People Power Through Mercosur Parliament?

You have got to give it to the Latin Americans. When it comes to people power, they certainly have got it! Remember what happened with the Free Trade Area of the Americas(FTAA), which was scheduled to take off in 2005? It was in Brussels, in 2002, that I started writing about the FTAA, and it certainly looked like it was going to happen.

But the Latin Americans got big on people power--and used it to good effect. In Wikipedia, description of the FTAA is "proposed". Never to have happened. A flop.

Unlike the Latin Americans, the AU countries and their relations, by way of the ACP Group, with the EU on the EPAs continues apace as if regional integration à la européen would be the best transplant for the African continent.

It seems like the Africans haven't quite gotten round to the effect of people power in the way our Latin American friends have. So sophisticated they appear to be in this regard that they have, as an article maintains, considered the:

...initiative to implement mechanisms of people's participation in the Parliament of the Common Market of the South (Mercosur) similar to the street parliamentarianism in Venezuela

Is it any surprise that it is Venezuela that is proposing this idea?

The mind boggles;-)