PARTICIPATORY DEMOCRACY vs REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY
We as citizens of the United States observe politics from afar and the vast majority of us may participate in the political process only to the extent that we go to the polls once a year to vote. We may endeavor to follow the news accounts of our nation's politics as they unfold, and of the consequences those political actions yield, but we have little power to influence our "democratically" elected officials. Perhaps we write an occasional letter to our senator or representative, but we almost inevitably receive a vague and impersonal response explaining why they will vote in our opposition.
Over the decades, our representative democracy has been systematically undermined and has ultimately failed in preserving the well being of the people of this nation. The system that the founding fathers painstakingly devised in order to best serve the interests and the will of the people has been corrupted and the systems of checks and balances on power that they instituted have been stripped away. Most of us accept this reality as being beyond our control and continue to observe, comment, and complain without aspiring to achieving any real change, without any hope of instituting a new system of governance that would instead take directly into account your views, and the views of your neighbors, and would empower you to make real positive change possible in your communities.
This site will attempt to explore in depth the places in the world where people are successfully bringing about that type of change in the face of similar odds, where an alternate form of democracy, which is called participatory or direct democracy, is taking root. Initiative, referendum & recall, community councils, and grassroots organizing are but a few ways in which direct/participatory democracy is achieving great success around the world.
Our system of representative democracy does not admit the voice of the people into congressional halls, the high courts, or the oval office where our rights and our liberties are being sold out from underneath us. Our local leaders and activists in our communities, and even those local elected officials who may have the best of intentions are for the most part powerless to make real positive change happen in our neighborhoods, towns and villages when there is so much corruption from above.
In places like Venezuela, Argentina, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Ecuador, Brazil, South Africa, India, and the Phillipines, new experiments in grass roots community based governance are taking place. There is much to be learned from these and other examples of participatory democracy from around the world when we try to examine how this grass-roots based governance could begin to take root here in our own country in order to alter our political system so that it might better serve the American people.
In the hope that one day we can become a nation working together as a united people practicing true democracy as true equals, we open this forum…
Enough signatures have been collected to put a referendum on water rights on the ballot next year in Colombia. This is the result of a strong grassroots effort. The referendum would establish water as a basic right and protect water resources from privatization. Another more contentious initiative that will be put on the ballot next year would amend the country's constitution in order to allow President Alvaro Uribe to run for a third consecutive term in 2010. When Hugo Chavez of Venezuela attempted to include a similar measure on term limits in a referendum package of constitutional reforms, he was widely criticized by his opponents as being an authoritarian dictator. Some are now levelling the same criticism at Alvaro Uribe of Colombia for his refusal to rule out a third term and denounce the referendum. Stay tuned, for we will be posting more about that referendum in the near future. - EditorOver Two Million Citizens Supported Water Referendum
Approximately one thousand people marched from the National University of Colombia to the National Registry in Bogota to submitt 2,044,267 signatures supporting the Water Referendum. A colourful bus full of children from different schools of the city, like guardians of their future, closed the march. Colombian music performed by young people in stilts gave it a joyful and carnival atmosphere. At 3 pm aqueduct workers, environmentalists, indigenous people, public service supporters, and men and women of various ages entered, like a water torrent, the National Registry, to submit the signatures to the National Registrar. Without speeches and with little formalities, the diversity of expressions supporting this Referendum were shown, through moving statements of women of various ages; a little girl, an indigenous women.
Rafael Colmenares, spokesperson of the National Committee in Defense of Water and Life read the letter to the Registrar.
This popular initiative started two years ago and has managed to join different local, regional and national initiatives in defense of water and life. The second period of collecting signatures started on March 14, 2008. It was a huge challenge; signatures corresponding to at least 5% of the people authorized to vote needed to be collected in six months, approximately 1.4 million signatures. During this six months it was necessary to go to the streets and rivers to carry out the task.
