IAF Seminar, Gummersbach, Germany, Part 2

This is the continuation of my earlier paper, IAF Seminar 2008, Gummersbach, Germany, posted in January 21, 2011. The course that I attended in THA, Gummersbach, Germany, was "Civil Society and Local Government" conducted I think, from October 26 to November 2, 2008. or almost five years ago. I feel nostalgic...

Our batch visited some government offices in Cologne, about one hour by car from Gummersbach. A local paper featured one story about such visit.

 One of those lecture-workshops. To my right was Asma Asfor from Palestine, to my left Isil Cakmac from Turkey.

My other batchmates from different countries. From left: Jingjing Cai from China, Pai from Indonesia, Xinggo Li also from China, Diego Conti from Brazil, Bastian Saputra from Indonesia, Brian Lariche of Malaysia, Asma Asfor from Palestine, Nora from Colombia (?), Marcelo from Venezuela, and Elsa from S. Africa.

Other batchmates from other countries.

We also have evening lectures, about 2x, excluding the welcome and farewell dinners of the 8-days seminar.

Fellowships in the evening. We have a quota of 1 free glass of beer per night per participant. Some batchmates don't drink, so they give their beer stub to us drinkers, so we can have two glasses on a night. The glasses are big anyway, so two bottles should be enough.

German Elections 2013: Big Defeat for the FDP

Last night, I joined some friends and staff of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom (FNF) in a WahlParty, watching the German elections live, at the German Club in Makati.

Big defeat for the German liberals, the Free Democratic Party (FDP). A brief analysis of the party defeat from a good German liberal thinker and my former teacher/facilitator at an IAF Seminar in Gummersbach in 2008, Arno Keller below. Posted in German, translated by Bing:

1. The world has not gone under.
2. Liberal values have lost none of their importance.
3. A political party could use Germany. After self-proclaimed "radical Liberals" and apparent liberal opportunists have systematically destroyed the Liberal core of the FDP, the debate on values in the FDP must run new, so that she can once again assume the role of a Liberal Party. Yes, and then also the FDP should recognize that systematic strategy development can actually help.

Chito Gascon was also there last night. His brief analysis:

results from elections in germany are coming in, and it appears to be historic in some key aspects... the conservatives gained more votes and will most certainly return her to the position of chancellor well on the way to being the longest serving woman leader of a major european country... AND, perhaps for the first time since after world war 2, the liberals who have thus far served in government longest as junior partner alternating with either the social democrats or conservatives, may (should the trend be validated) be finding themselves totally out of parliament... by far their worst result ever with them losing 2/3rds of their support compared from the last elections... time for some soul-searching, i hope they are able to bounce back... in the meantime, the conservatives will have a coalition partnership either with the social democrats or the greens or both these parties... the liberal voice will be missed in parliament this governing cycle...i applaud the democratic process... the people have spoken!

A disaster for the FDP yesterday, first time since WW2 and the party founding that they are out of the National Parliament, not a single seat, for failing to get the minimum 5 percent of the votes, they got only 4.8 percent.

Result of the exit poll is almost identical with the actual result. Photo from Spiegel International.

Wikipedia (accessed today) described the party 

The FDP, which strongly supports human rights, civil liberties, and internationalism, has shifted from the centre to the centre-right over time. Since the 1980s, the party has firmly pushed economic liberalism, and has aligned itself closely to the promotion of free markets and privatisation.

And here's a summary of its electoral performance, from its best-ever 2009 achievement to its worst result yesterday. Data from wiki.

It will be a big soul searching for the FDP and the European liberals. Should they push for more explicit free market policies? A Filipino friend and fellow IAF alumni in Gummersbach, Kareen Oloroso, mentioned last night that many Germans were angry at the liberal /FDP Foreign Minister's plan to cut German foreign aid. 

I agree with Arno's analysis above. Liberalism as a philosophy to advance individual freedom and limit the State's coercive power has not lost its value. German liberals in the government made something wrong that turned off many of their supporters.

Meanwhile, a surprising performance by the Alternative for Germany (AfD), an anti-Euro, back to Deutschhmark, other protest party. Formed only in February this year, they got 4.9% of the votes. It is possible that many previous votes for the FDP went to AfD.

