[governance] Tunisia

[parminder]

These articles especially the one by Fisk raises important issues about 
the global political discourse. And this is my attempt to connect the 
breath-taking events in Tunisia with the kind of stuff we do here in 
IGC. The article shows how concepts like democracy and FoE are 
instrumentalised by powerful players with vested interests. Even with 
what we all know about the western media, and west interests dominated 
global media - it was quite surprising for me how little news went 
around in the days when these events were unfolding in Tunisia. And in 
relation to it, how the smallest non-event about Iran - of the evil axis 
- is immediately hot global news.

Apparently, western interests supporting authoritarian regimes are not 
only fine, they are needed, but any anti-west regime is immediately and 
unpardonably undemocratic, suppressing human rights and the such.

It is in this respect important that global civil society really knows 
and focuses on what it believes in, what is it trying to achieve and who 
all it aligns with. We seek democracy, equity, power for the people and 
human rights. We basically seek more equitable distribution of power, 
and we fight against undue concentration of power, which almost always 
gets abused.

These are the 'civil society' values. I mention this term 'CS values' 
because I read in one of the emails during the hot discussion on the 
CSTD WG composition how we should judge governments and other actors vis 
a vis their adherence to 'CS values' which set me thinking what really 
was meant by this term. The writer of the email mostly meant MS-ism 
(multistakeholderism).

We need to judge actors in the IG space not just on this one dimension, 
but on the more basic CS values I mention above. And as long as the 
practical impact of some kinds of MS-ism is further concentration of IG 
power in the hands of those who are already most powerful, it hardly 
relates to 'CS values'.This is what one often sees happening in the 
global IG realm .

We need to judge where does the greatest concentration of power lies 
today vis a vis how the Internet is being shaped and used globally, and 
then see what can we do to democratise this power. This in my view is 
the role of civil society in IG, and is what we should judge ourselves 
against.

I came into MS-ism to ensure that IG political space is opened to those 
who are most dis-empowered, and when one sees MS-ism often used as a 
convenient hand maiden by those already most powerful in shaping the 
Internet - mega digital corporations and western govs - and the CS 
blindly and uncritically following the bandwagon, I do think we need 
some serious reconsideration of our ideals and our strategies. I hope 
the proposed initiative by the co-coordinators to relook at IGC's 
vision. strategies etc  does such deep introspection. Parminder




CW Mail wrote:
> FYI, the Robert Fisk article is at:
>
> http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/the-brutal-truth-about-tunisia-2186287.html
>
> and Brian Whitaker is at:
>
> http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/brianwhitaker
>
> CW
>

-- 
PK

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