Socialists
question Chavez's World Social Forum
AFP/Juan
Barreto
Mimicking
: A woman takes part in a satyrical play staged during the World
Social Forum in Caracas.
By
Elio
Ohep
Petroleumworld
CARACAS
Petroleumworld.com 01 30 06
Many of the delegates are questioning whether the World Social
Forum (WSF) that is closing up in Caracas, is really a debating
forum for social issues or just a propaganda affair that Venezuela's
leftist president Hugo Chavez is using as a vehicle of promotion.
"The
Forum is going through its adolescent crisis," said the sole
woman, Irene León, organizer of the Americas Social Forum
held in Quito in 2004, and now organizing the second edition of
the hemispheric forum. : "It was born robust and rich in
action and proposals for change," but above all, it was born
"pluralistic and heterogeneous." But she says the time
has come to re-evaluate everything.
It
seems that in the Caracas version of the WSF, it has become just
a propaganda machine against the U.S., president G, W. Bush.,
instead of a space to propose specific routes of action.
"The
forum definitely has a pro-Chavez spin, and I think some of the
issues, like women's rights, homosexuality and domestic violence,
haven't received enough focus," said Ibrivria Fried, an 18-year-old
student from the University of Vermont, AP reported.
The
WSF "emerged as a tool of defense against imperialism. But
a change has occurred, because now they have moved into an offensive
phase," said Jacobo Torres, with the Bolivarian Workers Force,
a Venezuelan trade unionist that supports Hugo Chávez.
The
main purpose of the World Social Forum met to discuss the path
of this effort to build a better world is not longer here, a Venezuelan
forum militant said to Petroleumworld." We need to change
now, come back to a discussion of what actions to take to stop
the issues of the right and come back to push for the issues of
the left, added the militant that wanted to remain anonymous.
The
majority of the one thousand plus foreign participants taking
part in the Forum were disappointed that the Forum was just a
big party with popular Caribbean Salsa music and not a real discussion
event. You can have serious discussion and a big ball said the
Venezuelan militant, but hardly any discussion took place.
However,
other prominent intellectual socialists spoke in behalf of the
Caracas WFT. French journalist Ignacio Ramonet, director of the
Le Monde Diplomatique newspaper said "is the embryo of an
'assembly of humanity', which is not aimed at homogeneous thought,
but at allowing diverse movements to organise without submitting
to a single way of thinking,"
José Dirceu Brazil's leftist President Luiz Inácio
Lula da Silva's former chief of staff, forced out of its job for
corruption said, that the Forum was held in Caracas because of
the process of change that Venezuela is undergoing, which is "based
on real participation by the people."
He
also praise Chavez, which he described as a "process that
is unique in South America, where for the first time, oil revenues
are being distributed in order to, slowly but surely, bring about
change ."
Should it remain merely a space for party and protest or should
move on to proposals for concrete actions is the big question
that big wigs of the movement are asking.
Last year two of the Forum's founders, Emir Sader of Brazil and
Samir Amin of Egypt, urged participating intellectuals to adopt
a manifesto calling for concrete actions and a more clear-cut
political stance, IPS News Service reported.
"The
utopian outlook of the earlier forums seems to be fading in Caracas,
and there are those who want to bring about an extreme shift towards
a more political nature," commented Plinio Arruda Sampaio,
a leftist Brazilian community activist who has participated in
previous WSF meets, according to IPS.
Elio
Ohep, editor@petroleumworld.com, 58 412 9963730, Caracas.
Petroleuworld
01 29 06
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© 2006 Petroleumworld. All rights reserved
