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We love, personally, Brazil - and have many friends in this stirring giant of a country. www.SustainabiliTank.info has much to thank to Brazil since our early visits to the country close to 35 years ago. Our Brazil button on this web - shows this only in small part. It was in Brazil we learned about the power Renewable Energy has to free us of all those effects that result from the addiction to petroleum. Furthermore, it was a nuclear physicist, Prof. Jose Goldemberg of Sao Paulo who made it clear to us, already then, that nuclear power is no solution. It was Dr. Jaime Rothstein of Sondotecnica, Rio de Janeiro, who already then showed us how the economy can benefit from moving away from oil imports and grow from local programs. He wrote those ideas up still at the time that Brazil was run by Generals and I witnessed how he presented his ideas to them and they saw the clear National interest in what he was saying.

We also love Fortaleza - the town in the State of Ceara, Northeast of Brazil - pushing 3 million people (in reality nobody knows the exact number of inhabitants - this because of the fact that the boom in the city has attracted additional people from the country-side) and that sits on the “shoulder” of Brazil. We were introduced to this town by Professor Jose Oswaldo Carioca who was the Rapporteur from Brazil, on topics of Biomass, to the preparatory meeting of the UN Conference on New And Renewable Sources of Energy (UNCNRSE - Nairobi, 1981). We have been many times to Fortaleza - and kept up contact with him and his people from the University of Ceara - the last time at the meeting in November 2007 that dealt with Green Chemistry.

Brazil’s secret is that with 185 million people it is dependent on the US only for 2.5 percent of its gross national product, compared with 25 percent of G.N.P. for Mexican exports - so, if the US economy slows down it does not have to have a major impact on Brazil. Brazil has a huge internal market, and the moment former President - Professor Henrique Cardozo - understood this - and made a go for developing this market by helping the poor and not only worry about the rich, and when his successor - “Lula” (Fernando Henrique Cardoso) of labor-leader fame, continued these policies of respecting the conventional economy while at the same time enhancing the social aspects of the country - Brazil started to boom. Brazil today is the Latin progressing giant that did not get stuck in populism rhetoric, but did go directly for fattening up the ranks of its middle class.

We follow on this website the Brazilian effort to open further doors to its economy in the US - as spearheaded by its diplomats and business people at the Brazilian-American Chamber of Commerce (BACC) headquartered in New York. Today I was full of surprise by the practical recognition of The New York Times - as evidenced by the Center-Front-Page serious reporting on Brazil that originated in Fortaleza. Brazil is following China and India, as third developing country that makes progress by having turned to help its own poor people. Sure, with a population only as big as 1/6.5 as the two larger upstarts, but with a territory their size, and natural riches that are immense, it has the potential to move forefront lined up with these other two giants. As it is becoming also an oil power - the sky is the limit - and the Brazilian diplomacy starts showing its muscle. So, the article’s timing, as a follow up to the crash of the WTO negotiations, should be viewed as a warning to the US that some countries - now led by China, India, and Brazil, will not allow themselves pushed around by a US-EU leadership that thinks very little of the impact of economic decisions on those “others.” China, India, and Mexico will suffer if the US and EU economies falter, but not Brazil. The Brazilians will just simply continue with their “Bolsa Familia” social programs and their successful microcredit programs, spearheaded by government banks like the Bank of the Northeast, and get more and more people to buy refrigerators and TVs. They will expand electricity use, and will drive using biofuels. They seriously develop solar, wind, and sea-wave technologies - and at their own pace the huge oil resource they found off-shore. I said “at their own pace,” because they are in no hurry to deplete those resources because others want to buy the oil. They will release some of this oil to the market - and this as refined products - just about as much as they think that is needed as funds for their national development program. We hope that they will not allow anyone to push them beyond as far as they find it to be to their own interest. Exporting soy beans and products, as well as other agricultural products, and ores, is just fine. They are going also for high-tech and medicines. All what they want is access to markets - like the ethanol market in the US and in Europe. If these are not forthcoming, there is no push to give in to demands by other economic powers. So, please read the following article carefully - so it is getting clear why Brazil can indeed afford to stand up to these other powers.

Strong Economy Propels Brazil to World Stage. Strong Economy Propels Brazil Into Long-Anticipated Global Role.

By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO
Published: July 31, 2008, The New York Times - FRONT PAGE MAJOR ARTICLE.

From FORTALEZA, Brazil — Desperate to escape her hand-to-mouth existence in one of Brazil’s poorest regions, Maria Benedita Sousa used a small loan five years ago to buy two sewing machines and start her own business making women’s underwear. Also - Recent oil discoveries off the coast of Rio de Janeiro State have led to a construction boom in the port town of Angra dos Reis.

Riding a Wave of Growth:

Today Ms. Sousa, a mother of three who started out working in a jeans factory making minimum wage, employs 25 people in a modest two-room factory that produces 55,000 pairs of cotton underwear a month. She bought and renovated a house for her family and is now thinking of buying a second car. Her daughter, who is studying to be a pharmacist, could be the first family member to finish college.

