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Fifty Indian MPs support global parliament for effective governance |
To improve the democratic character of global governance, the world's citizens
should be given more responsibility through a global parliament. This suggestion took
centre-stage on Wednesday at the presentation of an Indian edition of a new book titled "A
Global Parliament" that was chaired by Vilasrao Deshmukh, Minister of Science and
Technology and organized by Shashi Tharoor. According to American professors Richard
Falk, University of California and Andrew Strauss of Widener University democratic
decision-making needs to be "extended to the global system." At the release of the book at the
CSIR Building in New Delhi, Deshmukh said the proposal was "bold" and "worth serious
consideration." He remarked: "In a first practical
step, a largely consultative United Nations Parliamentary Assembly could be created
and national parliaments, including the Indian parliament could send elected representatives
to the global parliament. UNPA could become the peoples' chamber at the United
Nations while United Nations General Assembly can act as the upper house." Deshmukh
also supported an international campaign for the creation of a UN Parliamentary
Assembly which is supported by more than 800 elected representatives throughout
the world and hundreds of leading personalities, among them over 50 members of
the Parliament of India. Parliamentarian Tharoor, who was contender for the post
of UN Secretary General in 2006, said: "UN Parliamentary Assembly will a consultative
body of UN General Assembly to begin with and will be the voice of the people
globally. For practical reasons the representatives to UNPA should be elected
by the national parliaments of different countries so that even non-democratic
countries such as China could take part in it." In the book, Falk and Strauss
argue that a number of twenty to thirty countries that are geographically, culturally
and economically diverse could initiate a project to create a global parliament.
They take the view that direct elections are a necessary condition and that over
time more and more countries would join. In the preface former UN Secretary General
Boutros Boutros-Ghali of Egypt concurs that democracy, to be effective, needs
to extend beyond state borders. The book is a compilation of articles and essays
by Falk and Strauss that appeared in journals such as Foreign Affairs and newspapers
like The International Herald Tribune or The Times of India between 1997 and 2010.
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