While climate alarmist Greens Party was also among the losers, though not as bad as the FDP

http://notrickszone.com/2013/09/22/germanys-green-party-takes-a-beating-in-national-elections-climate-fear-no-longer-issues/
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Update: I like these postings by two FNF guys:

From Jules Maaten:

A bitter election result for the German liberals. Yet if the party gives itself a couple of weeks to mourn, and doesn't engage in pointless wars-on-a-square-millimeter or in I-told-you-so intellectualism, there is plenty of modern liberal thinking power, competence and commitment to bounce back convincingly. Simply pull up your sleeves and get going. That will be so good for Germany and for international liberalism.

From Bjoern Wyrembek:

Time to go to work. Time to make it better. Time to stand for freedom, for equal opportunities, for tolerance, for rule of law, against corruption, for property rights, for personal responsibility and markets that are open to everyone. Time to prove that these core values will create a better society, are standing for development and better living conditions and secure what we achieve. We just got a public demand note to get rid of much dead weight. So let's do it and move on. Time to go to work.

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See also: 

IAF Seminar 2008, Gummersbach, Germany, January 21, 2011

The German Club, Makati, September 23, 2013

IAF Seminar 2008, Gummersbach, Germany

In late October 2008, I attended the International Academy for Leadership (IAF) of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Liberty (FNF) in Gummersbach, Germany. The IAF holds about a dozen seminars per year on different topics, each seminar about 8 to 14 days long. The seminar that I attended was on "Local Government and Civil Society." Here's our group picture, we were 24 from about 10 or 11 countries from Asia, South America, Africa and Eastern Europe.

The venue was the Theodor Heuss Akademie (THA). It has complete facilities -- lecture rooms, meeting rooms, wide lobby, dining hall, internet area, library, 8-storeys dormitory, etc. The akademie is on top of a small hill. The city proper is below it.

Gummersbach is a small and hilly city in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, the richest among 16 states in Germany. It is 56 kms from Cologne. In front of the akademie is a forested and open grassland area, very serene and beautifully-landscaped.

Our cheerful and very intelligent moderators were Dr. Monika Ballin and Dr. Arno Keller. They really have a good grasp of the philosophy of liberalism -- its emphasis on individual liberty, the principle of subsidiarity and the goal of a lean and limited government. They also smiled a lot.

The Director of the academy is Birgit Lamm. A tall and soft-spoken lady who by now, has hundreds of friends from around the world, alumni of the academy. I am curious what Birgit would be writing because she tends to listen more than speak. So I guess her brains are full of different inputs and impressions of the participants and what those are saying.

Four of us were from South America -- Argentina, Paraguay and Venezuela. They speak very little English, but we have two lady translators who would give simultaneous translation during the lectures. We wear the headphones when our friends from S. America would speak to listen to the translators.

It's not all lectures and group dynamics, of course. We also have good time, in the evening, usually starting around 8:30pm. We gather in the lobby and just have a chat with each other, or we sing and dance. There is a piano in the lobby. Our Argentiian friend, Marcelo, played the piano and the guitar. They may not speak good English but they know and sing a number of songs by The Beatles, Billy Joel, Michael Jackson and other known Western musicians. Of course we also hum along with their Spanish songs and beat to their fast dance.

Ahh yes, we put our country's respective miniature flags in front of us everyday during lectures. The sight adds color and symbols to the participants. Some of us also were not that fluent in English, so we have to listen more attentively.

Another view of the participants. One side of the lecture room is facing the woods. It was nice to go out there during break time and noontime, feel the tolerable cold.

Aside from lectures, we also have group workshops and group presentations, to act out on certain policy debates. The "group acting" can be funny. Then we will assess each group after. Here, our group is protesting the closing of one municipal facility, we were the "protesters", while another group was supporting the move. I invented that plackard that said, "Remove our pub, we will block your beer delivery." :-)

We also had some guest lecturers. Here, Mr. Uwe Ufer, a City Mayor near Gummersbach. Uwe was an independent politician who did not believe in belonging to any political party and wanted to focus his effort and time with the citizens than allocate additional time dealing with party matters and politics.

More pictures and stories later in Part 2 of this subject.