“You can’t imagine the happiness I am feeling,” Ms. Sousa, 43, said from the floor of her business, Big Mateus, named after a son. “I am someone who came from the countryside to the city. I battled and battled, and today my children are studying, with one in college and two others in school. It’s a gift from God.”

Today her country is lifting itself up in much the same way. Brazil, South America’s largest economy, is finally poised to realize its long-anticipated potential as a global player, economists say, as the country rides its biggest economic expansion in three decades.

That growth is being felt in nearly all parts of the economy, creating a new class of super rich even as people like Ms. Sousa lift themselves into an expanding middle class.

It has also given Brazil new swagger, providing it, for instance, with greater leverage to push for a tougher bargain with the United States and Europe in global trade talks. After seven years, those negotiations finally broke down this week over demands by India and China for safeguards for their farmers, a clear sign of the rising clout of these emerging economies.

Despite investor fears about the leftist bent of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva when he was elected to lead Brazil in 2002, he has demonstrated a light touch when it comes to economic stewardship, avoiding the populist impulses of leaders in Venezuela and Bolivia.

Instead, he has fueled Brazil’s growth through a deft combination of respect for financial markets and targeted social programs, which are lifting millions out of poverty, said David Fleischer, a political analyst and emeritus professor at the University of Brasília. Ms. Sousa is one such beneficiary.

Long famous for its unequal distribution of wealth, Brazil has shrunk its income gap by six percentage points since 2001, more than any other country in South America this decade, said Francisco Ferreira, a lead economist at the World Bank.

While the top 10 percent of Brazil’s earners saw their cumulative income rise by 7 percent from 2001 to 2006, the bottom 10 percent shot up by 58 percent, according to Marcelo Côrtes Neri, the director of the Center for Social Policies at the Getulio Vargas Foundation in Rio de Janeiro.

But Brazil is also outspending most of its neighbors on social programs, and overall public spending continues to be nearly four times as high as what Mexico spends as a percentage of its gross national product, Mr. Ferreira said.

The momentum of its economic expansion is expected to last. As the United States and parts of Europe struggle with recession and the fallout from housing crises, Brazil’s economy shows few of the vulnerabilities of other emerging powers.

It has greatly diversified its industrial base, has huge potential to expand a booming agricultural sector into virgin fields and holds a tremendous pool of untapped natural resources. New oil discoveries will thrust Brazil into the ranks of the global oil powers within the next decade.

Yet while exports of commodities like oil and agricultural goods have driven much of its recent growth, Brazil is less and less dependent on them, economists say, having the advantage of a huge domestic market — 185 million people — that has grown wealthier with the success of people like Ms. Sousa.

In fact, with a stronger currency and inflation mostly in check, Brazilians are on a spending spree that has become a prime motor for the economy, which grew 5.4 percent last year.

They are buying both Brazilian goods and a rising flood of imported products. Many businesses have relaxed credit terms to allow Brazilians to pay for refrigerators, cars and even plastic surgery over years instead of months, despite some of the highest interest rates in the world. In June the country reached 100 million credit cards issued, a 17 percent jump over last year.

At Casas Bahia, a modestly priced Brazilian furniture-store chain, the number of customers buying items on installment nearly tripled to 29.3 million from 2002 to 2007, said Sônia Mitaini, a company spokeswoman.

Riding a Wave of Growth - continued:

Other signs of new wealth abound. In Macaé, an oil boomtown near Rio de Janeiro, contractors are racing to finish new shopping malls and luxury housing to keep up with demand from oil-service firms. At a port in Angra dos Reis, a town known for its spectacular islands, some 25,000 workers have found jobs building oil platforms.

Petrobras, Brazil’s national oil company, shocked the oil world in November when it announced that its Tupi deepwater field offshore of Rio de Janeiro could hold five billion to eight billion barrels of oil. Analysts think there could be billions of barrels more in surrounding areas.

While the oil will be expensive and complicated to extract, Petrobras has said it expects to be producing up to 100,000 barrels a day from Tupi by 2010, and hopes to produce up to a million barrels a day in about a decade.

The new oil plays are setting off an investment boom in Rio de Janeiro, with an estimated $67.6 billion expected to flow into the state by 2010, according to the Rio de Janeiro State Federation of Industries, an industry group. Petrobras alone expects to invest $40.5 billion by 2012.

Some economists say a slowdown in the rest of the world’s economy, especially in Asia, which is soaking up much of Brazil’s exports of soybeans and iron ore, could crimp growth here. “But that probability is small,” said Alfredo Coutiño, the senior economist for Latin America for Moody’s Economy.com.

In fact, because Brazil’s economy has become so diversified in recent years, the country is less susceptible to a hangover from the struggling United States economy.

Brazil’s exports to the United States represent just 2.5 percent of Brazil’s gross national product, compared with 25 percent of G.N.P. for Mexican exports, according to Moody’s.

“What makes Brazil more resilient is that the rest of the world matters less,” said Don Hanna, the head of emerging market economics at Citibank.

The rest of the world certainly has helped. Soaring prices for minerals and other commodities have created a new class of super rich.

