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(Part 3 of 3-Part Series)
ATTAC, THE "TOBIN TAX," AND THE WORLD SOCIAL FORUM OF PORTO
ALEGRE (BRAZIL):
IS THIS A WAY FORWARD TO FIGHT GLOBAL CAPITALISM?
- APPENDIX 1: Echoes
from World Social Forum 1
- APPENDIX 2: Some
Comments on World Social Forum 2
- APPENDIX 3: Who
is George Soros, this so-called champion of the Tobin Tax?
- APPENDIX 4: ATTAC
and the Union Network International (UNI)
- APPENDIX 5: UN
General Secretary Kofi Annan and the World Social Forum
- APPENDIX 6: The
"Participatory Budget" in Porto Alegre: The World Bank's
"Best Alternative" (By Miguel Cristobal)
********************
APPENDIX 1:
Echoes from World Social Forum 1
The World Social Forum (WSF) - held January 25-31, 2001, in Porto
Alegre, Brazil - drew 900 NGOs, 500 elected officials, and grassroots
and community activists from more than 140 countries. The call for the
WSF raised the "urgent need" to "democratize" and
render "more transparent" the institutions of globalization.
One of the main decisions of the WSF, according to its sponsors, was the
creation of a follow-up network whose principal mandate is to organize a
second World Social Forum in February 2002, also in Porto Alegre. In
keeping with this decision, the elected officials present in Porto
Alegre agreed to constitute an International Network of Members of
Parliament to advance the goals of the World Social Forum. Francis Wurtz,
chair of the United Left fraction in the European Parliament, disclosed
what was without a doubt one of the most telling features of this
Parliamentary Network - and that is its financing.
Wurtz told the Agence France Presse: "The principle was adopted
that the European Parliament would take responsibility for the
coordination of all technical aspects of the Parliamentary Network,
including its financing."
The European Parliament is a totally illegitimate and bogus institution.
It was established under the Maastricht Treaty with the purpose of
providing a democratic façade to the decisions made by the unelected
bureaucrats in Brussels - all of which aim at destroying the European
welfare states and imposing wholesale attacks on the working classes of
Europe. And as we all know, he who pays the piper calls the tune.
It was not surprising, therefore, to see the French government - which
just recently restored night work for women and lowered the legal
working age for children to 13 - send a high-level ministerial
delegation to participate in the World Social Forum. This delegation
included Messrs. Hascoët (Secretary of State for Economic Solidarity),
Huwar (Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs) and Charasse
(representing the Ministry of Foreign Affairs).
Present, as well, were prominent international businessmen, such as Oded
Grajew, president of the CIVES employers' association in Brazil. Also in
attendance was the mayor of the host city of Porto Alegre, Raul Pont,
who only a few months earlier confronted a general strike of teachers
demanding payment of back wages and benefits - and who has been
attempting, unsuccessfully till now, to eliminate social security
payments to the city's municipal employees (in the name of the
"reform" of the social security system).
All came to "dialogue" about how to create a
"globalization with a human face." In the words of Jean-Marie
Messier, CEO of Vivendi Universal, an NGO conglomerate with a payroll of
71,000 employees, "[t]he World Social Forum was a unique phenomenon
in that it helped to establish the basis for dialogue between the
corporations and civil society, including the NGO-type social
organizations."
Video-conference "dialogue"
According to many of the WSF participants interviewed in the
mainstream media, the "high point" of the Porto Alegre forum
was a video-conference featuring a live dialogue/debate between
representatives of the WSF and leaders of the World Economic Summit, who
were meeting in Davos, Switzerland, at that very moment. The Davos
Summit, financed by the billionaire speculator George Soros, is the
think-tank of the leading financial institutions of global capitalism.
This video-conference "dialogue" was modeled after UN
Secretary General Kofi Annan's "Global Compact" - an
initiative launched in the summer of 2000 for the purpose of
"urging the transnational corporations, which have been the first
to benefit from globalization, to now take their share of responsibility
for coping with its effects." (UN Millennium Summit Declaration,
September 2000)
The video-conference was illuminating. The stage was set initially by
George Soros, who told the WSF participants: "Protesting and
marching is fine. The protests have attracted world attention. ... Now
it is time for us to get serious and discuss."
