. The rest of it was even more forthright. "The programme of action we
set for ourselves at Rio has not only been unfulfilled but it has also been
ignored, sidelined and replaced by a half-baked unilateral agenda of
globalisation in the service of big corporate interests of the north.

"The focus is profit, not the poor; the process is globalisation, not
sustainable development, while the objective is exploitation, not
liberation." The audience loved it and gave him a standing ovation.

Fidel Castro took the Rio earth summit by storm 10 years ago when he said,
in the shortest speech to the loudest cheers: "If we want to save humankind
from self destruction we have to better distribute the wealth and
technologies on the planet."

This time Mr Castro sent Felipe Roque, his foreign minister, who repeated
more than half his leader's 1992 speech and added: "The world is more unfair
and unequal than it was 10 years ago. The gap has widened. The economic and
political order imposed on the world by the powerful is responsible. It is
not only profoundly unfair but unsustainable. It was left behind by
colonialism and has resulted from imperialism."

No interference


The world powers, he said, were pursuing "parasitic globalisation".
Attacking the World Bank and the IMF, he said: "[The economic system]
continues to favour the handful of countries who attained development at the
painful expense of the overwhelming majority of the peoples on the planet."

In the absence of North Korea and a few others which decided not to send
anyone, President Yoweri Museveni, of Uganda, was the last of the renegade
voices.

"The arrogant so-called non-government groups who interfere with the
construction of hydro-dams in Uganda are the real enemies of the
environment," he said, to some cheers.

To gales of laughter, he continued: "The IMF sometimes disorganise me. They
tell me not to turn left any more, turn right. There is weakness on one side
and arrogance on the other. When we are praying we say 'Thou shalt not lead
us into temptation, but deliver us from evil'. When we are weak we lead
others into temptation. We need to deliver America from temptation.

"The people are going to launch a massive resistance movement against double
talk," he said, summing up what all the world leaders may feel but none
dared say.

"There is little point in holding more summits until governments can
cooperate in the common interest."

The cheers were deafening.