Thursday evening

Dan Boyle and myself barely made it to Dublin airport this evening for our 8pm flight to Beauvais, Paris. We were travelling to a Greens-EFA Group / European Greens Council meeting in Montreuil, Paris from 9th-12th October called “For a Greener Europe.”

The Council meeting is of particular interest to us because the European Greens are going to be discussing their ‘common manifesto’ for next year’s European elections and will be making decisions on the content of the common election campaign that will be launched before the European elections.

I find it exciting to think of the European Greens becoming a more organised and coherent political force. The national Green parties are all dealing with the same political issues, including environmental protection, worker’s rights, fair trade, safe food, energy security, climate change, sustainable transport etc. It is clear that we can learn from each other and work to achieve European-level solutions to many of these political challenges.

The Council meeting is being held in Montreuil, a suburb of Paris that has elected its first ever Green Party Mayor – Dominique Voynet (that’s her in the photo). Dominique is a very experienced politician and was a Minister for the Environment in the past under President Francois Mitterand.

10 October 2008

Friday

The first session today was a very lively one on the topic of “State of Affairs; the EU Commission’s Energy/Climate package”. The speakers at the top table included Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, the French Secretary of State for Ecology and Yannick Jadot, the former Greenpeace Campaign Director, in France, who will run for the Greens in next year’s European elections.

The issues that generated most ‘heat and light’ during the debate were the issues of nuclear energy, the need for binding targets in the area of energy efficiency, the need to avoid allowing governments to dilute the targets set in the EU climate/energy package following pleading from special interest lobbies such as the car industry, and the need to provide more certainty and guaranteed price supports for green investors/businesses.

There was plenty of time for networking between the sessions and I met other Green colleagues from Scotland, Ireland, France, Belgium, Germany, Austria, Belarus, Greece, Brazil and Finland, amongst other countries. The energy and idealism at these events is always very inspiring. Most Greens are visionaries, and when a couple of hundred of them get together under the one roof to share that vision and to translate it into concrete workable policies, it is a very powerful experience indeed.

There is a good deal of pragmatism around at these events as well. Quite a few of the European Green Parties have been in Government at some stage, and their idealism is tempered by an understanding of how important it is to strategize carefully about how to mainstream Green policy proposals.

The food served at lunch time was organic and vegetarian, and there was a lot of interesting green political literature laid out on the tables to read and browse during the break-times. Unfortunately I missed most of a session on ‘Food Security and GMOs’ but picked up a very good CD that had been produced by the European Greens on the issue that I will watch when I get home.

The next major session was a Round Table on “Capitalism – first socio-ecological crisis”. Again the speakers were very interesting and included Mr Pascal Canfin, journalist at “Alternatives Economiques” and Mr Jerome Gleizes, Professor of Economics at Paris XIII University.

The Green Party is the only political party that has fundamentally critiqued “Growth Economics” as unsustainable in the longer term given the finite nature of the planet and its resources. There was a lot of very sobering debate about the dangers of largely self-regulating international financial markets and the fact that many new complex financial products and commodities being traded on those markets contribute little to any ‘real economy’. The challenge facing the European Union in terms of developing an effective response to the current crisis in the international financial markets was emphasized and some proposals were loosely debated.

This is an area that requires urgent political attention within the EU in my opinion. If the EU is to be seen as relevant and politically effective by the citizens of its Member States, then EU membership must deliver added value to citizens in terms of a greater capacity than the national level to provide protection in times of international crises such as the present one.

I think it is regrettable that the EU Commission was seen to be less than satisfied with the Irish Government for its speedy response in providing a guarantee to certain key Irish banks. This action by the Irish Government was absolutely necessary in order to protect the viability and stability of our banking system, which in all likelihood would have been badly damaged had we waited for a European-level response.

Any new EU-level financial regulatory system will have to include a capacity for national-level action within a wider system of EU co-ordination and control. I hope that concrete policy proposals to this effect will discussed at EU Council of Ministers and EU Commission level very soon. I did raise this issue with the Minister for Finance, Brian Lenihan, during the all-night debate in the Seanad about the legislation to provide the guarantee for Irish banks and he seemed in full agreement that a system of financial regulation at a Eurozone-level at the very least, should be a priority for European leaders.

