Message for leaders meeting in Turkey

Due to a shoulder fracture injury accident in San Francisco,  former House Speaker Jose de Venecia was not able to attend the 21st  standing committee meeting of the International Conference of Asian Political  Parties (ICAPP) in Ankara, Republic of Turkey late last month.   De Venecia told me the  meeting was “of great significance because of Turkey’s great importance to  our inter-Asian relations, its strategic geo-political role as an intermediary between Asia and Europe and considering its tremendous problem dealing with hundred of thousand of refugees on its border with Syria.”

De Venecia is founding chairman and co-chairman of the standing  committee of ICAPP.                               

The meeting was considered enriched by the presence of representatives from Latin American and Caribbean political parties under COPPPAL, led by its deputy president Gustavo Carvajal, and the newly founded Council of African Political Parties (CAPP), led by its president Wynter Kabimba.

De Venecia said the  â€œprofessional ” and “personal” ties to be forged at the session “should pay off – sooner than later, in political and allied cooperation among the three emerging continents.”

In his speech I read in his absence in Ankara,  De Venecia touched on the urgency of acting on vital issues. He proposed that the political parties should begin to think about institutionalizing informal ties in a Tri-Continental Alliance of Political Parties (TCAPP) that can speak authoritatively  for Africa, Asia,  and Latin America in global councils on political and economic issues, especially in the battle against poverty, corruption and extremism – most urgently, on the issue of global warming, or climate change.”

De Venecia said, “As the apocalyptic destruction of the Philippines’ Tacloban City and Visayan islands reminds us, it is the poorest countries that suffer the most from the greenhouse gases the richest countries let loose heedlessly in the atmosphere.”

 He suggested that  the Ankara meeting explore the possibility of such a tri-continental alliance through a conference in a key city .

He recalled that in the 19th ICAPP standing committee meeting in Hanoi early this year, ICAPP already approved the establishment of the Global Parties Climate and Ecological Safety Alliance (GPCESA), which was earlier endorsed by COPPPAL at the Mexico conference in October 2012; by the Centrist Asia Pacific Democrats International (CAPDI) fourth general assembly in Makassar last May, and even earlier, by the International Ecological Safety Collaborative Organization (IESCO) under the leadership of Dr. Jiang Mingjun, with head offices in Beijing and New York and which already enjoys special consultative status at the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC).

The Latin American and Caribbean political parties under COPPPAL also approved the creation of GPCESA in San Salvador a few weeks ago.

He also said that a few days earlier, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, following the “unspeakable” devastation in the Philippines, declared that climate change is a major threat to mankind. “I ask that through our ICAPP-member parties and our alliances with COPPPAL and  CAPP,  we include the battle against climate change in the charters of our respective political parties and civil society organizations, supported by concrete executive and legislative accounts. This is the minimum that we as political parties can do.”

Another important meeting De Venecia cannot attend due to his injury is the  sixth plenary session of the Asian Parliamentary Assembly to be held in Islamabad Dec. 8 to 10. The ICAPP-APA meeting in Islamabad, said De Venecia “could be a first step in bringing together political parties and parliaments to work together for common causes.”

De Venecia, together with Sen. Mushahasid  Hussain Sayed, ICAPP special rapporteur, and then Speaker of Pakistan Parliament Chaudhry Amir Hussain, had initiated the organization of APA. “We felt that the creation of the APA, from its earliest stages as Association of Asian Parliaments for Peace (AAPP), would lead to the eventual creation of an Asian Parliament.”

Europe has its European Parliament, Africa its African parliament, and Latin America  its Latin American legislature, ”but in our Asia, cradle of the great civilizations, cultures and religions, whose GDP was the highest in the world prior to the Industrial Revolution in Europe, we have failed so far to create an Asian Parliament.”

De Venecia also expressed appreciation  for the  hosting of  ICAPP’s standing committee meeting last month by the Justice and Development Party (AK Parti) of Turkey under the leadership of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Turkey, said De Venecia is the most prominent of the nations that emerged from the Ottoman Empire in the aftermath of World War I.  Under Mustafa Kemal Ataturk’s leadership, Turkey became the first Muslim country to develop a sense of national identity, and, together with Meiji Japan, became the early model of modernization for the colonial countries. It abolished the Ottoman sultanate and then the caliphate, and established in their place a secular, nationalist democracy. Ataturk gave women the right to share fully in the public culture of the Turkish nation.

Within a generation, Ataturk’s transitional authoritarianism gave way to multi-party politics. The first opposition party came peacefully to power in 1950. Since then,  successive governments have worked to strengthen Turkey’s democracy and economy.

Prime Minister Erdogan, said De Venecia, won as mayor of Istanbul in 1994-98, and has led the party through three successive general elections (since 2003).

 Now thoroughly modernized politically, economically and culturally, Turkey is one if  the strongest and most successful Muslim parliamentary democracies in the world (along with Malaysia and Indonesia).

Turkey, geographically poised between East and West, also bridges the cultural and geopolitical gaps between Europe and Asia. Perhaps, philosophized De Venecia in his speech, “God created this region of the Turks in this strategic land to connect Asia and Europe.” De Venecia praised  Ataturk seeing humankind’s need to organize a “’federation of nations’ – if it is “to banish conflict, poverty, and suffering from every region of the world . . .  We must think of the whole of mankind as being a single body and of each nation as constituting a part of that body.”

In closing, De Venecia said, “Ataturk saw the nations as interdependent – just as we do – and we in ICAPP, COPPAL and CAPP should regard our visit to this nation he did so much to create as an occasion for rededicating ourselves to that ideal, of a world united in peace and prosperity.”

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Last week I wrote about the pilgrimage of 49 pilgrims, then Bishop Chito Tagle and Jesuit priest Fr. Nono Alfonso to the Holy Land in October 2001. I stand corrected: the  tour actually took place in October 2011. Some of   the pilgrims’ experiences have been compiled into a book titled A Journey of Faith with the Cardinal,  copies of which are available  (at P250 each)  at Tanging Yaman Store at the Ateneo University, St. Paul’s Bookstore, Pauline Bookstore, and National Bookstore. Proceeds  from the sale of the book will be for the TV program,  “The Word Exposed with Luis Antonio Cardinal Tagle.”

Gregory Divino, the book’s editorial director and lead author,  wrote me that the book is “a journey unto itself.  It wasn’t an easy journey, but we, the 36 pilgrims in the book including the Cardinal, are grateful for it. As we continue on our separate journeys, we are enlightened and uplifted that people like you get to talk about it and hopefully be touched by it. May it continue to light your path, whatever journey you may be in yourself.”

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