From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2001 15:16:43 EDT To: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [pttp] Quebec Speaker blasts region's `elected monarchs' [I think the correct term would be Oligarchs'] Subj: Quebec Speaker blasts region's `elected monarchs' Date: 4/13/01 11:19:00 AM Mountain Daylight Time From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Gary Morton) Reply-to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) - We won't be fooled by summit PR: Activists - Quebec Speaker blasts region's `elected monarchs' ============= We won't be fooled by summit PR: Activists Protesters say people know free trade pact is for corporate gain Allan Thompson OTTAWA - People won't be fooled by a government public relations offensive just days before the Quebec city Summit of the Americas, organizers of the alternative People's Summit said yesterday. The bottom line is that a proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas would still put corporate interests ahead of human rights, the environment, labour standards and other vital issues, the activists told a news conference. And more and more Canadians are joining the movement to oppose government efforts to negotiate a hemispheric free trade pact, they said. ``There has been so much interest and so much concern across the country and within the hemisphere about these negotiations . . . I find it hard to see that trying to manage the issue by press release is going to (make it) evaporate tomorrow,'' said Rieky Stuart, Oxfam Canada executive director. Hassan Yusuf, executive vice-president of the Canadian Labour Congress, said governments are ``playing to the media to try and assert that they are concerned about other issues than free trade in the Americas.'' Yusuf said there is still no sign that a free trade deal would help to fight poverty, improve working conditions or help people take control of their lives. International Co-operation Minister Maria Minna yesterday announced Canada would contribute $25 million to support ``fragile'' democratization efforts in Latin America. Marc Lortie, senior Canadian organizer for the Quebec city summit, told reporters earlier this week that promoting democracy in the hemisphere will be the summit centrepiece. Draft communiqué makes democracy essential to summit Leaders might spend as little as 15 minutes talking about the trade pact itself and a ``democratic clause'' being drafted for approval by the 34 leaders would say only democracies can join the summit process, Lortie said. According to a draft copy of the summit's final declaration obtained by Reuters yesterday, democracy is an ``essential condition'' of a country's presence at this month's and future summits. Cuba has been excluded from the Quebec meeting. ``Any unconstitutional alteration or interruption of the democratic order in a state of the hemisphere constitutes a fundamental obstacle to the participation of the state's government in the Summit of the Americas process,'' the draft states. The 48-page declaration and plan of action, dated March 26, also calls for a stronger Organization of American States and an anti-poverty initiative to reduce by half the number of people living in poverty in the Americas by 2015. It does not refer to the free trade pact itself, which is expected to run as long as 900 pages. International Trade Minister Pierre Pettigrew has heralded the decision to make public a draft text of the proposed pact as a sign of unprecedented openness, even though it won't be available before next week's summit. Activists call it window dressing. ``Our government is engaged in a major PR offensive against the citizens of Canada,'' said Maude Barlow of the Council of Canadians. ``I think we've become the new Soviet Union. We're the target of the biggest police security operation in modern Canadian history and it's an offence,'' she said, of the mounting police and security presence in Quebec city. ``We're jaded about this now . . . only the words of the text matter. Not the preamble, not all the nice meetings we have, not all the nice things that governments say to us.'' ================ Quebec Speaker blasts region's `elected monarchs' Robert McKenzie QUEBEC - The Speaker of the Quebec National Assembly is in hot water for publicly accusing the 34 leaders expected here April 20-22 for the Summit of the Americas of behaving like ``elected monarchs at the head of politico-technocratic oligarchies.'' Both the Parti Quebecois government and the Liberal opposition disassociated themselves from the stand taken by Speaker Jean-Pierre Charbonneau in a text on the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas that he published yesterday. Charbonneau is a journalist, author and founder of the Parliamentary Conference of the Americas, a group of parliamentarians from North, South and Central America frequently critical of the way the free trade agreement is being prepared. Putting his job on the line, the judo black belt wounded by a Mafia gunman in his crime-reporting days said: ``If I am to be blamed, there is only one way to do it. Let them question my credibility in the National Assembly because I am ready to face the music.'' In the text he penned himself, Charbonneau accused the leaders of failing to deliver the open democratic process promised in 1994 at the first summit of the Americas in Miami. ``By acting as if they were elected monarchs at the head of politico-technocratic oligarchies, the heads of state . . . not only contradict their own virtuous commitment of the beginning but accentuate the general, world-wide trend towards the marginalization of parliaments by the executive powers (governments). ``What prevails everywhere is not a democratic life and political practises but rather authoritarian and absolutist behaviour. There is nothing to inspire populations with the democratic ideal.'' -------- Knowledge is Power! Elimination of the exploitation of man by man http://www.egroups.com/group/pttp/ POWER TO THE PEOPLE! Subscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Change Delivery Options: http://www.egroups.com/mygroups Your use of Yahoo! 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