The number of Brazilians with liquid fortunes exceeding $1 million grew by 19 percent last year, third behind China and India, according to a survey by Merrill Lynch and Capgemini.

At the same time, President da Silva has deepened many of the social programs begun 10 years ago under Fernando Henrique Cardoso, who as president ushered in many of the structural reforms that laid the foundations of Brazil’s stable growth today.

In Ms. Sousa’s case, for instance, she owes much of the success of her underwear business to loans she has received from the Bank of the Northeast, a government-financed bank that has awarded microloans to 330,000 people to develop businesses in this fast-growing region.

Other programs, like Bolsa Familia, give small subsidies to millions of poor Brazilians to buy food and other essentials. Bolsa Familia, which benefits 45 million people nationwide in distributing an annual budget of about $5.6 billion, has been far more effective at raising per-capita incomes than recent increases in the minimum wage, which has risen 36 percent since 2003.

The bottom-up nature of such social programs has helped expand formal and informal employment as well as the Brazilian middle class. The number of people under the poverty line — defined as those earning less than $80 a month — fell by 32 percent from 2004 to 2006, Mr. Neri said.

The programs have been particularly effective here in Brazil’s northeast, historically one of poorest parts of the country. Residents here have received more than half the $15.6 billion doled out in social programs from 2003 to 2006, according to Empresa de Pesquisa Energetica, an arm of the Energy Ministry.

People here are using that new wealth to buy items like televisions and refrigerators at a faster rate than the rest of the country. The northeast, in fact, passed the country’s south in electricity use this year for the first time, the energy agency said.

Many families have bridged the gap to the middle class by using Bolsa Familia to meet basic needs, and then applying for small loans to start businesses and escape the informal economy. That is what Maria Auxiliadora Sampaio and her husband did in Fortaleza, a coastal city of 2.4 million people. They were receiving Bolsa Familia payments of about $30 a month, which they used to support their three children. Then, two years ago, Ms. Sampaio used a microloan of about $190 to buy nail polish and kick-start her manicure business, which she runs from home.

Today she is making around $70 a day — about four minimum salaries per month, she said. With her next loan she plans to put about $140 toward a stove to sterilize nail clippers, which today she does with hot water.

The fruits of her new business have allowed the couple to retile their house and buy a television and a cellphone. This month her husband, who works at a Cachaça factory, was able to realize a dream: to buy a drum set.

He plans to use it in a band that plays forró, a traditional music in the northeast. “We always ate and paid bills, but he waited and waited,” and finally bought the set for about $780, she said.

“I feel like we are part of this group of people that are coming up in the world,” said Ms. Sampaio, 28. “When you don’t have anything, when you don’t have a profession, don’t have the means to live, you are no one, you are a mosquito. I was nothing. Today, I am in heaven.”

 http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/31/world/…

D8 summit calls for halt to biofuels.
By John Aglionby in Kuala Lumpur for The Financial Times,  July 8 2008.

The world should halt the development of biofuel crops on arable land and instead boost agricultural production to solve the global food crisis and prevent “disaster”, the Malaysian and Indonesian leaders warned on Tuesday at the opening of a developing countries summit.

Abdullah Badawi, the Malaysian prime minister, said the use of arable land for biofuels “should be stopped because such action will deepen the global food scarcity and further drive up food prices”. “We must not allow the zeal for energy security to come into direct conflict with the basic need for food production,” he told the Developing Eight summit in Kuala Lumpur.

The D8 comprises Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Malaysia, Nigeria, Pakistan and Turkey. All are prominent members of the Organisaton of the Islamic Conference.

Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, the Indonesian president, blamed “some developed countries” for exacerbating the food crisis by allowing biofuel development on arable land.

“The idea is to reduce greenhouse gases and to wean themselves away from dependence on fossil fuels,” he said in his speech. “It is not a good idea: it has only worsened the global food crisis.”

The leaders’ statements join a growing consensus that biofuel production has contributed more to soaring food prices than was thought to be the case until a few months ago.

On Monday Britain hinted it might reassess its biofuel targets after a review by a former Environment Agency chief indicated that while there is probably enough land to meet agricultural needs until 2020, biofuels had contributed to rising food prices. The World Bank has expressed similar sentiments to the British report.

Mr Yudhoyono predicted there would be “no quick fix” to the crisis.

“But we must act on it at once and in concert,” he said. “To delay concerted action on this great challenge of our time is to court disaster.”

The president is now en route to Japan to meet with the G8 leaders on Wednesday. Indonesian officials said he would urge the G8 members to “share the burden” endured by developing countries in the face of soaring oil and food prices.

Both Mr Badawi and Mr Yudhoyono stressed the need to find ways to boost agricultural production. Neither, however, mentioned whether they would halt, let alone reverse, their planned expansions of oil palm plantations.

Indonesia and Malaysia are, respectively, the world’s largest and second largest producers of palm oil, which is becoming increasingly popular as a biofuel.

Much of the development, particularly in Indonesia, has come at the expense of vast swathes of rainforest, which is widely considered to exacerbate climate change.

