STRAIGHT FROM THE BIG CITY

Fighting five economic wars
IKE ‘KA IKING” SEÑERES

I was part of the 1996 Manila APEC Summit management team and what I will never forget from that experience is the lesson that it is possible to bring hostile parties to a friendly forum, for as long as the proper protocols are followed. At that time, there were three “Chinas”, and it was very difficult to bring them together in one gathering.
**
The key to the successful protocol is the language used, and the manner of recognizing the participating parties. First of all, it was made clear that APEC was a meeting of “economies”, meaning that it was not a meeting of countries. Right away that solved the issue of People’s China not recognizing Taiwan as a country. It also qualified Hong Kong to join, being a colony at that time. To give way to People’s China , Taiwan was recognized as “Chinese Taipei”.
**
Today, eleven years later, we are still faced with a situation wherein all kinds of organizations in our country that are fighting many forms of social problems are unable to come together in one friendly forum, to thresh out differences among each other on one hand, and to decide to work together on the other hand. This is the vision that I have for the United National Integrated Development Alliance (UNIDA), a forum of development oriented organizations, patterned after the APEC model.
**
As an initial step, I have identified five technical working groups (TWGs) wherein the member organizations could work together in solving five economic “wars”, namely the “wars” against hunger, poverty, criminality, sickness and homelessness. It appears that the “war” against environmental degradation cuts across all these five economic “enemies”.
**
Following the APEC model, the chairmanship of these TWGs will be rotated among the member organizations, by way of consensus. We have already identified possible chairs for hunger, poverty and criminality, but we are still scouting for organizations that could chair sickness and homelessness. I am inviting all development oriented organizations to join UNIDA.

** For more information about public governance, email iseneres@yahoo.com