[ox-en] peru continued
- From: Graham Seaman <graham seul.org>
- Date: Fri, 26 Jul 2002 13:26:51 -0400 (EDT)
Hi all,
For anyone following the state of play in Peru, here's another translation
from a public email from gnu.org.pe, about how things look since President
Toledo got 'dragged' up to Seattle to visist Bill.
They've got the smoking gun now (scans of documents showing the US
embassador acting as a messenger-boy for MS, link below). I'll have to try
to find somewhere more sensible to put this material...
Graham
Here goes:
1. The bills we're supporting one way or another (which, to remind you,
have 4 authors: Villanueva Nuñez, Estrada Perez, Villanueva Nuñez -
Rodrich Ackerman, Gonzales Reinoso) have never been filed away. In the
Sunday supplement to La Republica you can see that many bills of equal
importance went on to be analysed in no hurry in the next legislature, and
that's where we must act more decisively.
2. They say that congressmens' acts are a function of pressure from the
people. The bills they present necessarily need the support of those who
defend it them, regardless of whether they benefit or not. In our bill,
which involves many of the state's economic interests, we have to make our
presence felt more strongly showing the congressmen they aren't alone. I
don't mean protests blocking off streets, like we get daily in Lima now,
but a measured contribution in activities which have some resonance to let
them know that their decisions affect the technological future of the
majority of the country. For now we have promises from 2 more congressmen
to support us in the next legislature, signing their support for the
project.
3. As you can appreciate from http://www.gnu.org.pe/lobbyusa-congreso.html
[ scans of notes sent by the US embassador to the peruvian government on
behalf of microsoft] the letters from the Americans have sparked the
interest of the press, and above all a lot of indignation from those of us
trying to defend our ideas democratically. These letters, even though from
a reliable source, were never denied by the congress presidency simply
because they weren't worth it. In any case we have to wait till Congress
debates the topic, and then we'll know if the letters have done their
task. One point in favour of this: some congressmen wish to request the
presence of our friends from the US embassy so that they can 'demonstrate'
to the peruvian and international communities why a state like ours should
continue with the proprietary software model and not follow the free
software alternative, which in the long run will bring better results,
according to many experts. Of course the 'demonstration' will be public
and with a similar opportunity for free software.
4. Concerning the agreement between president Toledo and Microsoft, we
only know the outlines. Nobody knows anything (unless I'm mistaken?) about
the appendices which are about 30 pages in the draft agreement which was
circulated extremely cautiously round a few organizations on Monday. Well
the tasty morsel for Microsoft is getting into eGovernment (nothing is
mentioned in the official eGovernment site,
http://www.pcm.gob.pe/pcm/Egov/index.htm), but the business also concerns
the famous project of 18,000 local developers for .Net (according to what
they say, they'll use 100,000 from the State). We already know that
the Huascaran plan is 550,000, only payable for training of teachers in
Word, Excel, and Powerpoint (just 12 hours each for those 3 *beautiful*
courses).
5. In regard to this agreement it is necessary to demand publicly the
publication of the entire document as signed. In my understanding the
Congress President and the Executive in turn have been formally requested
to carry out full publication, and a complaint presented regarding this
unconstitutional attitude. There are antecedents in the Chile-MS
agreement. There Congress was listened to after 1 year. We will prepare to
do this, or at the worst, to dig in for a long wait. Microsoft's attitude
is stopping information technology specialists from giving their opinion
on the proposals, as should happen in a state of law. It prefers a fait
accompli and not a debate on whether it is really appropriate for a
country to get itself into permanent debt for the sake of a few supposed
donations.
6. Once the whole agreement is published, I'm convinced that we'll have a
lot of material to defend free software in the next legislature. For now
we have to put on a brave face and carry on with the movement... Here's
part of the agreement between Microsoft and Chile:
http://www.granvalparaiso.cl/actualidad/210.htm
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