Mr Badawi also took aim at the oil futures market, suggesting the international community “examine how [it] might be organised to assist in stabilising [oil] prices.”

He said the summit should send a united message on how to confront the oil and food price crises. Analysts believe the D8 will struggle to reach consensus on what to do about high oil prices because it comprises both significant oil producers and consumers.

The summit is also expected to approve a roadmap to strengthen cooperation between D8 members, particularly on intra-member trade. The aim is to boost this from the current figure of $60bn to $517.5bn within a decade.

Back from the Bangkok meeting, Yvo de Boer, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, will be passing through New York on Thursday April 10, 2008.

He will be summing up before the ten members of world media, a fracture of the 90 members of the UN Correspondence Association, that will be present in the building at that time, the outcomes of last week’s United Nations Climate Change Talks in Bangkok, the first major UN climate change meeting this year.

The Press Briefing will be held in room S-226 at the UN headquarters in New York - the second floor, the UN Secretariat Building where floors 2-4 are partly turned over to the press accredited with the UN.  The briefing will take place on: Thursday,  April 10, 2008, at 12:30 p.m.
In Bangkok, delegates from 162 countries gathered to map out their work programme leading to a long-term international climate change agreement in Copenhagen by the end of 2009. The Bangkok meeting had its hot and cold times; the opinions about the results verry vary. The UN declared roses, but others see only positioning towards the precipice. We trust that Mr. de Boer wants to present his point of view, and he needs thus more attention then the dried up UN press corps is allowed to provide him with.
The briefing will be webcast and in Manhattan you can watch it on UNTV, Channel 78.

Mr. de Boer is also available for interviews and media opportunities - the problem is that the UN Department of Information Control allows him to do all of this only in relation to those the Department selected for accreditation to the UN. We know that Mr. de Boer, in order to succeed in his job, must have wider access to the public. The fact that UNFCCC will allow for a webcast, and UNTV, unless it cuts of the program because of some activity at the UN Security Council that is deemed by DPI as more important - is also a possibility for some to get his input. But this does not make for a vibrant press coverage. Media is about asking questions - not just a conduit of information from the UN tub to the gasping mouth of the uninformed. Our website is full of examples of what I am talking here about. The last time we wrote about this it was in the context of the Japanese preparations for media contact at this year’s upcoming G8, that by the way, will have a lot to do also with our interest in climate change policy.

In short - what Mr. de Boer needs to do is to have a press conference also outside the UN confines - a place where every correspondent active in New York, every blogger interested in the subject, can come - listen, ask, be informed, and tell then his readers, listeners, watchers - this because the subject of climate change is of interest not just to the governing elites of 192 UN Member Governments, but to every Joe and Jane who will be in the end those that pay for inaction of the few - and watch what I am saying - it is these folks that need the information in order to help them impact policy.

Just watch this simple fact: The New York Times has an excellent experienced scientist/blogger - Andy Revkin - who covers climate change. But when there will be the April 10th briefing, Mr. de Boer will be lucky to see in the room Mr. Warren Hoge, who has the regular UN beat for the paper. Andy willl not be there, because he is not the regular NYT UN accredited reporter. So the readers of the NYT will at best find a note that Mr. Boer made a presentation in New York, and they will have lost the chance to find out what could have been a news breaking answer to a good question from Andy. Needless to say that less famous bloggers have no back up whatsoever - and today news are spread by the blogs!
Background:
At the UN Climate Change Conference in Bali last year, countries agreed to step up international efforts to combat climate change and to launch formal negotiations to come to an agreement on long-term cooperative action. They decided on the ambitious time-line to conclude negotiations by the end of 2009 and identified the main elements for discussion, including a shared-long term vision and enhanced action on adaptation, mitigation, technology and finance. The new working group that was mandated in Bali to lead the work has met in Bangkok for the first time with the intention of spelling out the steps needed to come to the envisaged agreement.

Furthermore, talks in Bangkok advanced work on the rules through which emission reduction targets of developed countries can be met.  This work was taken up by an already existing working group in which discussions take place on further commitments for Annex I countries under the Kyoto Protocol.

The Problem is how and when will the developing countries join above effort. Clearly, they cannot be asked to carry the brunt of the responsibility even though they are the growing new polluters on the bloc. On the other hand, governments like the US, Japan, Germany, these days say that there is a need to expand the responsibility also to the major economies of the front-runners among the now developing countries - China, India, Brazil. But what about the Small Island States, The Least Developed States, the Naurus and Bangladesh of this world? They stood up to speak for themselves at Bangkok because of the long existing truth that the G77 does not back their needs. After all, it is not the economic loss of the oil exporters that the submerging islands should be asked to worry about.

Bubbles float all over the UN - plain talk is what is needed. I know that Mr. de Boer knows that and we want the opportunity to ask him direct questions that are not monitored by the UN Secretariat political appointees.Will Mr. de Boer stand up to this challenge and have please a press briefing outside the UN?

How does Mr. de Boer expect to handle in December 2008, at this Conference of the Parties to UNFCCC and the meeting of the members to the Kyoto Protocol, when in November there was a Presidential election in the US  and the man in the White House has really just a few more days - not the years needed for him to be a serious player in the negotiations?