John Ruggie, another Davos Summit spokesperson, represented Kofi Annan.
He stated: "Mr. Annan came to Davos in January 1999, ten months
before Seattle. He warned the world's leaders of the boomerang effects
of globalization. He told them that the collapse of the free-market
economy would not be a good thing for the rich or for the poor. His
words are as relevant today as they were then."
Ruggie did not mince words: For the United Nations, the framework of the
dialogue with the spokespersons of "civil society" must be
acceptance of the cornerstone of globalization and "free
trade" - that is, the "free-market economy." Kofi Annan
has been explicit about this, stating time and again that unless the
multinationals and governments "extend the benefits of free
trade" through social clauses and thelike, there will be such a
backlash from the worlds's toiling masses that the "free-market
economy" itself might be imperiled.
And what did the representatives of the Porto Alegre forum respond?
Rafael Alegria, a leader of Vida Campesina [Peasant Life] of Brazil,
said. "If things don't change, the social and political instability
will only deepen. This world has to change. The head of the United
Nations should not be there [i.e., Davos]; he should be here with us.
..... The United Nations has a great responsibility - and that is to
devise a new equilibrium for a better world; otherwise things will only
get worse and we will expose ourselves to the possibility of major
confrontations."
Alegria expressed the view of some of the main WSF organizers that if
the threats of "confrontation" and "instability" are
to be averted, it is necessary to place the fate of humanity in the
hands of the United Nations. But the United Nations is precisely one of
the main vehiclestoday for promoting the global "free trade"
agenda and for imposing the "new world order" of world
imperialism.
The UN is responsible for the deepening wars and destruction on the
African continent and beyond. Kofi Annan himself gave the green light to
the "humanitarian" invasion of Somalia, the U.S./NATO bombing
of Yugoslavia, and only a few weeks ago congratulated George Bush for
his recent bombing of Iraq. (Annan stated that Baghdad had provoked the
U.S. bombing attacks.)
Need for "social clauses"
When it was his turn to speak again in the video-conference, John
Ruggie rushed to respond to Rafael Alegria: "But the UN is present
in Porto Alegre in the form of a top-ranking UN delegation. ... The
initiative launched a few months ago by the Secretary General [i.e.,
Kofi Annan's Global Compact-ed.] is aimed at urging the heads of the
large multinational corporations to reflect upon the need for social
clauses within the 'free trade' treaties. ... And this issue [the
"social clause"-ed.] also concerns those of you who want
change. It concerns workers around the world and their trade union
federations. It concerns all the organizations of civil society."
The message was unequivocal: According to the UN, it is necessary for
the unions and activists around the world to drop their opposition to
"free trade" and globalization and buy into the process of
"roundtable agreements" and "social clauses."
But this is precisely the hitch. The global corporate "free
trade" agenda cannot be humanized or democratized. The "free
trade" pacts (NAFTA, European Union, FTAA, etc.) by their very
nature are designed to remove all "barriers" to "free
trade" - that is, labor rights and regulations, environmental laws,
public enterprises and services - and the list goes on.
If Kofi Annan and the United Nations genuinely wanted to roll back the
globalization juggernaut, they could demand the dismantling of the WTO.
They could push for the abrogation of the GATT, NAFTA and Maastricht
treaties. They could demand the ratification in every country of the 182
original ILO Conventions protecting labor rights. They could demand the
cancellation of the crushing debt of the "Third World"
countries. They could demand an immediate halt to U.S. military
escalation and an end to all U.S./NATO interventions anywhere in the
world.
But the UN will not do this because its aim is not to challenge the
global corporate "free trade" agenda. Its aim is to bring
together all members of "civil society" - beginning with those
participating in the Porto Alegre forum - into a common framework to
promote more "democratic" and "participatory" free
trade pacts and other anti-worker policies.
The aim of the UN is to get the unions to cease functioning as
instruments to defend the workers in order to become adjuncts of the
policies of the international financial institutions and governments in
their service. Only in this manner, they say, will it be possible to
"avoid a social explosion."