11 October 2008

Saturday

Today was another mild sunny day in Paris. I attended a good debate on Human Rights and the EU, and how to make the EU Human Rights Policy within, and outside of the EU more effective. It was stressed that human rights were not a “fair weather” concept, something that could only afford respect when conditions were favourable. One speaker commented that in dark times particularly, human rights are what preserve civilisation and prevent a ’slide into barbarism’. However, it was also stressed that any political entity such as the EU that wishes to argue credibly for the universality of human rights must begin at home. In particular the areas of the treatment of minorities, asylum seekers and refugees were highlighted as policy areas that should be guided by human rights.

Concerns were expressed about the monitoring of all EU borders by unmanned aircraft and satellites, the finger-printing of all travellers entering the EU and the risk that a “Fortress Europe” might emerge in the future. Speakers called for a “grand EU strategy” which coordinated refugee and immigration policy as well as development, foreign trade and human rights policy in a meaningful way. It was also stressed that terrorists must be fought within the realm of the rule of law, and that terrorism can be further stoked by the use of military force.

One speaker denounced the undermining of basic human rights standards under the pretext of combating terrorism, or through allowing the anti-terror card to make human rights violations seem more acceptable. It was reported that Mary Robinson, former Irish President and UN High Commissioner on Human Rights had argued that today’s human right’s violations are tomorrow’s wars.

Dan Boyle and myself had an informal meeting with Danny Cohn Bendit and several other members of the European Green Party to update them on the Irish position following our rejection of the Lisbon Treaty in June this year. It is interesting to see that there is still a sense of confusion and disbelief on the part of public representatives from other Member States that the Irish people close to reject the Lisbon Treaty. We discussed the implications of this refusal for the European elections next year, and the likely composition of the European Parliament and Commission.

I informed them that I have been nominated to represent the Green Party on the new Oireachtas cross-party sub-committee on the Future of Ireland in Europe which is due to report back and provide recommendations to the Irish Government by the end of November this year. The recommendations of the sub-committee should inform the position of the Irish Government when it attends the December Summit of the EU. At this point greater clarity will be required by other Member States regarding how Ireland chooses to define its future relationship with the EU.

After lunch we were addressed by special guest Wangari Maathai who won a Nobel Peace Prize based on the work that she did in setting up the Green Belt Movement in Kenya. This is a women’s movement that undertakes tree-planting projects to compensate for the environmental damage done by logging companies in Kenya, many of them foreign. She is a very impressive individual and spoke about the challenges facing African countries at present.
I am now in the Press Room writing this blog.

Later on we have a round table on migration and integration policy within the EU and that is followed by a party with live music and Lebanese food. Can’t wait!

Sunday 28th September was the day of the Belarus national elections for the Lower Chamber of its Parliament. I thought it unusual to have elections on a Sunday but was informed that this day was chosen in an attempt to maximise the opportunity for voters to participate.

We were divided into pairs for the Election Monitoring Mission. I was paired with an American woman called ‘Winsome Packer’ who turned out to be a very interesting companion (more about that later!). We were also allocated a young Belarusian interpreter and driver for the day. We were given a map with approximately 30 polling stations that were located in the North East of Minsk. It was made clear that we were expected to visit approximately 10 polling stations during the day to ensure that the correct procedures were being followed. We were given a very detailed handbook containing checklists that had to be completed for each of the polling stations we visited. We met in the foyer of our hotel at 6.45am that morning. The hours of opening of the polling stations were 8am-8pm.

Local assistance
Our driver was a very interesting young guy. His name was Alexander and he drove a large and expensive-looking SUV. He was obviously from a wealthy family and he mentioned that he regularly went snow-boarding in the North of Italy where his sister lived. He had studied some form of engineering in college and was now working in the field of information technology and alternative energy. He spoke very positively about the lot of young people in Belarus. He claimed that jobs were readily available for young people and that the Belarus economy was doing quite well. He seemed very satisfied with Lukashenko’s leadership and also stressed his admiration for Putin. He said that many of his relatives were Russian and that he would have no difficulty in fighting to defend Russia if it were attacked (he had not yet been conscripted to the Belarus army).

Our interpreter was a young Belarusian who was a student of linguistics. She spoke English with a perfect American accent and admitted to us that she had spent the past three summers in the US. She said that applying for a visa to travel abroad was a bit of a lottery but that while some of her friends had been refused, she had always been lucky. She was interested to be told that the European Parliament employed many interpreters and said that she had never considered that possibility as a future employment option. She seemed reluctant to pass comment on Lukashenko’s leadership or the conduct of the elections generally.