However, it wasn´t difficult to get the support of the people. How can someone oppose to water being considered a fundamental right? Who doesn´t want to protect strategic ecosystems? How can someone accept the threats of water privatization?
Finally, the task was carried out, the Colombian people answered the call for water. Every day, different people approached the tents located at big cities and the regional comittee in defense of water and life to join the campaign, to collect signatures and submit them. This was a way of stating "here we are and will be, we commit to water, to life and to the future of our children and grandchildren".
The National Registry will rule on this issue next month, so we are still alert to the challenges to the Referendum and the movement in defense of water and life. That small river born on February 14^th , 2007, is a huge river now, impossible to dam.
By Tatiana Roa Avendaño, www.censat.org.
Global struggles for water have demonstrated that it will soon become, if it is not already, the most sought after commodity. Unlike petroleum or any other fuel, it is a resource that has no substitute, and is completely necessary for human survival. With enhanced contamination and corporate controls threatening water security all over the world, the people must have the power to decide how to solve this problem and manage themselves this resource that belongs to them.
Governments in South America have in many cases acquiesced to the demands of corporate lenders by relinquishing control of city water systems to foreign investors. As Bechtel and its subsidiaries jack up the prices, more people find themselves unable to pay water bills. The article below points out the problems faced by the people of Ecuador and suggests that the people take direct democratic control of the essential resource. The article should also compel a reader to ask who owns the water that we use and consume on a daily basis, and who will have control in the future when supplies are more scarce? - Editor
Who Controls Ecuador's Water?
by Sara Grusky, Food & Water Watch October 30, 2007 - Americas Program, Center for International Policy (CIP) americas.irc-online.org
It is a well kept secret that Bechtel won a contract to privatize the water in Ecuador's largest city, Guayaquil, just months after the massive citizen protests that threw Bechtel out of Bolivia. In October 2000, a local Bechtel subsidiary, Interagua, signed a 30-year concession contract to run the water and sanitation services in Guayaquil. The privatization process was promoted by loans from the Inter-American Development Bank and a guarantee from the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA), a World Bank agency. Now, more than six years later, the residents of Guayaquil are demanding damages from the company for water contamination, an end to water cut-offs, and a return to local, public control.
On Sept. 28 residents in Guayaquil gathered in front of the offices of the undersecretary of the economy to protest the contract. On Oct.18 thousands gathered to proclaim that water is a human right, demanding that their "water debts" are forgiven and that their water services are reconnected. A local advocacy organization, the Observatorio Cuidadano de Servicios Publicos (Citizen's Observatory of Public Services), is seeking to stop the water cut-offs through legal action.
One in six people in the world lack access to clean and affordable water and thousands of children die of water-borne diseases every day. Corporations like Bechtel seek to profit from providing water, often elevating the narrow interests of their companies and its shareholders above social and environmental goals. Around the world, privatization has led to large rate hikes and poor service, while failing to solve the problem of lack of access, leaving the poorest communities with no water services at all. This is now the situation in Guayaquil, where there are hundreds of documented complaints due to the appalling service of Bechtel's subsidiary, Interagua. The citizens of Guayaquil are demanding accountability from the company. The Ecuadorian regulatory agency ECAPAG recently fined Interagua $1.5 million for contractual violations. Some of the problems that face the residents of Guayaquil include: - Repeated residential water cut-offs for up to 12, 24, 36, or more hours at a time;
- Residential water cut-offs of senior citizens and other low-income residents due to inability to pay;
- Failure to extend services to specific neighborhoods, especially low-income residents;
- Failure to meet contractual obligations for rehabilitation and expansion of services;
- Public health problems such as respiratory problems, skin rashes, asthma, and diarrhea due to lack of wastewater treatment;
- Environmental contamination due to lack of wastewater treatment;
- Hepatitis A outbreak in June 2005, investigated by local authorities (Commission for Civic Control and the Public Defender's office) who concluded that the water was "not apt for human consumption."
