Chávez Visit Adds Controversy to World Social Forum

  
The Associated Press reported on January 27 that Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez participated in the World Social Forum. This is sure to add more fuel to anti-Chávez protests both in Venezuela and Miami. It is just for this reason that the World Social Forum resisted having Chávez at the event and in previous years was cautious about having high-profile political leaders attend at all. In truth, Chávez was invited by the State Legislature and has proved to be a delicate, if not embarrassing guest.

Perhaps the most sensitive part of the visit was Chávez's support for an official plebiscite on participation in the FTAA negotiations-this as the Venezuelan opposition calls for its own plebiscite to remove him from office. For this and other reasons, the local press correctly reported that Chávez had stolen the limelight from the forum. He also took some of the impact from Brazilian President Luiz Inácio da Silva's appearance at the Davos World Economic Forum. Lula wanted to bring Porto Alegre to Davos, but Chávez stole the show. As reported by the AP, one of the WSF's founders, Oded Grajew, said that organizers were not embarrassed by Chávez's decision to come, but warned the Venezuelan leader not to use the event for self-promotion. "He will get no sympathy from anyone at the forum if he uses it to capitalize for his own benefit," said Grajew, a progressive business leader identified with Lula's Workers Party. But that in fact is what has happened, much to the chagrin of many of the less ideological participants.

As reported earlier, the question of an official Brazilian plebiscite against the FTAA is being used by parties to the left of Lula's Workers Party as a way to embarrass the new government and underscore the concern of many of Lula's supporters that he is governing too much from the center. Lula spent a good part of his "dialogue" with the World Social Forum on Friday trying to explain the importance of negotiating from a position of strength and conviction. He presented the same ideas in Davos with candidly, simply and directly. Meanwhile, in Porto Alegre, the PSTU party, the largest leftist group not to join Lula's electoral coalition, was collecting thousands of signatures demanding an official anti-FTAA plebiscite. Chávez's remarks were timely for Brazil and fan the concerns of many of Lula's most ardent supporters that their president is moving quickly to the center.

In the midst of such controversies as the impending war with Iraq and the role of Hugo Chávez, the WSF has had a hard time promoting its basic purpose: to bring people from around the world together to discuss concrete alternatives to corporate-led growth. Although many people publicly defend the need to maintain the forum in Porto Alegre, there is a feeling here that moving it to India in 2004 would be refreshing. This feeling is heightened by the sense of poor organization and planning that has plagued the 2003 meeting.

In the meantime, we can be sure that Brazil's Workers Party breathed a sigh of relief when Hugo Chávez got back on his plane.