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Comment
Call of Prague
After
Seattle, it was the turn of Prague to tell the world that globalisation
cannot go unchallenged. Prague proved, if nothing else, that the issues of
corporate reform and increased social services have worldwide appeal.
Marxists marched alongside Zapatista sympathizers. Czech environmentalists
rubbed shoulders with black-hooded German anarchists. Activists from Greece
and Turkey—yes, Greece and Turkey, together commanded the front line of a
march blockaded by police and kept it calm. This was not the globalisation of
multinationals, but ‘‘globalisation of human rights, workers’ rights and
economic justice.’’ As Day
One of the Initiative Against Economic Globalisation in Prague began, all was
quiet and orderly. Leaders of nonprofit organizations held thinly attended
public discussions. Fourteen thousand dark-suited bankers and politicians
yawned through World Bank and the International Monetary Fund meetings with
titles like ‘‘Building the Bottom Line Through Corporate Citizenship’’. By
late morning, however, activists had begun a three-pronged assault on the
heavily guarded Congress Centre. One group of mostly anarchists and
communists managed to snake its way through police barricades and get within
yards of the bankers’ meeting hall. It remains unclear how the violence
escalated so quickly, but fifty Czech police were injured in a bombardment of
sticks, stones and Molotov cocktails. By nightfall, after activists had
smashed the windows of a Mc Donald’s on Wenceslass Square, cops were again
beaten back, this time by protesters wielding the policemen’s own batons. The
day ended in a cloud of tear gas, with thousands of World Bank delegates
being shuttled in buses, searching for the four-star hotels not besieged by
young radicals. But amid the apparent chaos, there were signs of
accomplishments. For one, pressure from the streets, building ever since
Seattle, finally forced two traditionaly secretive institutions to let some
critics in the door. Representatives of Transparency International, which |
is calling for public access to World Bank and IMF documents, along with 350 representatives of nongovernmental organisations, were admitted to meetings in Prague (five years ago, only two NGOs were allowed in). World Bank president James Wolfensohn and IMF managing director Horst Kohler even met with NGO leaders in a public meeting presided over by Czech President Vaclav Havel. Still, the substance of the new dialogue left much to be desired. ‘‘Understand that we are not a world government,’’ Wolfensohn told NGO leaders. ‘‘Very often poeple blame us for the politics in a country when they should really blame themselves.’’ Such defensiveness makes it hard to take seriously the World Bank and IMF claim that they want ‘‘to make globalisation work for the benefit of all.’’ The
Italian Zapatistas and Catalonian Marxists have now returned home. Czechs
have reoccupied their city. And the jails are mostly empty. But the Prague
Fall is not over. The movement is globalised; critics have been admitted into
the tent. And perhaps most important, politicians, central bankers and
multinational chiefs are beginning to understand that corporate globalisation
faces truly global antipathy. Strangely
enough, even the far left in India, not to speak of the established left,
does not bother much about the impact of global mass organising. Their
response to the Seattle episode was out and out passive. As for the protest
in Prague, they even failed to notice it. Globalisation has created a new
situation in which multinationals cannot be fought in isolation. Nor is there
any possibility of re-birth of any international with communist tag in the
near future. But non-communist left forces are emerging in every part of the
globe. It’s now more easier than ever before to launch solidarity platform to
raise voice against market forces. Globalisation by the corporate elite of
the world is to be challenged on its own turf by massively articulating
anti-corporate solidarity movements developing across the world. |