"I just might be there next year."
The final moments of this video-conference "debate" were
equally revealing.
Bjorg Edlung, a businessman present in Davos, summoned the Porto Alegre
participants to create joint Davos-Porto Alegre task forces on specific
issues to "breach the gap." Responding to this proposal, Njoki
Njehu, director of 50 Years is Enough, a U.S. NGO, stated: "If the
purpose is to discuss economics and alternatives, there are plenty of
economists here in Porto Alegre. I invite you to come to Porto Alegre
for our next Summit and to work as hard as us for solutions."
George Soros said he appreciated the invitation. "I just might be
in Porto Alegre next year," he said. "For the time being I
have not made up my mind."
There you have it in a nutshell. George Soros - the personification of
"globalization" - is open to attending the next World Social
Forum. Clearly he and global capitalism's top financial institutions are
beginning to heed the admonitions of Kofi Annan that they need to
promote a "social dimension" - a Global Compact - to attempt
to win acceptance for their plans of plunder, speculation and
super-exploitation. In particular, they are realizing that they need to
be able to co-opt the trade unions into participating directly in the
implementation of this destructive process.
For Soros and company, the Porto Alegre forum may just be what's needed
to move this process forward.
The danger of co-optation is very real. More than ever, it is necessary
for the workers' movement, beginning with the trade unions, to refuse to
be wooed by the siren song of "globalization with a human
face!"
(This article was based on extensive reports from Brazil published in O
Trabalho newspaper.)
********************
APPENDIX 2:
Some Comments on World Social Forum 2
- World Bank and Porto Alegre
Consistent with the views it has developed over the past years in
support of the "participatory budget" in Porto Alegre, Brazil
- which it considers one of the "best alternatives" today -
the World Bank established in the fall of 2001 an International
Department to oversee the implementation of "participatory
democracy" in 26 countries.
- Echoes from WSF Planning Meeting
The International Council of the World Social Forum met in Dacar,
Senegal, on Oct. 30-Nov. 1, 2001, to prepare the WSF 2, which will be
held in early February 2002 in Porto Alegre, Brazil. The WSF 2 planning
meeting was hosted and organized by ENDA-Third World, an NGO that has
been building the WSF actively across Africa.
According to one of its documents ('ENDA: Water and Urban
Poverty"), ENDA-Third World believes that "to prohibit child
labor is to deprive the children, as well as their families, of an
important means of subsistence. It is necessary to take into account the
socio-economic reality, which is why ENDA fights for recognizing the
rights of child laborers."
This position by ENDA is in total opposition to the historic position of
the trade union movement internationally - which has fought consistently
to abolish child labor, as children belong in school, and which has
waged bitter struggles so that the parents of impoverished children can
make a living wage to feed and support their families.
But not only does ENDA support child labor; it is an active participant
in the privatization of the water distribution system in Senegal,
receiving public funds to build well and water towers and charging the
public not insignificant fees for providing water.
- What is "Sustainable Development"?
Further evidence of how the politics of the organizers of WSF 2 are
fully compatible with the politics of the IMF and World Bank can be
found in a report adopted by the Summer 2000 University of ATTAC on the
question of "sustainable development." This is how this
concept, which is one of the main objectives of ATTAC and the WSF, is
defined:
"The definition of a new model of development is on the order of
the day. ... The concept of sustainable development points the war
forward in this quest. ...
"Though this [sustainable development] is a valid model, we must be
careful not to consider that it must be the opposite of the current
model. We must be careful, for example, not to counterpose our model to
Structural Adjustments. It is not because the dominant model promotes
imbalances that we must reject promoting balances. It is not because it
idealizes the market that an alternative model must reject the
market."
There you have it in a nutshell: It is an "alternative model"
that rejects neither the IMF' Structural Adjustment Plans
(privatization, deregulation, payment of the foreign debt) nor the
policies aimed at "balancing the budgets" (through drastic
cuts in public services, for example).
It is therefore not a surprise to learn that the Ford Foundation is now
among the financial backers of World Social Forum 2.
