Peace brokering

PHNOM PENH — Is it possible to have peace? The wars in Afghanistan, Iran, the two Koreas, the Nepalese political parties, between India and Pakistan are going on. Governments clash with armaments to demolish one another, in effect, decimating populations, leaving survivors living in terror and poverty, and properties ravaged. Can there be peace by holding dialogues aimed to help remove the tensions, make democracy work, and put an end to the region’s conflicts?

The answer is a resounding yes, as evidenced by the signing of the Phnom Penh Accord by leaders of Asian political parties participating in the 10th founding year celebration and sixth general assembly of the International Conference of Asian Political Parties (ICAPP) held last week at the Peace Palace in Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia.

Three hundred twenty-six delegates representing 89 political parties from 36 countries in Asia, including Afghanistan, Australia, Bahrain, Bhutan, China, Iraq, Israel, Japan, North and South Korea, Uganda, Kyrgyzstan, Cambodia, Thailand, Laos, Malaysia, Mongolia, India, Pakistan, Tonga, Nepal, Philippines, Russia, Syria, Indonesia and Vietnam, attended the conference.

The ICAPP is a dream that materialized for Jose de Venecia Jr.; its inaugural meeting was held in Manila in 1960. Now founding chairman and co-chairman of the ICAPP standing committee, de Venecia, together with Korea’s Chung Eui-yong, secretary general and co-chair of the standing committee, expressed that at first, very few people thought it would be possible to bring together competing governing, opposition and independent political parties in Northeast Asia, Southeast Asia, Central Asia, West Asia, the Middle East and Oceania. The succeeding assemblies that followed had expanded in membership and, turned out, according to de Venecia and Chung Eui-yong, to be “visionary, cordial, constructive and successful. Simply by bringing together Asia’s political leaders in fraternal assemblies regularly, the ICAPP has become a positive force for mutual understanding among Asian countries.” Now ICAPP counts 300 political parties in the region with diverse political and ideological backgrounds.

The ICAPP standing committee, composed of l8 leading political parties, has been meeting regularly, more than twice a year since 2004, to organize activities, special conferences and workshops. In Phnom Penh last week, aside from the speeches made by political party leaders, there were new relevant activities, such as separate summits for women and the youth, discussion on global-debt-for environment to finance climate change, and sponsoring a proposal to the United Nations General Assembly for a global fund to finance anti-poverty programs.

At Phnom Penh the Centrist Asia Pacific Democrats International (CAPDI), a sister organization of ICAPP, was inaugurated. The organization is the first in the Asia Pacific to bring together political parties and institutions of civil society. It will become the bridge between centrist parties and the voluntary associations mediating between the individual and the state — in Asia and the Pacific Rim.

It is not only the ending of war that the ICCAP want to come to an end. Environmental protection has become important. According to De Venecia, “through the ICAPP, the IESCO (an international organization devoted to environment safety) and CAPDI, we can try our utmost and perhaps see to it that ecological safety - safeguards against environmental degradation - and green public policies - are written into every national constitution - every political party’s platform and every civil society charter.”    

Strategies to resolve conflicts were not discussed at the Phnom Penh plenary sessions, which were devoted to speeches, where delegates talked about problems in their countries, about government’s annihilation policies. No solutions were offered. Neither dissenting opinions nor arguments were expressed. The sessions were a listening post.

Heads of parties were called for quiet discussions in private rooms. Standing committee members, led by De Venecia, stayed up until 2 in the morning of the last day of the conference to talk with the leaders of three contending parties for the past 14 years. At the meeting was Nepalese Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal, who chairs the Communist Party of Nepal, a Marxist-Leninist party that is in a three-way fight with the CPN-Maoist group and the Congress Party to take control of the government. PM Nepal agreed to have a CAPDI peace delegation to Katmandu in January.

De Venecia told media that CAPDI Secretary Gen. Mushahid Hussain Sayed of Pakistan was optimistic that the strife among the Nepal parties could begin to thaw in Cambodia. Mr. Sahed himself had run but lost as presidential candidate in the last Pakistani election after the assassination of presidential candidate Benazir Bhutto, who happened to be present at the first ICAPP meeting in Manila.

Cambodia Prime Minister Hun Sen, Deputy Premier Sok and Cambodian Parliamentary leaders Heng Samrin and Chea Sim were all smiles when De Venecia made references on several occasions to their country’s serving as a model for strife resolution. Three parties - the Royal Family’s and the armed forces and the Cambodian Political Party, along with FUNCINPEC (National United Front for an Independent, Neutral, Peaceful, and Cooperative Cambodia) worked together to form a government that is successfully involved in reconstruction efforts in a democratic society.

De Venecia said efforts are now directed at possible friendly relations between North and South Korea.

He stayed another two days in Cambodia after the conference to join the Peace Commission to the Cambodia-Thailand border to see what peaceful agreements can be made.

Some observers have wondered about the ideological direction of ICAPP, since many of its member parties are communist, if not left-leaning. De Venecia said the Phnom Penh Accord rejects every type of extremist politics, isolates those who espouse intolerance and hatred, advocate terrorism, separatism and conflict in the name of ideology and religion. “We need to prove that piecemeal evolution of the political system - rather than abrupt and violent change - gives representative institutions a better chance to take hold and we need to restore to our fledgling democracies their meaning and their sense of purpose.”

CAPDI, said De Venecia, “is a grouping to which all Asian political parties and civil society associations with a centrist orientation may adhere. . . It is an instrument of solidarity for the Asia Pacific community - linking our separate countries in economic, cultural, political and mutual security cooperation, while establishing linkages with the other regions of the world.”

The ICAPP story is clearly led by De Venecia, who said after the Phnom Penh conference, “I’m exhausted, but happy.” It was very obvious how the delegates admired and respected him. He flexed his muscles to trek the many more miles for him and his ICAPP “buddies” to take before there can be true and lasting peace. To be solved are drawn-out conflicts between Israel and Palestine, and the Philippine government and Muslim separatist factions.

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