17 - 23 January 2002
Issue No.569
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 17 - 23 January 2002 Issue No.569 |
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The other way
The leaders of the world's nations are behaving oddly: George Bush, when not succumbing to pretzel-induced malaise, is urging his people to revive the "American way of life" by going to the mall -- as if thousands of Afghans had died so they could buy a few more pairs of jeans. Yasser Arafat is cracking down on anyone suspected of contemplating disobedience, to obtain the privilege of negotiating with a government that is not only waging war on his people, but has made it abundantly clear that it will not negotiate with him. And Argentina's president (whoever he may be -- who's counting?) is trying to impose yet more stringent austerity measures on the very people who have suffered most from the country's "structural adjustment" programme.Nor is the future bright for the "private sector" (the pole we oppose intuitively to the state, in a neat but deceptive dichotomy). Enron's collapse illustrates the possible fate of the stock market's brightest stars -- although just as citizens pay the price for their leaders' cavorting, small shareholders have been sacrificed, their savings gone in a puff of smoke worthy of Harry Potter's best efforts, while the larger fish bask in the truly serendipitous glow of having sold their stocks in time.
What remains? International organisations from the UN to the IMF are largely discredited in this part of the world, so we are left only with civil society; and who can say what that is? Despite the musings of political philosophers, when it comes to identifying the beast -- for the purpose of joining it, say -- it becomes remarkably elusive. Can one step out into the street and ask for directions? Can one belong without knowing it? Perhaps the answer is simple. The teenagers facing riot police from Seattle to Genoa, or the people banging pots and pans in the streets of Buenos Aires, are civil society. The self-appointed international observers who defied their governments' indifference and went to Palestine -- they are civil society. And perhaps that is all it takes to become a member: the knowledge that something is very wrong, and that the people designated as our representatives are doing less than nothing to make it right.
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