**********
APPENDIX 3:
Who is George Soros, this so-called champion of the Tobin Tax?
The New York Times published a biographical article on George
Soros on Dec. 6, 1998, which reads as follows:
"Mr. Soros, who is believed to be worth about $5 billion, is
uniquely positioned to help determine how the rules are made in some
parts of the world, as he built his fortune in currency markets where
the rules were never entirely clear.
"As the Russian crisis mounted in August [1998], for example, Mr.
Soros worked his Rolodex, summoning influential Russian politicians and
U.S. Treasury Department officials to the telephone. He pushed for a big
international bailout and a devaluation of the ruble to bolster Russia's
troubled economy.
"At the same time, Mr. Soros had $1 billion invested in a Russian
telecommunications concern - through a partnership with one of Russia's
powerful 'oligarchs' - as well as investments in Russian stocks, bonds
and the ruble. ...
"But his largest single holding in Russia - a $1 billion stake in
Svyazinvest, a telecommunications concern - put him into partnership
with Vladimir Potanin, the young chairman of one of Russia's biggest
banks. Mr. Potanin is a member of a powerful and politically influential
clique of Russian businessmen known as the 'oligarchs.' These men deftly
exploited lucrative opportunities that came with privatization in Russia
and used dubious tactics to snare control of huge industrial concerns.
''I bought it on the thesis that robber capitalism was ready to turn
into legitimate capitalism,' Mr. Soros said of his holding in
Svyazinvest. ...
"Mr. Soros, an aggressive, gutsy speculator, ran one of the
earliest and most successful of these - the Quantum Fund - for two
decades beginning in 1969. Basing Quantum in the loosely regulated
confines of the Caribbean island of Curaçao, Mr. Soros often racked up
returns in excess of 30 percent a year and twice posted annual returns
of more than 100 percent, according to the fund's most recent quarterly
report. .....
"Of course, no one in the markets proves the point better than Mr.
Soros himself. It was in 1992 that he became a household name, when
Quantum and related funds, largely using piles of borrowed money, made
more than $1 billion in a few weeks by betting against the British
pound. Britain's central bank wasted its reserves in an unsuccessful
effort to defend the currency's value. The episode derailed Britain's
membership in a European initiative seeking to rationalize exchange
rates - and it earned Mr. Soros this sobriquet: 'the man who broke the
Bank of England.'"
"Mr. Soros has also described some forms of financial derivatives -
highly volatile and complex investing products - as the economic
equivalent of crack cocaine. Yet he has used derivatives in his own
speculating, explaining that his funds favor only the simplest
varieties. Such inconsistencies give pause to those who might otherwise
share his views. 'It's an amusing spectacle to see a guy like him who's
made a fortune speculating is now going around denouncing newcomers to
the field," said Doug Henwood, author of 'Wall Street'."
********************
APPENDIX 4:
ATTAC and the Union Network International (UNI)
ATTAC's vision of the world is one where the trade unions would
abandon their traditional role of defending the material and moral
interests of the workers and become an element in the setting up of
"global governance." Thus, by way of self-congratulation, a
report is published in ATTAC's Bulletin No.265 (dated Oct. 14, 2001) on
the first Annual Congress of UNI (Union Network International), which is
an international regroupment of trade union federations in the service,
banking and telecommunications sectorsS "A founding event,"
says the ATTAC report. Founding? It certainly is that. One can read the
following example in the Congress documents: "The challenge of the
21st Century therefore is to perfect a model of extended democracy that
is adapted to globalization."
What does this "extended democracy" consist of? UNI's
leadership proposes, for example, that Structural Adjustment Plans (SAPs),
which involve systematic demands for privatization and the dismantling
of public services, and which today are modestly called "Programs
for the Reduction of Poverty," should be drawn up "in
consultation with the trade unions," and that trade unions
"should be aware of all the macro-economic conditions and
structural adjustment conditions which apply currently to IMF and World
Bank loans." UNI's leadership asks that "global organizations
should make room for the trade unions and civil society."
And that is not all. UNI's leadership has proposed a program of pension
fund management to its affiliates:
"1. Develop a UNI program of "trade union management of
capital."