Above is a question that will not be asked at the UN - But for the Planet’s sake - there must be somewhere space to allow such a question - or really lots of travel just produces lots of emissions.

Bhutan’s unique democracy: a first verdict: The Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan has kept its tryst with democracy - and its people have surprised even themselves, says Karma Phuntsho.  For openDemocracy, April 2, 2008.

The Kingdom of Bhutan, positioned in the high Himalayas between the two Asian giants of India and China, takes pride in doing things differently. Its foremost goal is “gross national happiness”, and tourism is restricted to those who can afford a hefty package of some $200 per day. Almost 60% of the country is considered to be under forest cover, with 25% staunchly protected as nature reserve. Bhutan’s landscape is bestrewn with traditional architecture and religious monuments and sparsely populated by just over half a million people who still walk proud in their unique traditional dress (gho for men, kira for women). The sale of tobacco is banned nationwide and internet and TV arrived only at the end of the 1990s. Even democracy has come to this country in the most unusual way.

Karma Phuntsho was born in central Bhutan.
He studied Buddhism in Cheri monastery in Bhutan, continued his studies in Tibetan monasteries in India, before teaching Buddhism and related subjects in both Tibetan and English. He earned a doctorate in Buddhist studies at Oxford University in 2003. He is currently a research associate in the department of social anthropology, Cambridge University.
Bhutan, ruled by a king since 1907 and by a theocracy and civilian regency before that, had always remained independent, and largely immune to development until about fifty years ago when the first roads and schools were built and it began shyly to embrace modernisation. The process of “modernisation” brought to this “last Shangri-la” swift socio-economic advance and with it the onslaught of globalisation and its material trappings (see Lyonpo Jigme Thinley, “Globalisation: the view from Bhutan” [25 October 2001]).

More recently, it is political transformation which has intrigued and occupied the Buddhist population of this hermetic country.

Towards the end of the last century, the much-loved fourth king, Jigme Singye Wangchuck (who had ruled the country since 1972), started a process of gradual devolution of power to the people by handing executive power to a cabinet of ministers and ordering a new democratic constitution to be drafted. In 2006, he abdicated to make way for his eldest son Jigme Khesar Namgyal Wangchuck to be king and for parliamentary democracy to be constituted as Bhutan’s political system.

A democratic process:

Bhutan’s democratic journey began from the palace. “It is a gift from the golden throne”, say most Bhutanese. Notwithstanding the populace’s initial reluctance for change, the fourth king insisted on establishing a system which involves the people and is sustainable. His critics, however, argue that this is a royal sham to silence political dissent and a shrewd way to secure the monarchy’s future. The draft constitution which is to be endorsed later in 2008, they say, gives far too much significance to the king and preserves most royal privileges. The majority of Bhutanese, on the other hand, see the royal initiative to democratise as benevolent, timely and beneficial for both the country and its monarchy.

If Bhutan’s democracy is unique in originating with the ruler and not as a result of the outcry of unhappy subjects, the laws which frame it make it even more so. In an unprecedented move, Bhutan’s electoral authorities imposed on all candidates standing for parliament a minimum educational qualification of a university degree obtained from a credible institution through full- time study. For a country where secular education began only in the last half of the 20th century and where most of the community leaders are village elders with no formal education, such a requisite is both demanding and controversial. The vast majority of the population over the age of 40 did not even attend school, let alone college.

Many suspect this prerequisite to be a tactic to dislodge the former representatives who had a dominant voice in the erstwhile national assembly and enjoyed strong support in the rural communities which make up most of Bhutan. The government reasoned that parliamentarians, and especially ministers, should be sufficiently educated to be able to follow and conduct modern political and economic discourse and to interact with international counterparts. Thus a university education is seen as an essential criterion for good leadership.

For the community leaders who only have a traditional upbringing and training and have not attended secular colleges, this rule is seriously biased against the Bhutanese tradition. It places western educational values above Bhutanese ones and technical training above liberal education. “Even our enlightened monarch, who has led the country so successfully, does not have a university degree”, remarked one elder, referring to the fourth king. Worse, this regulation is seen as an obstruction to the burgeoning democracy. This stringent rule disqualifies most community leaders from the race and there is an acute shortage of political aspirants.

Most candidates who competed in December 2007 for the twenty seats in the national council or the upper house were in their 30s, and some were just out of college. A couple of districts could not even produce two candidates, and had to settle for votes for and against single candidates.

Competition for the national assembly or the lower house was stifled in the same way. Despite repeated calls to set up political parties, only two were successfully formed. A third party was forced to dissolve after it failed to find an able party president with a university degree.

Now, temporary election laws such as the educational criterion will be officially endorsed by the new parliament, which consists only of people holding a university degree. Some traditional leaders are wary that true democracy may remain forever out of their reach. One former people’s representative has even enrolled himself at a university.

