We have APEC, OPEC, ASEAN, the G7 and of course, the G20. These meetings were all started for various reasons, but most times they are passed over as ‘talkfests’. A memorandum or ‘communique’ is read at the end of each of these conferences, to prove to the waiting public that all these leaders have actually been doing something over the time they have been locked behind closed doors.
Let’s just think about the G20 that is unfolding in London as I write. Twenty leaders from the world’s largest economies are in London. They will formally start ‘meeting’ today at 9.50am GMT and will finish at 3.30pm GMT. In that time they will hopefully solve the world’s problems. Or will they?
Of course they won’t, but I feel for the very first time that the global public wants more than just talk. In previous years, most of us would not even know what the G20 actually was, let alone take anymore interest in it. Now with the economy in the toilet, we are taking one hell of a lot of notice of this meeting. Why? Because now it affects us. Our hip pockets are hurting and these twenty men and women are the ones who can stop the pain.
Watching CNN earlier today, reporters Sasha Herriman and Charles Hodgson were making small talk about the leaders and the summit, as we watched footage of leaders arriving at the summit and having the obligatory handshake and fake smile session with host, Gordon Brown. Herriman stated that after all the hoo hah over the last day, with dinners and audiences with the Queen, they can ‘relax’ and get on with what they came to London to do. Hodgson disagreed saying that they will feel very much under pressure to come through with the goods over the next few hours, otherwise the global public will have their guts for garters.
The buzz word throughout all of this economic misery has been regulation. Nicolas Sarkozy of France and Angela Merkel of Germany have threatened to walk out of the conference if their demands of regulation of financial institutions are not in black and white in the communique. Pretty dramatic stuff, which is either French and German grandstanding or evidence that at least some of these world leaders want the talk to stop this time and action to be what drives them forward.
We as a global public have failed to regulate our leaders over many years. If we kept them accountable, they would not have been allowed to walk in and out of these ’summits’ without delivering. We ignored them at our peril. Now that it hurts us, we are scrutinizing every move they make. We have joked for time in memorial about the uselessness of politicians and how they never get anything done and that these meetings are a waste of time. These meetings cost the host country millions of dollars, and disrupt everyday citizens enormously. For me, I want accountability. As a teacher, I get paid miserably lower than any of these world leaders and none of it is tax payer funds. But I am very much accountable to the parents of the children in my care. If their children can’t read, or if their children’s work is not marked, they let me know about it.
So it should be with world leaders. These are the men and women that have received our votes and gained power off our backs. But we let them go to these meetings, let them chat on about nothing in particular, have a lovely photo oppoortunity, get on a plane and return home. Watching footage of the latest ASEAN meeting in Thailand, I noticed exactly where one leader’s priorities lay. With ASEAN, their group photo consists of each of them locking arms and hands, their left into the other’s right. The leaders all stood there and were about to have a standard picture. But this leader looked all forlorn at seeing what might be happening and desperately made the effort to do the locking hands thing. He looked like a sad kid at the party who didn’t receive a party bag at the end. This is unfortunately what some of the leaders of these countries see as the highlight of the trip; the warm fuzzy moment.
People want action and people want it today. Forget the photo. Forget the display of fake friendship. Get down to the nuts and bolts of why you are there. We are in this mess now not because of one country that we all now admonish severely. We are in this mess because we, as ordinary citizens, failed to make our leaders accountable, and failed to make them work for their extraordinary salaries. They in turn, came to these meetings in the past with one eye on the clock and the other on the latest sports results from their respective countries.
What the leaders are now feeling is a collective global cattle prod aimed right where their mothers never kissed them and they don’t like how it feels.
But, as former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser used to say, “Life wasn’t meant to be easy”. It’s time world leaders lives were made a little less easy.
Enjoy your day