2. Find the means to implement the program of "trade union
management of capital," for example by nominating trade union
managers, training the managers and developing a network of trade union
managers."
********************
APPENDIX 5:
UN General Secretary Kofi Annan and the World Social Forum
United Nations General Secretary Kofi Annan sent a message on Nov.
20, 2000, to the governor of the Rio Grande do Sul, Olívio Dutra,
indicating his full support for the World Social Forum, held in Porto
Alegre at the end of January 2001.
Annan's message stated, in part:
"The declarations made by the head of states in the United Nations
Millennium Summit [held in New York in the fall of 2000], and the common
declaration adopted by the meeting prove that the underlinement of the
unequal benefits brought by globalization and the building of actions to
better the lives of peoples over the world are in the top priorities of
the international community. ... I wish you all the success possible.
..." (source: WSF web site)
A closer look at the declaration adopted by the UN Millennium Summit
reveals that it is a document fully committed to the corporate
"free trade" agenda, which, its signatories all agree, is the
"only viable engine of economic growth and prosperity." Never
mind that in the name of "free trade" millions of jobs are
being destroyed the world over and that working and living conditions
are being driven back a few hundred years - only to provide prosperity
for a tiny minority of ruling rich.
In his address to the UN Millennium Summit titled "We the
People," Kofi Annan did not take issue with the corporate global
agenda. In fact he warned that "what is needed is not new shackles
for world trade." Instead he called for "extending the
benefits of free trade" to those who have been left out. He
proposed doing this by creating a "Global Compact" between
business, civil society and the United Nations whose major task, he
said, will be to urge "the transnational corporations, which have
been the first to benefit from globalization, to now take their share of
responsibility for coping with its effects."
Let there be no doubt about the intentions of the heads of state who
signed the UN Millennium Summit declaration - all of whom in their own
countries are dutifully implementing the IMF's austerity and structural
adjustment plans. Their goal is not to promote economic justice for the
peoples of the world or to ensure genuinely fair trade based on full
respect of the sovereignty of the world's nations and peoples.
If these heads of state wished to accomplish these objectives they
could, without great difficulty, proceed to dismantle the WTO, repeal
the GATT treaty, abrogate NAFTA and the European Union's Maastricht
Treaty, stop the ratification of the FTAA, ratify and implement in their
own countries the 182 original ILO conventions protecting labor rights,
and cancel the crushing debt of the "Third World" countries -
to name but a few key measures to be taken.
No. Their goal is altogether different. It is to enlist all members of
"civil society" - first and foremost the trade union movement
- into supporting the "free trade" agenda of the multinational
corporations and the governments in their service.
********************
APPENDIX 6:
The "Participatory Budget" in Porto Alegre: The World Bank's
"Best Alternative"
BY MIGUEL CRISTOBAL
The World Bank has just translated, published and distributed widely
a propaganda handbook written jointly by the Workers Party (PT) mayor of
Porto Alegre, Tarso Genro, and Urbitaran de Souza under the title:
"The Participatory Budget: the Porto Alegre Experience."
In this World Bank handbook we learn, for example, that during the year
2000, 140 municipalities across Brazil - 73 led by the Workers Party and
67 led by "center-right" city governments - have implemented
the Participatory Budget.
The Brazilian mainstream press has also devoted a great deal of
attention to the Participatory Budget. A full one-page interview with
Victor Vergara, World Bank administrator for Brazil, published by O
Estado de Sao Paulo, gives further insight into the usefulness of the
Participatory Budget for Global Capitalism.
Vergara answers a reporter who asks him how the World Bank assesses the
Participatory Budget: "It is one of the most positive and
innovative administrative experiences to come on the scene in Latin
America," Vergara states. "It is a modern method of governance
that has awakened great interest throughout Latin America. ... The World
Bank has translated into Spanish the book by Porto Alegre Mayor Tarso
Genro on the subject. We have already distributed 2,500 copies of the
book in nine Latin American countries."
When asked why the World Bank views this model so positively, Vergara
replies: "It is a modern form of governance in that it transforms
representative democracy into participatory democracy, into
decision-making by consensus."
