[asia-apec 1014] APEC 1999

[Gatt Watchdog]

APEC 1999 To Be Exposed And Opposed
By Aziz Choudry

The New Zealand government is the chair of APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic
Cooperation) for 1999.   We in Aotearoa/New Zealand are now entering a period
of hard-sell for the government and business leaders who support APEC's goal
of a "free" trade and
investment regime for "developed" countries like Aotearoa/New Zealand and
Australia by 2010 and in the "developing" countries of the Asia Pacific
region by 2020.  Despite the ongoing economic crisis, and growing calls to
rethink the economic fundamentalism which underpins much of global economic
policy-making through entities like APEC, the World Trade Organisation, the
World Bank and the IMF, the APEC Ministers in Kuala Lumpur continue to
advocate further trade and investment liberalisation as the best way forward.

The Aotearoa/New Zealand APEC Monitoring Group, along with GATT Watchdog,
Corso, CAFCA, Christian World Service and the NZ Trade Union Federation, is
committed to telling the real story about APEC.  We have already begun an
education campaign which will continue throughout 1999.  Our primary goal is
to help people understand the link between APEC's goals and the destructive
economic policies which have devastated this country and the lives of its
peoples over the past 14 years and to promote discussion on alternative
strategies and policies to achieve economic, social, environmental and Treaty
justice.

The APEC process will involve a steady stream of meetings throughout the year
with the first preparatory meeting of senior officials in Wellington in
February and the final ministerial and leaders' meetings in Auckland from 9 to
13 September.  The main official activities are the senior officials' meetings
(SOM) and the meeting of trade ministers at which the outcomes in September
are pre-scripted and basically agreed. The Monitoring Group is coordinating
education activities during each of these meetings.

The first SOM is in Wellington from 1-9 February.  We have already convened a
group to organise a series of workshops, seminars, and public meetings around
the issues of the Treaty of Waitangi, labour issues and education.  Activities
during the second SOM in Christchurch from 29 April to 7 May, organised by
GATT Watchdog, Corso and CAFCA, will focus on foreign investment and big
business, development, and the Treaty of Waitangi.  The third SOM is in
Rotorua from 5-15 August, where the main issues for local action will be
forestry, fisheries and indigenous rights.

The trade ministers will meet briefly in Auckland in late June, and again
with the leaders in mid-September.  The September meeting will be a focus of
attention for the world's media.  For us, it is also the opportunity to bring
together those groups from throughout the country who have been involved in
APEC-related discussions during the year to share their understandings,
strategies and alternatives to the failed free market approach.

The APEC Monitoring Group will be organising a public meeting in Auckland
on Friday 10 September, followed by a forum on alternatives to the APEC
agenda on Saturday and Sunday, 11 and 12 September.  The Auckland conference
will have a strong focus on the connections between our own experience of the
"New Zealand experiment" and the regional and global drive towards economic
liberalisation being promoted by APEC and other vehicles of free trade and
investment.

There will be many sideshows for those who want to hitch onto the APEC wagon.
All of these are intended to legitimise the APEC agenda. In addition to the
meeting of the APEC Business Advisory Council, made up mainly of
representatives of big business, an APEC Women Leaders' meeting will seek to
show the support of women for APEC's liberalisation agenda.  A meeting on
Small and Medium Enterprises will try to convince small businesses that APEC
is not really the vehicle for big business, and is good for them.  There is
bound to be something for Maori entrepeneurs.

Some NGOs may well be invited, and perhaps even funded, to participate on the
fringes of APEC.  The government has already hired someone whose job is to
co-opt NGOs into the APEC programme.  There is even a possibility that the
government might partly fund a "People's Summit" to show how "tolerant" it is
of dissent.  The more people the government can get to participate in its
activities, the more support it will claim for APEC's free market goals.
Those who oppose what radical free market policies have done here and around
the world will find this offensive and unacceptable.  However we realise that
the opportunity to rub shoulders with participants in the APEC process will
be tempting for people and organisations who believe they can bring about
some kind of change in the way APEC operates.  That misunderstands the nature
of APEC, which can be summed up in two of its own catch-cries: "APEC Means
Business", and "APEC is a community of economies".

The only consultation that the government proposes for NGOs and Maori is
purely for cosmetic purposes.  It is a desperate measure to try to build, as
Jenny Shipley put it in her recent speech to the APEC Business Leaders' Summit
in Kuala Lumpur, "broader support for APEC among the wider communities of
which we are part". A desperate measure to control debate and opposition to
APEC and minimise the risk of political embarrassment during the year that
Shipley's government (if it is still in power) wants to showcase the New
Zealand free market economy to the rest of the world.

"Our experience of free trade and investment and free market policies here in
Aotearoa/New Zealand tells us that APEC is wrong. We plan to expose and oppose
APEC and the aggressive free trade and investment agenda which it promotes.
Its underlying model of development denies communities the right to determine
our own futures, and advances the government of big business, by big business,
for big business," says Leigh Cookson, a spokeperson for the group.

Since the 1994 APEC Summit in Indonesia, the Aotearoa/New Zealand APEC
Monitoring Group has been involved in ongoing research, education,
campaign and media work on APEC.  Members of the group have participated in
alternative meetings on APEC held parallel to APEC Summits in Jakarta (1994),
Osaka/Kyoto (1995), Manila (1996), Vancouver, (1997), and this year in Kuala
Lumpur.

For more details, please contact the Aotearoa/New Zealand APEC Monitoring
Group at <gattwd at corso.ch.planet.gen.nz> Fax 64 3 3668035 Ph 64 3 3662803