Bhutan also startled its citizens with the pronouncement that religious persons are not entitled to vote. “Religion”, the chief election commissioner explained, “must remain above politics”. To cast a vote, one has to choose, and to choose, one has to discriminate. Buddhist monks must transcend worldly discrimination and partiality. In theory, this fits well a devoutly Buddhist country. In reality, however, a significant population of men and women are monks and nuns, and many of them are also village elders. In most villages, particularly in the eastern part of Bhutan, a large portion of men are lay priests combining both religious and worldly pursuits. Denying them suffrage has not only lessened people’s participation in democracy but led to other issues.

Some monks are thinking of renouncing their religious status to claim their franchise; others, out of indignation, clandestinely work to influence lay voters. Without suffrage for the religious, there is a general feeling that no political parties will own their cause, and that this will eventually result in the neglect of the nation’s priceless spiritual tradition. This regulation, like the educational qualification criterion and other such rules, awaits being debated and enacted by the new parliament.
A people’s choice:

Bhutan’s process of democratisation, like political change elsewhere, was not without excitement, ferment and furore. Despite moderate reluctance at first, people took up the cause with unexpected gusto. This was not what most foreign media persisted in depicting: the picture of an idyllic Bhutan, medieval and innocent, prosperous and peaceful, and unwilling to creep out of its monarchical wonderland. Such an orientalist portrayal, sexed up with the Shangri-la myth, is as far from the truth as it is patronising.

Bhutanese were not spoon-fed with an unwanted democracy, let alone force-fed, as was often claimed. Rather, Bhutanese took an active part in the process with enthusiasm and vigour. Villagers walked for hours from isolated areas to listen to the political candidates, who traversed the country campaigning for support. Thousands volunteered to work for the party of their liking and contributed huge amounts towards party funds. Politics became the topic of almost every conversation and the atmosphere was rife with political fervour and fear, speculation and gossip, and even exchanges of vitriolic allegation and mudslinging in the months leading up to the election. Democracy was taken up with such passion and earnestness that in some places friends and family were divided along political lines while elsewhere enemies have united under one political party.

On 24 March, in an event described by its people as well as outsiders as a historic moment, Bhutan went to the polls to elect its first democratic government. Men and women walked long distances, some with babies on their back, and queued for hours to cast their secret ballot. It was for some their final answer to the royal call to build a sound democracy, but for most the moment to exercise their right to choose their leader. A total of 253,012 out of 318,465 eligible voters (79.4%) cast their vote, almost a third of that in the first two hours, in a contest between parties each led by people who have previously served as prime ministers under the monarchy.

Druk Phuensum Tshogpa (DPT), led by the eloquent intellectual and statesman Jigmi Thinley, stressed political integrity as the bedrock of a sound democracy and campaigned for democracy and justice. His opponent, Sangay Ngedup (the brother-in-law of the fourth king and uncle of the fifth king) led the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) with the slogans “walk the talk” and “service with humility”.

For most Bhutanese, the two parties were known as the “crane” and “horse” respectively, after their logos.         With both parties bandying the royal vision of “gross national happiness” and promising to develop the nation with motorable roads and electricity as their priorities (since these are tangible benefits with which woo the predominantly rural electorate), there was little or no difference between the parties in political ideologies or policies.

At the most, theirs was a difference in emphasis, with DPT stressing principle and PDP delivery. Hence the election was largely seen as a contest about the persona of the party presidents and the public appeal of the individual candidates. However, the outcome confounded expectations and sent a stunning message across the country.
In a surprising verdict, Thinley’s DPT won by a surprising landslide of forty-five out of forty-seven seats, while Ngedup lost in his own constituency to a schoolteacher. The PDP’s comprehensive defeat revealed that even the uneducated rural populace cannot be won over by unrealistic promises and temporary benefits such as the campaign luncheons and entertainments that the PDP showered on them. In contrast to the international depictions of Bhutan as politically innocent, the Bhutanese public has proven to be savvy and ready for democracy.

The result also indicates that royalism isn’t as deeply ingrained in the Bhutanese populace as the unwary observer may be led to believe. In spite of the virtually universal respect for the two monarchs, the votes confirmed people’s inconspicuous distrust of the royal in-laws and the fear that they may attempt to fill the vacuum left by the kings. Although the DPT’s overwhelming victory was largely attributed to its outstanding leadership, it also suggests a call for moderate change and stable government, since the party has at its helm five former ministers and several senior bureaucrats.

Today, Bhutan takes pride in having successfully completed its election in order and peace, without clamour and tumult but with a difference. With the people’s representatives to both the national council and national assembly elected, and the five members of the national council appointed by the king, the country is waiting for the bicameral parliament to be formally convened.

Bhutanese, relishing the taste of the royal “gift” and with no serious misgiving, have taken their first bold democratic step and await what democracy has in store for them as events unfold. But for now, its attention is drawn to the coronation of the fifth king, whose presence remains undiminished.

Also by Karma Phuntsho in openDemocracy: “Bhutanese reform, Nepalese criticism” (13 October 2006).

