By Yunus Soner, Kazan / Russia
The BRICS summit in Kazan, Russia, keeps on fueling debates globally on the future of the international system. Immediately after its conclusion, we spoke on the summit’s results with George Galloway. The interview was made in Kazan at the Expo Center, where the summit took place.
George Galloway is a British politician, broadcaster and writer who served as Member of Parliament for 5 constituencies. For his entire life, Galloway has been a fierce critique of Western imperialism, opposing especially the wars against Iraq. In 1994, he met with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
In 2003, when the US and Britain started the invasion of Iraq, he was again, having been the vice-president of the Stop the War Coalition since 2001. In an interview to Abu Dhabi TV, he called the British to troops to “to refuse obeying illegal orders”, stating that Tony Blair, then Labour Party Prime Minister, had lied.
Upon his comments, he was expelled from the Labour Party, for which he had been in parliament then. Since 2019, he is affiliated to the Workers’ Party of Britain.
Okay, so what’s your basic takeaway from this summit?
Well, you can measure the success of the summit by the venom of the western media that are now finally commenting on it. Bild, the giant German newspaper said this morning that this was a summit of scoundrels according to Germany’s main newspaper. The Times of London called it a grotesque summit. They started out by ignoring the summit as they ignore bricks generally, but they have decided that the elephant in the room is too large and that it now must be attacked, and all their arrows are now firing here at Kazan.
I myself was almost assaulted by the Sky News British television reporter because I wouldn’t rise to his bait trying to discuss Ukraine to the exclusion of all other things. The fact that the BBC are in the front row of a press conference. And by the way, no Russian broadcaster is allowed even to work in Britain, never mind ask questions of the Prime Minister, bristling with hostility. But he was allowed to accuse the Russians of sowing havoc on the streets of Britain, like the British need anyone to sow their havoc for them.
Britain is a deeply unhappy country now. This turning up of the heat from the western media is clearly related to the tremendous growth for bricks the fact that there’s a commonwealth summit going on but the commonwealth leaders of South Africa, India Nigeria and so on are all here in Kazan instead of in Samoa.
Perhaps they didn’t want to meet with King Charles, I don’t know, they preferred Vladimir Putin to King Charles. The fact that Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are here, the fact that Indonesia is here, the fourth most populous country in the world, the world’s biggest Muslim country, that’s all very significant.
And eventually the West has to acknowledge it. And it’s acknowledging it through its media with malice.
The new development bank shall play a bigger role in the future. Is there kind of very carefully developing financial architecture here?
Well, I hope so. Certainly, it wasn’t shown to us in the press conference or in the final communiqué. I had been hoping for more, I’ll be honest with you.
But that may be because of the complexity of the situation. It may be because there’s an obvious contradiction between growth of membership and clarity of purpose. The more people you’ve got in a room, the harder it is to find a consensus on certain aspects. It may be that. It may be that the trial drive has shown up more difficulties than we expected and that it needs more road testing. But I was hoping for more.
The big disappointment for me was, obviously, President Lula couldn’t be here, that was disappointing, but the clear indication that Brazil blackballed Venezuela, and I presume Nicaragua also, is a worrying piece of news.
President Putin made it clear in the press conference he doesn’t agree with that. The Russians stand with Venezuela. As do I.
How do you see the road ahead for BRICS in the close future, like within the next one, two years?
Well, Brazil’s chairmanship of the organization is going to be interesting. If Brazil’s heart is in it, that will become clear. If Brazil’s heart is not in it, that will equally become clear. But assuming that Brazil fully intends to develop the organization over the next year.
I think by the time we get to Brazil, 2025, we should be able to implement some of the things we were hoping would be implemented here in Kazan, particularly the financial payment system, developments on the currency, and the commodities exchange.
We have got a grain exchange, but we were hoping, I was hoping for a proper full commodities exchange system that would bypass the international marketplace dominated as it is by western countries who do not have the global south or the global east at heart.
This interview was conducted on behalf of TeleSUR TV.