[bestbits] Re: [governance] IGF Cancelled

[parminder]

On Friday 26 July 2013 09:16 AM, Jeremy Malcolm wrote:
> On 26/07/13 11:31, Ang Peng Hwa (Prof) wrote:
>> According to third party sources I asked, ie not the Indonesians, one 
>> major item that added to the cost is that the UN had apparently asked 
>> for US$900k to fly personnel and security equipment for the event.
>
> Time to cut the UN apron strings.

Why sure, we can check with Google. They will be quite happy to run the 
global internet policy dialogue.... It is most astounding that after 
subverting and ditching the tradition of strictly public funding for 
policy spaces and activities, and adopting the neoliberal and 
anti-democratic (and fancy) multistakeholder funding model, now that it 
has collapsed one is to blame the public systems for it....

To repeat: this disaster occurred precisely because of cutting of the 
apron strings that policy space should always have tied to public funds 
and public systems. When Indonesian government said last year that it 
was unable to fund the IGF, it should not have been handed over to a 
private committee headed by a businessman. ... It should have been 
shifted to another country willing to host it.... We are participating 
in an absolute privatisation of governance and politics, and simply 
following the neolib agenda that represents the interests of the most 
powerful...

And this is indeed sheer 'power' - that those who are responsible for a 
'failure' can so conveniently blame others for it, and employ their own 
failure to further their cause....

And why should this be seen as a 'failure'. See it as an opportunity to 
completely do away with pulbic funded and pulbic systems supported 
public spaces... Lets go over completely to corporate funded policy 
spaces and policy making.... Why make these moves in such shifty 
cautious ways. So at least we will all know what is that we are 
contributing to building - what kind of society...

(By the way, right now we have a full fledged experiment of this kind - 
corporate run policy spaces - running in India, it shows the pattern and 
the larger design of certain ideologies and forces, and the extent to 
which they have been successful.)

parminder

(PS: This is a general response, not just to your email, Jeremy. And 
please do excuse my cynical language. These anti-democratic shifts are 
really disturbing.)
>
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