Also on Bhutan in openDemocracy:

Lyonpo Jigme Thinley, “Globalisation: the view from Bhutan” (25 October 2001)

Charlie Devereux, “Bhutan’s outsiders in limbo” (20 April 2006)

Dharma Adhikari, “Bhutan’s democratic puzzle”
(20 June 2006)

Meenakshi Ganguly, “China and Bhutan: crushing dissent” (4 July 2007)

The subject of this posting came to our attention via an e-mail we received that a very special event will be held at the Manhattan Cathedral of the Saint John the Devine, April 13, 2008. we followed up and posted an announcement:

The Garrison Institute and Philip Glass Opera Satyagraha at the Metropolitan Opera at the Lincoln Center in New York are about Climate Change? You Have the Chance to find out April 13, 2008 at Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine.
Tuesday, April 1st, 2008
Posted in Reporting from Washington DC, Future Meetings, Art Performance reviews, India, New York |

 http://www.sustainabilitank.info/2008/04…

Then we folllowed up and we like now to post for our readers some excerpts from the Metropolitan Opera’s angle regarding this very unusual new opera - the product of a team led by modern “master-builder” Phillip Glass.

Satyagraha, Philip Glass’s landmark opera about Gandhi’s formative years in South Africa, has its Metropolitan Opera premiere in a new production on April 11.

Following its hit run in London, Phelim McDermott and Julian Crouch’s extraordinary new staging, conducted by Dante Anzolini, features Richard Croft as the visionary leader.

Met initiatives include art exhibitions, talks, an outdoor campaign, and related public events.

New York, NY (April 2, 2008)— Following its hit run in London last spring, Philip Glass’s landmark opera, Satyagraha, will premiere at the Metropolitan Opera on April 11 at 8:00 p.m. in a new production that has won raves from critics and audiences.

Satyagraha (Sanskrit for “truth-force”) is a musical meditation on Gandhi’s early years in South Africa, when he developed his philosophy of non-violence.

This seminal work, composed in 1979, has been re-imagined by director Phelim McDermott and associate director/set designer Julian Crouch; this co-production of the Met and English National Opera (ENO) has been created in collaboration with Improbable, McDermott and Crouch’s acclaimed London-based theater company.

The Times of London praised the production as “a masterwork of theatrical intensity and integrity.” The libretto, by Glass and Constance DeJong, is taken from the Bhagavad Gita, and the opera is performed in Sanksrit.

“I was determined to bring this modern masterpiece to the Met,” said Met General Manager Peter Gelb. “I’m very pleased that what I believe to be Philip Glass’s greatest opera is having its long-awaited premiere on our stage.”

In conjunction with the Met performances, a series of events and exhibitions inspired by Satyagraha and Gandhi’s message of non-violent protest are taking place throughout the city, including two visual art exhibitions at Lincoln Center and a provocative outdoor transit campaign.

In their role debuts, tenor Richard Croft portrays Gandhi, with Rachelle Durkin, Earle Patriarco, and Alfred Walker in other leading roles. Conductor Dante Anzolini also makes his Met debut, leading all seven performances through Tuesday, May 1. Lighting designer Paule Constable and costume designer Kevin Pollard join McDermott and Crouch in making Met debuts.

When the production of Satyagraha premiered in London last year, many performances sold out, and the show became ENO’s best-selling contemporary work in more than 20 years. The Guardian praised it as “an astonishingly beautiful work…Phelim McDermott’s staging, undertaken in collaboration with the theatre company Improbable, is also a thing of wonder.” Best known to U.S. audiences as the creative force behind the hit Off-Broadway “junk opera” Shockheaded Peter, McDermott and Crouch have conceived a beautiful and striking production that features improvisational puppetry by the twelve person Skills Ensemble and projections created by the British film and media production company Fifty Nine Productions. The staging also incorporates corrugated metal, used in the colonial structures often seen in photographs of Gandhi’s campaign, and newspaper, which reflects Gandhi’s pioneering use of the media to communicate his message.

Satyagraha is the second opera in Philip Glass’s famous “portrait” trilogy, which also includes Einstein on the Beach (1975) and Akhnaten (1983-84). Satyagraha is based on Mohandas K. Gandhi’s formative years as a young lawyer in South Africa, when he developed his philosophy of non-violent protest as a force for change. The opera had its world premiere in 1980 at the Netherlands Opera.

The opera’s Met premiere this month coincides with the anniversaries of Gandhi’s Salt March on Dandi, Gujarat on April 6, 1930, and the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, widely recognized as a disciple of Gandhi, on April 4, 1968.

“Gandhi was a great man who thought the power of truth could change the world…I can identify with that idea,” Glass says. “By the late 1970s, I thought that the political and social landscape had become so violent and that it was really time to think about the man who invented the idea of social change and non-violence. Little did I know that 30 years later, it would be far more violent. I don’t know what the power of art has to do in the world. Yet, when I talk to people about this piece, it seems to have had a strong meaning for them.” This is the second Glass opera produced by the Met; The Voyage, based on Christopher Columbus’s journey to America, was commissioned by the Met and had its world premiere here in 1992.

