* "Can" - to dismiss, fire
You may think what you want about the decisions taken at the London Group of Twenty - G20 - meeting, but this point is not up for debate: it is a much more representative group than the "rich white man's club" (apologies to Barack Obama, Angela Merkel, and the Japanese), AKA the G8.
The difference between the G8 and the G20, said Pascal Lamy, Director General of the World Trade Organization, "is like night and day." Lamy, who has attended numerous G8 meetings and was a player in last week's London meeting, knows of what he speaks. He made the remarks at the Brussels "Global Progressive Forum" (GPF) at the European Parliament, fresh from his London conference. "The balance of forces is completely different," said Lamy, who prior to the WTO was the EU's Trade Commissioner. "With the presence of the BRIC countries in the G20, the geopolitics are redefined," said Lamy. In the proper, democratic direction, for this French social democratic free trader.
Lamy believes that there is no contradiction between regulation and free trade; he points out the difference between free trade partners Canada and the United States, where the former maintained proper surveillance of the financial sector while the US... well, we know what happened.
Lamy didn't call for the end of the G8 meetings, but others have. In the Toronto Globe and Mail, Gordon Smith and Barry Carin, both G8 summiteers under the Chrétien government in the '90s, say that the G8 "is on life support," and take little solace in the fact that Canada will host the 2010 G8 Summit. They call for a transubstantiation of the G8 into the G20:
Our government should prepare the ground this week in London and transform next year's Canadian G8 summit into a Canadian G20 summit.
I couldn't agree more. Look at what will happy this July: the countries that will help fund, consume, or produce their utmost to counter the worldwide recession - primarily China - will be given colonial treatment, according to Smith/Carin:
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has invited G20 leaders to Sardinia for only part of the meeting; non-G8 countries will inevitably see this as second-class treatment.
It's probably too late to cancel the Sardinia Summit, though after Berlusconi's erratic behavior at the G20 and at today's NATO Summit, some of his fellow summiteers would probably happily forego his hospitality.