Strasbourg, 08/10/2012 (Agence Europe) - The Welfare State, which was created to eradicate poverty, has become a mechanism that is of use to well organised, healthy people, said Thorbjorn Jagland, Secretary General of the Council of Europe, in his opening speech for the first World Forum for Democracy to be held in Strasbourg until Thursday 11 October. Speaking on Monday 8 October, Jagland did not avoid any of the aspects of the current confidence crisis taking place towards what has often been defined as the least bad of political regimes, given that the perfect one cannot be found. Although democracy is struggling to take hold in the Arab Spring countries, it is also having a hard time in countries where it is a long-standing feature. Jagland said that our older model is in difficulty as citizens are placing less and less trust in it, balk at joining political parties, do not turn out as well for voting while, on the other side of the Mediterranean, there is discontent because democracy is taking time to and socio-economic problems persist.
In the middle of all that, a ridiculous and offensive film has again caused trouble to flare up in the Muslim world, Jagland continued, going on to affirm that it is time to separate terrorism from religion. One only has to look at the Irish example, he said, that had never been described as “Christian”. Terrorism, he said, is terrorism and that is all there is to it. One could feel he had invested himself in the forum which had long been prepared under the code name “Davos of Democracy”.
Enthusiasm waned somewhat with the speech by Roland Ries, Mayor and Senator (PS) of the town. One would have liked him not to dodge the subject of President François Hollande's absence, an absence that is deplored in the corridors of the Council of Europe and in the streets of Strasbourg. Hollande, who had stated he would not be attending in September, could have been replaced by Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault or by Laurent Fabius, Foreign Minister, it is murmured, as that would have given a meaning to the declarations from the highest summit of the French State in favour of Strasbourg, as the European Parliament's unshakeable seat and capital of human rights. Instead, it was Bernard Cazeneuve, Minister for European Affairs, who spoke in their stead, finally simply setting out the history of the Council of Europe and calling for the texts of the different speeches to be rapidly communicated to the ministers so that they might study them. Minimum service ….
Ban Ki-moon, Secretary General of the United Nations and a prestigious guest at this opening ceremony, was true to form - charming, brilliant and perfectly diplomatic. Evoking the post-war Europe, he highlighted the Strasbourg example of reconciliation between two peoples - Germany and France - that were enemies for a long time but now reconciled. He said it was difficult to imagine in 1949, when the Council of Europe was created, that Europe should become the flagship of democracy that it is today. He confirmed that the difference between the models of yesteryear and today's reality was the biggest challenge that they have ever had to face. Citing Albert Einstein, Jagland had said a few minutes earlier that the brain was like a parachute - that it only worked when it was open. He called upon the participants to take part in a 360° brainstorming around the world. Ban Ki-moon referred to remarks by Robert Schuman for whom the Council of Europe was a laboratory for experiments on European cooperation, giving the institution the henceforth universal vocation of being a testing ground for global cooperation.
The voice from elsewhere that followed Ban Ki-moon was like a small hurricane in places little used to the kind of decision-making that makes everything shake. The Nobel Prizewinner for Peace 2011, young Yemenite Tawakkol Karman, hoped that the World Forum for Democracy would result in practical and pragmatic mechanisms allowing fundamental texts, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the European Convention on Human Rights, to become binding documents and not just honour pacts. Today, she said in a clear voice, the United Nations are bound hand and foot when it comes to dealing with despotic regimes. She spoke out in favour of an institution under the auspices of which all men and women may be supported in their fight for democracy. To this request launched from “Strasbourg, a town of human rights”, she made by way of conclusion a call for ethical and moral support to be given to the Syrian people in the face of massacres committed by the Bashar al-Assad regime. And because she is a pragmatic woman that knows what the reality of fighting is, she spoke out against what she called “international paralysis” and called for the creation of humanitarian corridors for saving men, women and children. She asked Ban Ki-moon and Thorbjorn Jagland, and all the other decision-makers of this world, whether she is in contradiction with human rights when asking for that. She concluded by saying they should all prove the good intentions that they express everyday. The public's reaction to this was a standing ovation. (VL/transl.jl)