Liberalism - the need to move beyond Euro-centricism

Prof Rajiva Wijesinha, Chair of the Council of Asian Liberals and Democrats

Welcome remarks at the Regional Liberal Networks Meeting at the 2001 Liberal International Manila Congress

On behalf of the Council of Asian Liberals and Democrats, I am delighted to welcome you to this meeting of Regional Liberal Networks. It is particularly fitting that these networks should meet here in Manila, on the first occasion on which Liberal International is holding a Congress in Asia. The Philippine Liberal Party, which is co-hosting the event, was the first Liberal Party in Asia to join Liberal International and is I believe one of the oldest Liberal parties in the world, which has carefully guarded its identity in the midst of shifting priorities in Asia as well as elsewhere.

I am grateful too to the Friedrich Naumann Stiftung which has done so much to sustain these networks and also bring them together so often. I am delighted to welcome Hubertus von Welck, the Regional Director for Africa, who has much experience of working with us, in South Asia as well as in South East Asia, where he helped to develop CALD. He was succeeded by Rainer Adam, who had served not only as Regional Director of South Asia, but also in China and in Indonesia, which has added I think to the wider vision with which he contributes to the development of Liberalism in this area.

Liberal identity

As the influence of Liberalism and ideas associated with freedom and individuality, spread all over the world, I should register my disappointment that we have not been able to encourage the development of a clearer Liberal identity in South Asia. I realize that, for years, South Asia was in thrall to what might be termed statist socialism, as indeed is exemplified by the constitutions of both India and Sri Lanka, the former enjoining that all parties in India profess Socialism, the latter including the adjective in the name of the country.

It was understandable then that, in reacting to this, the FNS should have stressed economic liberalism. But it is important, if Liberalism is not to be associated with the sort of crony capitalism that dominated much of South East Asia for so long, that we distinguish firmly between Liberalism and what is termed Neo-liberalism, a philosophy that would be inappropriate for countries in most regions of the world where opportunities for the more deprived segments of society are so limited.

Commitment to human rights

We need of course, as Liberals have done throughout the last few centuries, to ensure balance. The excesses of statism and populism are as dangerous as entrenched inequities and endemic poverty. We need in affirming our commitment to human rights to recognize the importance of all rights, which cannot, as Graf Otto von Lambsdorff once put it when different interests based on different situations worldwide seemed to promote discrimination, be divided into more important and less important rights.

In doing this, we need to talk to each other regularly, to consult on the different dangers we face in different parts of the world, to discuss what our common priorities might be, and how we might help each other to develop an ideology that is responsive to different needs while preserving and promoting its core values. We need to move beyond the Euro-centric vision that dominated Liberal International for so long, while also recognizing that the long experience of many European countries in dealing with problems that have similarities to our own could be useful in developing equitable and sustainable solutions.

Authoritarianism and corruption

We are privileged to be hear so early on in the second Aquino Presidency that the Philippines has enjoyed. Cory Aquino, an icon to all of us in that she represented the first successful resistance by people to authoritarianism and corruption, ushered in a new era, but the need to guard and build on the values she embodied is a constant. In welcoming the recent triumph of the Liberal Party of the Philippines, we hope it can be replicated elsewhere. But we also hope that here, as well as elsewhere, we will be able to ensure wider appreciation of the principles that makes CALD and all your networks and Liberal International unique in a multifarious world.