| JOHANNESBURG--"Castro,
Gaddafi, Mugabe, Blair!" cries the billboard, "There
goes the neighborhood!" You see it on the
way to the city center, and presumably elsewhere
in Jo'burg as well. From Monday morning, September
2, 2002, those four will be joined by something
like 100 heads of state and government at the
Sandton Conference Centre. They will take their
turn on
the podium of WSSD and, politically, on its issues.
There goes the summit, or (who knows?) here comes
good news for development. It's always a toss-up.
A
few days ago, agreement on the Kyoto Protocol seemed
very much up in the polluted air, with the US-and,
suddenly, Russia--both anti-ratification. There is
now agreement. But on what?
Jack
Freeman, veteran of many a summit,
prolific writer and, generally, sage
on all matters developmental, writes
a revealing piece in a journal distributed
at the meeting. The UN way on deliberations
at this level is to reach unanimous agreement
on the content of formal documents. There
is no voting. One member of a "contact" or "negotiating" group's
intransigence can hold up everybody else
and the group's outcome.
Therefore,
a perfectly sane and desirable clause
gets compromised into generalities,
truisms or, at best, a pallid version
of the original. So what has been agreed
on the Protocol, given the US's flinty
objections, to say nothing of the provisions
on globalization, agricultural subsidies,
time-bound targets and penalties for
the greatest polluters? A lot of all
this was agreed in Rio, wasn't it? "So
what?" asks Freeman gloomily. "Governments
change, so will policy."
On the eve of the WSSD plenaries to
be addressed by heads of state/government,
shades of Rio return in forms slightly
different from the inevitable Agenda
21. For instance, the heads of countries
alphabetically high up (Algeria, Argentina)
had to begin the hour-long trip from
their hotels to Riocentro at around 4AM,
security and all else taken into account.
You cannot have such gentry queuing up,
so there was a kind of holding area for
them as they arrived, before they could
be shown to their seats.
In Rio,
each speaker had seven minutes. President
Collor of Brazil, in the chair,
showed every sign of keeping the presidents
and prime ministers to their rationed
time ("Please consider the others
you will keep waiting") and actually
interrupted President Museveni of Uganda,
who was speaking without notes, with
a polite reminder.
Given the time constraint, all thoughts
turned to Fidel Castro who was attending--he
of the six-hour long speeches and endlessly
impassioned orations before patient and
cheering countrymen. Would Collor interrupt?
Would Castro listen?
When Cuba's turn came, the breath in
numerous breasts came a bit quicker,
and not just because of a possible Castro-Collor
clash. There he was, this symbol of an
earlier and more innocent world, wrought
of more black-and-white issues, where
the good guys came down from mountains
to deal with abominable dictators, where
idealistic men created a Third World
between devils with H-bombs and deep
blue seas deep teeming with Polaris subs.
It had all come to nought, hadn't it?
But here was this man, in the unkempt
beard, walking up to the podium in his
old olive-green fatigues, for once not
chomping his cigar. Then he began to
speak, in a surprisingly musical voice.
The thoughts were familiar, highlighting
the struggles of the poor in an unfair
world. Castro punned in Spanish, and
surely not for the first time, hombre
(man) and hambre (hunger). The minutes
were passing.
Precisely
seven minutes after he had started,
and many were timing him, Castro
turned to the Chair. "Gracias, senhor." He
had finished and stepped off the podium.
He was whooped and cheered all the way
to his seat, numerous presidents and
prime ministers on their feet, the only
speaker to receive that kind of ovation
at that other summit.
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