The FailureIn 2006, Bechtel's total revenue amounted to $20.5 billion and Interagua's operations in Guayaquil earned $300 million in revenue. Despite these profits, Interagua did not initiate the rehabilitation programs it had promised. Concerns and complaints mounted over broken pipelines, floods due to malfunctioning sewage systems, exorbitant water rates, poor water quality, and environmental damage due to the lack of wastewater treatment during this first five-year period. Lack of investment in storm drainage forced many residents to suffer the health effects of constant flooding. In 2002 the company was treating only 5% of the sewage and releasing the rest, including fecal material, and domestic and industrial waste directly into the local river, Guayas. 1 The health department began to issue reports documenting health problems that children were experiencing in communities located north of the city, such as Acuarelas del Río and Guayacanes, where the sewage was being released. The health problems included skin rashes, asthma, and gastric problems such as diarrhea. Along with overflowing sewage and illegal dumping, unsafe tap water has also contributed to the serious health crisis. Residents complain about the "nauseating" and "unbearable" odor coming from the tap water.2 Interagua has refused to make public information regarding water quality. In June 2005 over 150 children were infected with Hepatitis A from drinking dirty tap water. The outbreak was concentrated around the western suburbs of Guayaquil where 76% of residents described their water as cloudy and foul-smelling. Interagua denied responsibility for the outbreak but studies have shown that it was a combination of the nonfunctional sewage system and poor water quality that contributed ultimately to the outbreak of Hepatitis A.3 The Commission for Civic Control and the Public Defender's office declared that Interagua held some responsibility for the Hepatitis A outbreak and concluded that the water was "not fit for human consumption." But problems persist including repeated cut-offs of water service that last for more than 24 hours, which is illegal unless the company provides alternative sources of water for the residents. In some areas Interagua cut the water for 23 hours a day in order to evade the responsibility of providing an alternative water source. In addition, the company continues to cut off water services when consumers accumulate too much debt.
Taking Back Control
Guarantees and loans provided by the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank have ensured a profitable investment for one of the world's most influential corporations, Bechtel. But, similar to the experience of many other cities across the world, water privatization has not solved water problems in Guayaquil. Instead, Bechtel has delivered water not suitable for drinking, refused to expand access to services, cut off water to those unable to pay, and neglected responsibilities to provide wastewater treatment compromising the local environment and public health.
The Observatorio Cuidadano de Servicios Públicos is working tirelessly to document Bechtel's contract violations. The group—which brings together numerous civil society organizations in Guayaquil to monitor and help improve public services—has exposed the constitutional, legal, and contractual violations of Interagua and is working to ensure that action is taken. They will continue to organize and demand that water and other public services be locally and publicly owned, controlled, and managed with active citizen oversight and participation.
The recognition of water as a human right and the push for citizen oversight and participation in public services is also being acknowledged and supported on an international scale. The United Nations Committee on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights adopted the human right to water on Nov. 26, 2002 and the United Nations Development Program's Human Development Report of 2006 calls on all governments to enshrine the right to water in enabling legislation. The human right to water is indispensable for leading a life of human dignity. Everyone should have secure access to sufficient safe water and sanitation to meet their basic human needs. To ensure that safe and affordable water is available to the 1.2 billion people across the globe that currently do not have proper access, international financial institutions and aid agencies need to abandon failed policies and stop pushing countries to privatize water services. Governments need to involve residents in solutions and recognize the human right to clean and affordable water. Sara Grusky is a senior organizer with the Water for All Campaign at Food & Water Watch (http://www.fwwatch.org/). She works with communities and organizations across the Americas that are working to replace corporate control of their water resources with local democratic control. She can be reached at sgrusky@fwwatch.org.
To sign-on to a letter to Bechtel regarding their operation in Ecuador contact Sara Grusky at: sgrusky@fwwatch.org
Also see these related articles (in spanish): http://www.radiomundoreal.fm/rmr/?q=es/node/9203 http://www.nodo50.org/opcion/116/pais.htm
And this news in today from Guayaquil: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7208591.stm