Polling stations
Most of the polling stations that we visited during the day were located in colleges, hospitals and factories. The buildings were all quite old and run-down and in need of modernisation. There was very little evidence of any posters outside the polling centres, or of any political parties or candidates around or near the polling centres. There was only one official poster inside each polling centre containing the pictures and names of all four candidates who were contesting the election in North East Minsk. The text under each photo explained what party the candidate belonged to, if any, and listed their annual income and any assets they owned! The photos were very old fashioned and certainly lacked the eye-catching qualities of some of the poster campaigns used by candidates in this country.

In each of the centres, we were greeted by the Chairman of the local electoral committee who was inevitably a male! He introduced us to the remainder of his committee who sat behind a long table and checked voters ID against the list of voters. We were seated at an observer’s table, which was about four metres away from where the officials sat. There were usually one or two domestic observers sitting at the our table but they were usually linked to pro-government parties or groups.

The voters and officials observed the voting protocols with great solemnity. The polling booths reminded me of traditional confession boxes – the voters had to pull a curtain closed behind them before casting their vote in the privacy of the booth. Voter turn-out was about 30% by lunchtime but many voters had already voted several days previously. They took advantage of the “early voting” facility which meant that anyone who couldn’t vote on Sunday 28th was offered a chance to vote early (between 25th and 28th). These early voters were typically students, military and elderly people. However, in some polling stations approximately 50% of those eligible to vote had done so by means of “early voting” and it was impossible for the election monitors to determine whether the voting was above board or not.

Polling stations also offered a “mobile” voting service, where those who were unable to travel to the station had a mobile ballot box brought to them in their homes/in hospital etc. Again it was impossible for us to determine whether these votes had been cast in a way that met the criteria of the OSCE Election Mission.

Levels of co-operation
We were very struck by the levels of co-operation that we received from all of the officials that we met. Most had very poor English but they communicated with us through our interpreter. They were willing to answer our questions and to demonstrate that they were complying to the letter with election protocols. In fact in one polling centre that we visited, the officials were very taken with my American colleague, Winsome Packer, and they told her that she closely resembled US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice!

When we left the polling station, two officials followed us with red carnations – one each for the American, the interpreter and for me. However, it was interesting that when the end of the day approached and the vote was counted, the co-operative attitude of the officials disappeared.

We were not allowed to approach the table at which the votes were being counted but had to sit about four metres away. It was impossible to monitor what was being counted or the accuracy of the eventual results when they were announced. My colleague and I protested and asked through our interpreter for much greater levels of transparency in relation to the process of counting votes. However, our requests were ignored and the official results were posted up in the polling station very soon after that. We registered a complaint with officials at the District Electoral Division and were relieved later to hear that approximately 40% of the other election monitors had experienced the same lack of official co-operation regarding the vote count.

Election results
The overall voter turn-out for the election was 75% but the final results showed that not one single opposition candidate was elected to the Lower Chamber of Parliament. That may be a coincidence. However, the heavy bias in the Belarusian media towards government parties, the lack of information available about opposition candidates and their policy platforms and the lack of transparency about the way in which the vote was counted all give rise to very real concerns about how democratic the process actually was.

My own analysis of the situation is that a great deal of change needs to occur in the political culture of Belarus before genuinely democratic elections can become a reality. The population is unaccustomed to the kind of competition between political ideas that form the basis of any democratic system.

Luksahenko is viewed as a strong leader who, while feared, has brought stability and improved economic conditions to Belarus since 1994. I heard it said while I was there that things are better now under Lukashenko than they were in the Communist era and that people, particularly older people, are afraid to rock the boat.

There are definitely strong traditional ties to Russia, but I sensed amongst its younger people a strong interest in closer links with the European Union. The young people I met were very impressive and very well-educated. Belarus itself is strategically positioned between Russia and the EU. The tensions that have emerged between Lukashenko and Putin and the changing economic relationship between the two countries mean that there may be an opportunity for the EU to continue to patiently develop closer economic, political and cultural ties with Belarus. Its young people will be an important part of any longer-term strategy pursued by the EU in this regard. It would appear therefore that a “carrot and stick” approach by the EU where it sanctions Belarus where appropriate but also offers the “carrot” of subsidized cultural and educational programmes particularly aimed at its younger people may yield important political benefits in the future.