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Panelists call for moral democracies

Rise of demagogues, changing climate cited as global threats

By Lisa Nuch Venbrux
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
October 10th, 2007 issue

For the past 11 years, policymakers and dignitaries worldwide have gathered for the Forum 2000 conference, co-founded by former President Václav Havel to chart the effects of globalization on society. This year, hundreds participated in panels at Prague’s Žofín Palace to discuss freedom and responsibility in politics, business and media.
Havel opened the Oct. 8 seminars by highlighting societies with few or no democratic freedoms, including Russia and Burma (Myanmar). But many delegates to the first panel, “Freedom and Responsibility in Politics,” focused on the responsibilities — and failures — of democratic countries aiming to uphold and promote freedom.
Keynote speaker Madeleine Albright, who was born in Prague and served as U.S. secretary of state in the late 1990s, made several pointed remarks on the subjects of a global “clash of ideas,” poverty and climate change, emphasizing the importance for leaders not to ignore moral values.
“The search for moral objectivity can lead to no morality at all,” she said.
Despite this, she decried leaders who contribute to a “clash of ideas” delineated by stark lines of good and evil. As demagogues rise to prominent positions on the world stage, “fear can poison the minds of people for decades to come,” she said, urging earnest attempts at intercultural understanding.
Albright also criticized those who take a laissez-faire approach to climate change. Calling current environmental practices “act[s] of treason” against future generations, she mentioned U.S. President George W. Bush as a leader who thinks countries should be able to do as they please when it comes to environmental protection. This is the wrong approach, she said, arguing international agreements must be observed.
Her remarks set the tone for the panelists, many of whom either directly or indirectly condemned recent actions by the United States and other Western powers, notably during the so-called war on terrorism.
“Nothing has damaged more … the whole Western reputation as Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo,” commented Wolfgang Gerhardt, chairman of Friedrich-Naumann-Stiftung, an NGO that promotes liberalism.
His Royal Highness Prince Turki Al-Faisal, chairman of the King Faisal Centre for Research and Islamic Studies in Saudi Arabia, called secret jails, the abrogation of habeas corpus and the use of torture a “slippery slope.”
Al-Faisal also evoked the controversy surrounding cartoons published in a Danish newspaper in 2005. The images provoked outrage among Muslims, including Al-Faisal, who called them “vile.” Like Albright, he urged the importance of respecting not only legal rules, but moral codes as well.
Democracy is never ‘done’
The panelists as a whole offered a dismal picture of the problems facing democratic and undemocratic, developed and developing countries alike. Yet a few suggested steps for improvement.
Jayantha Dhanapala, a prominent diplomat and senior adviser to the president of Sri Lanka, said campaign finance reform, modified electoral systems and training for politicians would all contribute to improved conditions worldwide.
He also advised immediate nuclear disarmament, to build a world emphasizing human security through cooperation, not “weapons-based security.”
“Multilateralism must replace unilateralism,” he said.
Segolene Royal, the former Socialist Party candidate for the French presidency, proposed incorporating lessons about freedom and responsibility into curricula for schoolchildren.
Above all, leaders should understand democracy as a process, not an event, Albright said. Even the world’s oldest democracy, the United States, is still learning.
“Democracy is never ‘done,’ ” Albright concluded. “Responsibility and freedom are never ‘done’ either.”

Lisa Nuch Venbrux can be reached at lvenbrux@praguepost.com


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