PEACE-MAKER
In April 2016, the organizations of political parties of Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Africa convened for the first time in Jakarta to explore ways and means of economic and political cooperation among our three continents.
The historic (in a sense) meeting was held among ICAPP, the International Conference of Asian Political Parties, which this columnist founded and launched here in Manila in 2000 and now represents some 350 political parties from 52 countries in Asia; COPPPAL, the Permanent Conference of Political Parties of Latin America and the Caribbean, founded in 1979 by our old friend, the late Mexican statesman Gustavo Carvajal Moreno, and which is now composed of 70 political parties from 30 countries in the region; and CAPP, the Council of African Political Parties, established in 2013, representing 58 political parties from 38 countries in the continent.
Two subsequent meetings were held in Tegucigalpa, capital of Honduras, in November 2017; and in Moscow, in October 2018.
Institutionalizing these informal ties into a tri-continental alliance of political parties can at some point speak authoritatively for Asia, Latin America, and Africa in global councils on political and economic issues, especially in the battles against poverty, terrorism and extremism, climate change, and the narcotics trade.
We must join hands in actively opposing violent extremism and terrorism that have bedevilled a number of countries in our regions. We must isolate and defeat those who advocate terror and bloodshed in the name of ideology and religion.
Then there is global warming, and the ongoing and longer-term threat of climate change. Against this threat, a trilateral gathering can become and must become a political force and a moral force for mobilizing nations and getting them to act together. Climate Change has become a clear and present danger to our fragile planet and to the longevity of human race.
We must also join efforts in an intensified campaign against the narcotics trade which has pillaged the Asian, Latin American, and African regions and the global community. Perhaps, the U.N. should convene a global summit against narcotics because their production and distribution are at an alarming rate and their large-scale penetration of markets in the United States and Europe.
We believe our three continents, by working together, can become the stabilizing element in the emerging multilateral global balance of power. Our two fraternal associations, ICAPP and COPPPAL, launched in Mexico City in November 2014 the ICAPP-COPPPAL Business Council (ICBC), a forum of Asian and Latin American business leaders, to help business communities of our two continents form closer linkages; explore potential ways and areas of business promotion; and to expand economic cooperation in coordination with the governments and political parties of our two continents.
We proposed then that the ICAPP-COPPPAL Business Council be enlarged and joined soon by CAPP and that the political leaders of Africa can take the active role in organizing the African wing as a necessary component in our campaign to help in tri-continental trade and development and in the campaign against poverty in our regions and the world.
Indeed, there will be a great need for trans-national, trans-cultural groupings since the problems that face us more and more transcend national, regional, and even hemispheric boundaries.