The Met’s new production of Satyagraha is underwritten by Agnes Varis, a Met managing director who also sponsored an outdoor advertising campaign for Satyagraha that launched this month. The campaign, featuring four bold, provocative questions (such as “Could an opera make us warriors for peace?”) superimposed over an image of Gandhi, runs for one month on bus shelters and phone kiosks throughout New York City. “I decided to underwrite this production of Satyagraha because of the brilliance of Philip Glass’s music and the message of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.,” said Dr. Varis. “I’ve always been interested in freedom movements, and Gandhi and King were leaders who changed our society.”

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Met Exhibitions and Events:

The Arnold & Marie Schwartz Gallery Met: CHUCK CLOSE PHILIP GLASS 40 YEARS.
Monday, March 17 through May 2008/Metropolitan Opera.

Over the last 40 years, the artist Chuck Close has created more than 100 different studies of Philip Glass, in many different mediums. To honor the decades-long friendship, Gallery Met—the Metropolitan Opera’s exhibition space for contemporary visual art—is presenting CHUCK CLOSE PHILIP GLASS 40 YEARS, a new exhibition that features 18 portraits of Glass created by Close between 1968 and 2008. Organized by Gallery Met Director Dodie Kazanjian, the show includes paintings, photographs, lithographs, tapestries, etchings, and engravings, in mediums ranging from acrylic to watercolor and daguerreotype to stamp pad ink. Gallery visitors will also be able to hear Philip Glass’s Musical Portrait of Chuck Close during the exhibition; the 15-minute piece for solo piano premiered at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall in 2005.

As part of a new visual arts program begun this year by Kazanjian, renowned painter Francesco Clemente has created an original artwork inspired by Satyagraha for a banner currently hanging on the front of the opera house.

New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, “The Force of Truth: Glass, Gandhi, and Satyagraha.”

Monday, March 17, through Saturday, April 19/Lincoln Center.

In collaboration with the Met, the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center is presenting an exhibition of Satyagraha production photos and design sketches, historical images, and collages, as well as a Gandhi-inspired mural by artist Tamar Hirschl entitled “Protest.”

The exhibition is open to the public and free of charge. Hours are Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday from 11:00 am to 6:00 pm; Monday and Thursday from noon to 8:00 pm; and Saturdays from 10:00 am to 6:00 pm.
Guggenheim Works & Process: Satyagraha.

was held - Tuesday, March 25, at 8:00 p.m./The Guggenheim Museum.
Philip Glass, Julian Crouch, Phelim McDermott, and Met General Manager Peter Gelb discussed the creative process behind the new production. Glass (accompanying on piano), Richard Croft, and Bradley Garvin (Prince Arjuna) performed musical excerpts, with additional piano accompaniment by Dennis Giauque. This event was sold-out, but video clips will be available in mid-April at www.metopera.org. For more information, please call (212) 423-3587.

Metropolitan Opera Guild: Bringing Satyagraha to Life.

Monday, April 14, at 6:00 p.m./Metropolitan Opera House.
Philip Glass talks with Met Artistic Assistant Manager Sarah Billinghurst about Satyagraha. For tickets and information, please call (212) 769-7028.

Metropolitan Opera Guild: Philip Glass and India.

Tuesday, April 22, at 6:00 p.m./Metropolitan Opera House

Satyagraha draws from the Bhagavad Gita and from the life and writings of Mahatma Gandhi. Dr. W. Anthony Sheppard examines this opera and its source material, and reveals the enduring impact of Indian music on the career of this world-renowned contemporary composer. For tickets and information, please call (212) 769-7028.

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Outside the Met:

The Satya Graha Forum
On the occasion of the opera’s Met debut, an independent consortium (separate from the Met) of New York cultural, arts, environmental, educational, and spiritual institutions working with Glass, has launched an initiative to create a dialogue on Gandhi’s concept of social change. The Forum, which kicks off on April 6 with a gathering at the Gandhi statue in New York City’s Union Square Park, will present events, lectures, and performances throughout the month of April. For more information, go to www.satya-graha.org

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About the composer
Award-winning composer Philip Glass is world renowned for his operas, symphonies, concertos, film scores, and solo works. Glass’s landmark opera Einstein on the Beach, created with Robert Wilson, had its U.S. premiere independently produced at the Met in 1976. He subsequently made Einstein part of a trilogy, resulting in the creation of his operas Satyagraha, which premiered in 1980, and Akhnaten (1983). Glass and Wilson worked on several other projects including the CIVIL warS—Rome (1984), written for the 1984 Olympics; White Raven (1991), commissioned by Portugal to celebrate its history of discovery and premiering at EXPO ‘98 in Lisbon and at the Lincoln Center Festival in 2001; and Monsters of Grace (1998), a digital 3-D opera. Glass’s other recent opera collaborations include Galileo Galilei (2002), with Mary Zimmerman, and The Sound of a Voice (2003) with David Henry Hwang. Glass’s opera Waiting for the Barbarians, based on the book by John Coetzee, had its premiere at the Erfurt Theater in Germany followed by its United States premiere in January 2007 at Austin Lyric Opera. His opera about the Civil War, Appomattox, commissioned by the San Francisco Opera, premiered there la