PEACE-MAKER
In October 2010, we travelled to San Salvador, the capital of El Salvador, following our trip to Buenos Aires two years earlier, where we explored ways and means of cooperation between our Asia-wide organization, ICAPP, the International Conference of Asian Political Parties, and COPPPAL, the Permanent Conference of Political Parties of Latin America and the Caribbean.
ICAPP, which we founded and launched in Manila in September 2000, now represents 352 political parties from 52 countries in Asia; while COPPPAL is composed of 60 political parties from 33 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean.
We were accompanied in this San Salvador trip by our wife Gina, who was then in her first term as representative of the 4th district of Pangasinan; Bonifacio ‘Boy’ Nakpil, our late brother-in-law and husband of Gina’s younger sister Bechay; Ambassador Chung Eui-yong of South Korea, our ICAPP co-chairman and then secretary general; K.P. Sharma Oli, now prime minister of Nepal; and several other Asian political leaders.
Ambassador Chung later served as South Korea’s national security adviser, then foreign affairs minister in the administration of President Moon Jae-in under whose leadership the historic meetings between him and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and between US President Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un were held.
Our group met with Latin American statesmen Antonio Cafiero of Argentina and Gustavo Carvajal Moreno of Mexico, then chairman and deputy chairman, respectively, of COPPPAL.
The late Antonio Cafiero held distinguished government posts in Argentina, such as senator, governor of Buenos Aires province, ambassador, and Cabinet minister under the administrations of the renowned President Juan Peron and his second wife Isabel, who became president following the former’s death.
Gustavo Carvajal Moreno of Mexico, who passed away a few years ago, served his country as congressman, senator, Cabinet minister, and president of Institutional Revolutionary Party or PRI, which was Mexico’s ruling party for many decades.
We were also welcomed by El Salvador’s President Mauricio Funes and Vice President Sanchez Ceren, who was later elected president.
President Funes pointed out that poverty is the most serious challenge for Latin America and the cause of poverty is not poor economic performance but wrong politics.
Cafiero emphasized that closer cooperation and increased exchanges between our two organizations well demonstrated the growing awareness of the important roles played by political parties in the globalized world. He said our next step should be to reach out to political parties in other continents to join efforts to meet common global challenges.
We stressed that we can overcome our geopolitical, territorial, racial, religious, and ideological differences through negotiated political settlement. We proposed that the ICAPP and the COPPPAL join forces to seek power-sharing and burden-sharing formula to help resolve global issues. We underscored the need for the ICAPP and COPPPAL to work together to establish the Global Anti-Poverty Fund through the UN.
We all agreed that it is essential to further increase cooperation and solidarity between our two continents through increased contacts and exchanges among the political parties to meet the current global challenges and advance our common objectives of peace and prosperity.
Since then, regular meetings between our two groupings have been held in various cities in Asia and Latin America, which has been our continuing modest contribution in promoting mutual understanding, trust, dialogue, and cooperation between our countries and peoples.
Subsequently, our International Conference of Asian Political Parties have forged working partnerships with CAPP, the Council of African Political Parties, representing 58 political parties from 38 countries in the continent; as well as with several political parties in Europe, through the Asia-Europe Political Forum, which we launched in Seoul in July 2017. We also had initial meeting with the US’ Republican and Democratic parties in 2018 in Washington to explore modes of cooperation.
Truly, in an increasingly globalized world, we seek strength in unity and a sense of shared purpose.