When asked if such a model can be implemented only by "left"
governments, his answer is unequivocal. "Not at all. The
Participatory Budget has no ideological origin. It is simply a method
for making decisions. ... We are not saying that it is the ideal model,
but it seems to us that it is the best alternative." (March 5,
2001)
This "method of decision-making" is, in fact, fully in sync
with World Bank policy. For many years now, World Bank President James
Wolfensohn has been warning that as a result of the implementation of
World Bank-IMF Structural Adjustment Policies, "the number of
social conflicts and social explosions is likely to increase, the
quality of our environment will be worse, and the disparities between
rich and poor will be wider." (Address to the Board of Governors,
Washington, DC. Sept. 28, 1999)
To avert the risk of such social explosions, Wolfensohn has argued
repeatedly for the need to co-opt the trade unions and social protest
movements. Addressing a meeting of NGOs in Prague on September 22, 2000,
Wolfensohn declared:
"What we are trying to do in as oblique way as we can is to
convince the governments that you cannot impose development on
communities or groups of people, that what you need to do is to consult
so that they could own the process and that we don't design something in
Washington or La Paz, but that it includes the people."
The World Bank president made specific the role ahead for the NGOs and,
more broadly, for "civil society." It was necessary, he said,
"to give people a voice in development. ... This means giving
people an opportunity to actively participate in the identification,
design and implementation of World Bank projects and lending."
The World Bank's World Development Report 2000/2001: Attacking Poverty
summarized this strategy: "Social fragmentation can be mitigated by
bringing groups together in formal and informal forums and channeling
their energies into political processes instead of open conflict."
What the Record Shows
The O Trabalho Current of the Workers Party (PT), recently produced
a brochure in which it provides a concrete balance sheet of the 13-year
experience of the Participatory Budget in Porto Alegre.
The brochure's introduction explains O Trabalho's overall stance on the
question of the Participatory Budget:
"O Trabalho fights and has always fought for the independence of
the working class, independence which takes concrete forms in its
organization of parties, trade unions and independent organizations.
This is why we believe that it is our duty to draw the attention of
workers, activists and labor organizations to the mortal danger which
the Participatory Budget represents for their rights, for the free
exercise of their right to demand, for democracy, and for the very
existence of workers' and people's organizations."
The brochure goes on to describe the results of the Porto Alegre
Participatory Budget:
1. The Union of Neighborhood Associations (UAMPA), traditional
organization which regroups neighborhood associations from Porto Alegre,
is today on its last legs and was not able to hold its recent congress.
Pedro Lopes, a longtime leader of UAMPA, told O Trabalho newspaper:
"UAMPA originated as a fighting organization. We were in the front
ranks of the struggles for education, housing and transportation -
against austerity. We fought the privatization of the public bus system.
"Then UAMPA gradually became absorbed into the governance of
austerity through the Participarty Budget. We never questioned it. We
even got funding for xeroxes in City Hall, a nice office space - some of
which can be considered conquests, others of which were simply
co-optation.
"Now, we can't even organize our own congress. We have been
gradually absorbed by the forums of the Participatory Budget." (O
Trabalho, May 9-23, 2001)
2. The Municipal Workers Trade Union (SIMPA) finds itself today having
to compromise its positions by "arbitrating" between the
demands of its union members and the demands of other organizations, in
order to respect the consensus that dictates the Participatory Budget.
Echoing this frustration, Jorge Buchabqui, former Human Resources
Secretary of Rio Grande do Sul state government, resigned from his post
in protest of the state government's pro-IMF policies and the fraudulent
character of the Participatory Budget" - which, he said, had become
a "straitjacket in the hands of the government to contain all the
demands of the workers." (O Trabalho, January 15-29, 2001)
3. The Participatory Budget talks a lot about democracy, but little is
known about how the Participatory Budget Councilors, who ultimately make
the policy decisions, are designated. In the "Bylaws: General,
technical and regional criteria" edited by the municipal government
in 2000, it is stated that to be elected councilor, representation is
established proportionally according to the following table when there
is more than one contending list:
- 24.9% of votes or less: no elected delegates;
- from 25% to 37.5% of votes: one associate;
- from 37.6% to 44.9% of votes: two associates;
- from 45% to 55% of votes: 1 seat and 1 associate.
