“The world has changed”, said the former President of Brazil. Fernando Henrique Cardoso, in a video taped with his message for the XXI IPSA World Congress of Political Science. Unfortunately, personal health reasons prevented Mr. Cardoso from joining us in Santiago. Still, he took the time to prepare some remarks, in which he thanked the past President of IPSA, Lourdes Sola, and touched on the importance of IPSA celebrating its 60th anniversary in 2009.

President of Brazil from 1995-2003, Mr. Cardoso was sorry he could not be part of the Opening Ceremony, as scheduled, with his colleagues Ricardo Lagos –former President of Chile- and Lionel Jospin –former Prime Minister of France. In his message, he spoke about “the first crisis to have a global impact”, and about the particularities of the recent economic downturn. At the core of his comments was the need for democratization, not only of financial instruments but of the financial institutions themselves.

(Higher quality non-streaming video downloads are available.)