By Matti Kohonen, Tax Justice Network, NIGD

The FIM had already taken place twice before the 2005 event, and so it had gathered a sort of a momentum behind it in terms of participation from various civil society networks. So this fact drew me to attend it in the most immediate sense, a place to network and find out about new initiatives.

My idea of the FIM before I went there was that it would be a space organised for civil society, that would facilitate the emergence of civil society initiatives to the political arena. The difference between the WSF process mainly is that at the WSF no such immediate policy proposals are made, where as the FIM was geared for exactly that. Without the existence of social forums, I think initiatives like FIM would be weaker, since they could not benefit from the ideas expressed at social forums. At FIM as I expected a group of NGOs and social movements were geared to come up with clear policy proposals. How this took place was a bit different than what I thought.

At FIM there were six tracks, all of which had been assigned a track co-ordinator. The problem exactly arose in here, the power of one single person to summarise all of the presentations was limiting the representation of initiatives in the outcomes. The second aspect of the outcomes was restricted by the fact of who was able to make it to Montreal. The small number of southern participants didn’t seem to go well with the aspirations of the forum.

The track in which I participated was the fifth one, 'How to democratically regulate the global economy?' In this track, there was a split between the participants from capacity-building, and systemic change of the structures of the institutions that act to govern and regulate the global economy. Here we experienced a clear split between those who advocate for increased and broader capacity building towards participating in the proceedings of existing institutions that are supposed to regulate the global economy, and the ones who demanded systemic change to those very same institutions and the foundation of new regulatory bodies on the global level, or bolstering the role of more democratic bodies such as the UN Economic and Social Council.

In the concluding workshop of that track, I mentioned that capacity building for engaging with existing institutions has serious short falls, since if these institutions don't execute the voice of the people. These institutions are just so, then no matter how much you engage you get nowhere. This was again not completely understood by all the participants, who were very much in the capacity building paradigm, including the track co-ordinator who summarised the track according to her understanding of the situation, which was not much altered by the conference itself. At the WSF all proposals seem to revolve around different ideas of systemic change and this strong coalition for capacity building amazed me.

I did my presentation in one of the panel sessions, chaired by Sony Kapoor. There I presented that financial flows have diversified, and they do not correspond to monetary transactions (currency or capital flows). A lot of trade is actually driven by shifting money to lower tax jurisdictions. Essentially the nature of money has changed with neo-liberalism, money is present in different forms that escape all regulation and transparency. This workshop for example was not taken up upon the track co-ordinator at all in the final proposals, though all the track proposals were supposed to be summarised and relayed to her, nor was the feedback session to conclude the track very structured either.

I also did a workshop, which I simply requested two weeks before the start of the FIM, so this was a sort of an 'open space' within the FIM. There was a LSE student on Caribbean trade issues, and a business guy about his company registration also presenting, so a pretty diverse crowd. So I presented my piece on the 'offshore shadow economy' (systemic issues paradigm) and this LSE student presented trade negotiations at the Caribbean (capacity building paradigm). The third presentation wanted to establish company registration globally, but had no clue of how to administer such a registrar democratically. The dialogue between the trade negotiation presentation was very interesting, especially since that part of the world is full of tax havens, and we ended up agreeing on a number of points. The two paradigms do go together at least on this practical level. She said that civil society awareness on the Doha round was much better than on the previous trade rounds, but that it didn't change much the outcomes for that particular region in terms of results. These kinds of regionally based strategic case studies of movements advocating for one and other paradigm might bridge the gap between the approaches and illuminate the debate. If work needs to be done in terms of comparisons between the two paradigms in order to resolve this crisis of understanding of each other’s points, I suggest the ACP countries need to be looked at very carefully, and why not start with the Caribbean, with its persistence of endemic poverty and high-class tax havens side-by side.

In conclusion, I can only quote Cândido Grzybowsky, in his words (I hope his final speech about the FIM made more public), that at the FIM many issues were not even touched, but it's to do with a different crowd than the WSF. There was no mention of the social and solidarity based economy, which is one of the strong points that Candido supports, and the area in which I do my research in Ghana. On the other hand, we had issues like co-operation between parliamentarians and civil society and even military and civil society that do not so easily emerge (esp. the military!!) at the WSF. They are fruitful avenues, esp. the parliamentarians' initiatives, something on which Heidi Hautala (Finnish Green MEP) was a key note speaker. The participation of parliamentarians at the WSF is not as easy since the WSF shouldn’t be a party political space, but they should be encouraged further as individuals to come along. Maybe even the military has a role in global democracy, in making them more civil maybe. Candido's speech should be one of the documents on which the FIM needs to reflect its own role, if it is to champion initiatives from civil society to the political arena. On the documentation of the FIM, it's far behind the WSF style where most sessions at least try to document what happened. Documentation can bridge the gap of actual personal participation in a very crucial way, and bring more people to the process. Other ways are wider public awareness initiatives through media documentaries, independent media and libraries. These are avenues currently considered by actors within the WSF.

So I hope for the next round we make more concrete proposals instead of trying to twist existing mediums. Mass media can’t be made more ‘bottom up’ because of centralised ownership, just to take apart one idea that was presentment as a conclusion. Unless of course you come up with a mass-media that is owned and run differently, such as using podcasting and libraries more widely and more creatively. We should make some criteria for UN reform (e.g. what percentage of world population present at the security council or whatever) and not just use words like accountability that are always twisted in reality. We need to define 'democratic accountability' not just use such fancy terms that have no substance but a fancy shape. This should be the task of civil society, so I think we are still searching the role of global Civil Society as a result of the FIM, which I think was a good opportunity to get a bit further.

I hope the next FIM like conference could be held in the South, e.g. Dakar in 2007, since Montreal being francophone can more easily link up with Dakar, and in 2007 the WSF will be held in Nairobi, and the Helsinki Conference in Dar Es Salam. So this is a challenge I would like to give to the organisers of the FIM along with my other comments.