Fine example of democracy! A slate can receive up to 25% of the vote and
yet not get a single delegate. This is how "consensus" is
established - by marginalizing all opposition.
4. The global Porto Alegre municipal budget shows that from 1991 to
2000, the municipality increased its tax revenues by 350%. During this
same period, however, the municipality's internal and foreign debt
payments (charges and depreciation) increased six-fold.
5. The Municipal Budget is subjected to a number of federal provisions
that highly restrict its share of federal tax revenue. This is the case
of the Kandir Law, which subtracts a part of tax revenue that should go
to municipalities and channels it toward export subsidies for employers.
Another such provision is the Federal Union Revenues (DRU), which
authorizes the federal government not to transfer to the municipalities
all the resources received by the federal treasury. Hence, the Porto
Alegre municipality implements the Participatory Budget with a budget
already amputated by 38 million Reals by the federal Cardoso government.
Thirty-eight million Reals are the equivalent of 1,520 housing units (UHS)
or 317 kilometers of sewer construction, the lack of which is a
nightmare for the populations of lower-income neighborhoods having to
bear repetitive and devastating overflows.
6. Outsourcing: These are the funds funneled through the World Bank and
IMF for the purpose of sub-contracting and outsourcing public sector
jobs. Indeed, the Participatory Budget functions as an instrument to
generalize the outsourcing of public services. The "2001 Investment
and Services Plan" synthesized the "priorities" defined
by the Participatory Budget, stating:
"In the area of social assistance, there will be a 'transfer of
resources to Non-Governmental Organizations which will develop these
activities, with contracts with 54 organizations to carry out 4,200
projects.' (Bureau of Vocational Work: Agreements with Non-Governmental
Organizations)
If you simply take the year 2000 budget, transfers out of the municipal
budget toward private institutions amounted to the following:
o 6.34 million Reals in education, which represent 150% of the total
investments of the municipality for the year in public municipal
schools;
o 5.26 million Reals in healthcare, which represents twice the total
investment of the municipality in public healthcare;
[Note: Garbage collection has been totally outsourced and privatized.]
o Through the mechanism of these agreements, the PSF (Family Health
Plan) has transferred to private neighborhood health associations the
hiring of doctors and nurses - a task that was previously carried out by
municipal health administrators;
o The management and administration of the Community Daycare Centers has
been transferred to neighborhood associations; these do not have any
municipal daycare personnel or infrastructure.
7. The Porto Alegre municipality has agreed to compel the local
population and the municipality to accept growing proportions of the
healthcare expenses abandoned by the federal government.
From 1998 to 2000, the State transfers to the municipality for
healthcare expenses (SUS) dropped from 358.81 million Reals to 299.54
million Reals. At the same time, however, healthcare expenditures
increased to 415.53 million Reals. Hence, for the single year 2000, 115
million Reals were taken out of the municipal budget. With this sum,
4,560 housing units or 953 kilometers of sewer system could have been
built.
8. While the Camata Law - and now the Law of Fiscal Responsibility -
require the municipalities and State governments to limit to 60% of
their liquidities the global value of wages and retirement of municipal
public employees, the Porto Alegre town hall, which implements the
Participatory Budget, proudly claims to have applied the "most
rigorous criteria," limiting to 48% the pay slips of those working
and retired from the Porto Alegre municipal civil service.
This difference of 12% would increase demand and create jobs. Instead,
the municipal funds have been paid out for outsourcing - and hence the
NGO-ization - of the public health services, education and social
assistance.
These are the facts.
Contrary to what is publicly claimed by all-too-many people, the
Participatory Budget is not an "innovative form of democracy."
Rather, it is a major instrument of corporatist policy whose aim is to
integrate and destroy independent labor and popular organizations in
order to implement the measures demanded by international finance
capital: debt payment, reduction of public expenses,
sub-contracting/outsourcing, and privatization.
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