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Forty thousand demonstrated in Seattle. Now Prague braces itself |
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The “Turn Prague into Seattle” slogan has been pinned to thousands of protesters’ T-shirts, websites have been set up, and accommodation organized months ago. The protesting community has prepared well for the 55th annual IMF/World Bank meetings from September 19 to 28.
Dozens of established non-governmental organizations (NGOs), such as Oxfam and Friends of the Earth, as well as more obscure grassroots movements and umbrella organizations especially set up for the event, will gather in Prague. They will protest against and demonstrate for … well, anything from the speeding up of the debt relief initiative to the abolition of the Bretton Woods institutions.
No one really knows how many protesters will show up in Prague, as there is no recent history of IMF/World Bank related protest In Europe. But the surprise appearance of 40,000 protesters against the World Trade Organization in Seattle last November has raised expectations and concerns. Most estimates predict a minimum of 20,000 protesters – more than one for each of the 18,000 official delegates – to descend on the Czech capital, normally home to 1.2 million people.
World Bank spokeswoman Merrell Tuck says the bank doesn’t have any security concerns and trusts the Czech police service, which will have 11,000 officers on duty. Yet there is widespread concern over whether security can be properly provided and worries about the Czech police’s lack of experience with this scale of event and potential turmoil. Goldman Sachs, for one, is making private arrangements for the security of its 60 delegates. Schools have been given a week’s holiday and parents have been asked to take their children out of the city.
Special measures might not be such a bad idea.
After all, some anarchist groups see a world revolution taking off in Prague, which will “end the rule of the bosses, their corporations, banks, and states,” according to Revo, an anti-capitalist youth organization.
DestroyIMF, the anti-IMF movement, wants to “shut down the dirty deals happening behind closed doors” and 50 Years Is Enough, a US network promoting global economic justice, intends to “assert the responsibility of these anti-democratic institutions, together with the World Trade Organization, for an unjust world economic system”.
While the meetings organizers fret about the potential for protests to turn into widespread disorder, they can be confident that not all 20,000 protesters will make the trip to throw eggs, rotten fruit and well-rehearsed abuse at bankers. Most organizations are outspokenly against violence and their plans sound rather tame. Indeed some of the protesters seem to have been infected with the blandness, self-importance and bureaucracy of the official sector. There will be an art festival – admittedly, “the art of resistance” – a video festival and “a different message” public discussion forum organized by CEE BankWatch Network, Jubilee2000 and Friends of the Earth.
Inpeg, the Initiative Against Economic Globalization, a coalition of grassroots groups set up to organize activities in Prague, wants to shadow the meeting with its own counter-summit to discuss issues surrounding globalization. And Czech president Vaclav Havel will hold a panel discussion to bring together views of NGOs and IMF/Bank officials on development and debt issues.
Established NGOs such as Oxfam and Jubilee2000 are a familiar and unthreatening presence and are themselves on the way to one of the workshops organized by the World Bank. Like most of these established NGOs, the World Development Movement (WDM), an organization that supports the world’s poor, doesn’t consider the abolition of the two Bretton Woods institutions a feasible option. Rather it wants to influence their policies by dialogue, and “make themselves heard through sound research, policy engagement and public pressure”, says Barry Coates, director of WDM.
That’s Fine with the managing director of the IMF, Horst Köhler. He Finds that the young people critical of the IMF have “serious questions” and “a kind of fresh look”. He told a press conference last month: “We should have a dialogue, we should listen. … On the other hand we should be Firm. In the end we have a membership, governments which are accountable.”
“But the IMF is not accountable to the countries that are affected most by their policies,” counters Marlene Barrett, head of campaigns at Jubilee2000, a coalition of groups Fighting for debt relief. “Mozambique only has a 0.06% vote in the IMF, compared to the US with 18%. The rules of the global economy are totally unfair.”
In practice, most NGOs have better working relationships with the World Bank. Over the past Five years, the Bank has employed 70 staff to deal directly with issues raised by civil society. It organizes discussion groups and has implemented a small grants programme that supports NGOs’ networking efforts through seminars and publications. It has also – for the First time – put a draft of the World Development Report on poverty on the web to be discussed by all interested parties. (However, the report’s chief author, Ravi Kanbur, resigned in June over disagreements on toning down sections of the report concerned with globalization.)
Most important to the NGOs, the Bank has realized that the poor of the world will not necessarily become any richer through GDP growth. The Bank now Finds that its projects need to be “participatory in nature”, that they should be able to “reach out to poor and excluded communities”.
This realization was put into practice at the last World Bank/IMF September meeting with the introduction of country-owned poverty- reduction-strategy papers (PRSPs). The poverty-focused strategy replaced the structural adjustment lending of the Bank and the Fund.
The PRSPs will be produced by each country and are a requirement for debt relief under the heavily indebted poor countries (HIPC) initiative.
The World Bank launched the HIPC initiative, which will provide debt relief to some 20 countries, in 1996. To Rob Mills, policy adviser at Eurodad, the European Network on Debt and Development, HIPC was a sign that awareness-raising does bear fruit. “The initiative would have never been set up without NGO lobbying.” Now NGOs come to Prague to demand that the promises to write off debts, made in Okinawa by the G7, are kept.
Barrett says that “so far, of the $100 billion promised debt relief, less than $12 billion have been realized”.
IMF press officer William Murray concedes that there is a debate over timing and speed. “But there is no fundamental debate about the debt-relief programme any more.”
He might be surprised. “Our objectives are quite fundamental in that conditionality does not help to reduce poverty,” says Coates from WDM. Other groups also emphasize that by combining debt relief with the PRSPs, the Bretton Woods institutions will have imposed one more conditionality to hassle poor countries. Conditionality will, if anything, delay the debt relief.
The IMF proposes that without conditionality “debt relief would go again in the pockets of corrupt politicians”. But NGOs wonder what the new strategy can possibly do to counter corruption. “You have to look beyond the rhetoric. It is the secretive process between the IMF and the government that fosters corruption. The record also shows that most countries were ineligible for debt relief because they did not open up their markets,” says Coates. “As long as markets are opened up, no one cares how corrupt politicians are.”
Chelsea Moven, international press agent of Inpeg, adds: “In fact, the poverty-focused policies will act as a barrier to policies that really benefit the world’s poorest people. Free markets are still the cornerstone of the PRSPs but these policies hurt the poor.
Globalization is causing poverty and inequality.” Consequently, Inpeg has organized a counter-summit to discuss alternatives to globalization, as well as a “global day of action against economic globalization”.
On the same day, September 26, a global day of action has also been called against capitalism, and “to shut down the IMF/World Bank”. Apparently, anyone can protest.
Coincidentally, the World Bank’s theme nicely reflects the concerns of the protesters. The seminars accompanying the annual meeting will be held under the motto “making the global economy work for everyone”, indicating that globalization might not enrich everyone equally.
