[asia-apec 1305] Antonio Tujan (IBON) on Alternatives To The APEC Agenda

[APEC Monitoring Group]

Alternatives to the APEC Agenda
Antonio Tujan Jr.



ALTERNATIVES TO THE APEC AGENDA

At every APEC Leaders' Meeting from Bogor, Indonesia to the present here in Auckland, New Zealand, the East Timor people and their supporters have hounded the APEC leaders to protest and demand action on the issue of Indonesian invasion and genocide in East Timor.  They have been told instead that as an association of economies, the APEC involved simply with economic matters and they should take their case elsewhere.

We know, of course, that the issue of East Timor is not simply about colonial expansionism and genocide, but is about economy.  The reason behind the Indonesian occupation of East Timor is not to save East Timor from the Portuguese or reclaim it, but the age-old reason behind colonial expansion: to take control over the rich natural resources of East Timor.

And what prevents the APEC powers from intervening in the issue in the name of humanity is not respect for Indonesia's sovereignty, just as the US did not bother to consider Yugoslavia's sovereignty in engineering a NATO bombing and invasion.  It is hypocrisy to blame the so-called militias for the carnage and wait for Indonesia's invitation when it is plainly clear as confirmed by independent observers that the Indonesian military is responsible for these militias and is directly involved in killing civilians.

The reason for this is also economic.  APEC powers such as the US, Canada, Australia and Japan, as well as New Zealand are keenly aware that their billions of investments and trade with Indonesia could be jeopardized if they should step on the toes of the Indonesian elite still dominated by Suharto and the military bureaucracy.

APEC is indeed not simply about economic concerns because the APEC agenda for free trade and globalization affects our very lives and the fate of our communities.  This agenda is putting the corporation and its greed for profits over every facet if our lives.  APEC is putting the agenda of the corporation to amass superprofits above the interests of the people, above our welfare, social services and security.

It has been often been mentioned how important the APEC is because of the economic clout of the Pacific rim countries that comprise it.  Indeed, the APEC brings into its fold many of the world's major economic powers and emerging major economic players like China and the ASEAN. The Asia-Pacific is a broad and complex grouping of diverse countries, a fact that makes the APEC a challenging and formidable project, and at the same time, an important international political economic instrument - whether for the interest of developing economic cooperation between countries or something more.

Whatever were the intentions of the academics and technocrats who conceptualized the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation as an international organization, and the political intentions of the governments which initiated it, economic and technical cooperation in the APEC soon gave way to the exigencies of real politik in the Asia-Pacific.  The APEC became a convenient counterfoil to an emerging Japan-ASEAN force in the Western Pacific, in this manner serving US interests for hegemony in the Pacific.

An effective tool for neoliberal globalization
 
Beyond the interplay of regional and interregional issues in the APEC are the major issues that dominate the APEC: the promotion of free trade and the whole program of neoliberal globalization and through this, the promotion of the US agenda for hegemony in the Pacific. Ever since Seattle, when the US altered the political and programmatic agenda of APEC along the lines of free trade, the APEC has evolved into an important international tool or mechanism for neoliberal restructuring of Pacific rim countries.

 The APEC has served to broadcast in its early years the powerful message for globalization and the myth that this is an inexorable process brought about by technological revolution.  The layman and even a number of NGOs have bought this lie that since technology is for development and the welfare of humankind, then globalization is good.  And since business controls technology, then they must be given free rein to invest, trade and supposedly develop our economies.  And There Is No Alternative.

 For many countries indebted to the IMF and the World Bank, globalization was implemented through the Washington consensus that imposed policies of liberalization, deregulation and privatization as components of the Structural Adjustment Programs.  For many others, an elaborate campaign and diplomatic offensive was utilized that used the example of the so-called Asian tigers as an attraction, or used the example of the economic collapse of the Soviet blocs countries as supposed proof of the superiority of the market.  In most cases, the globalists just plainly threatened everyone with even more crisis if they do not jump unto the globalization bandwagon.

 The APEC is an important mechanism to sustain a momentum for neoliberal restructuring for an important economic chunk of the globe.  This is achieved by creating an overall political atmosphere and pressure for liberalization, especially in trade.  It has been effective in drawing in such politically difficult countries like China and Malaysia and dealing with regional economic interests of Japan, ASEAN or Australia.  Besides such measures as insisting that it is an association of economies, the APEC has achieved this by using herd tactics, actually calling working group leaders as "shepherds" headed by a "lead shepherd".

Additionally, liberalization is achieved through specific political pressuring and commitments for sector liberalization and country programs.  The annual Leaders' Meetings provide an occasion and, in a sense, a deadline towards hammering out specific agreements and commitments on particular key issues such as country commitments in Manila, trade in information technology and telecommunications in Vancouver or Early Voluntary Sector Liberalization for a number of commodity lines in Kuala Lumpur.

Liberalization of the Asia-Pacific countries is also further achieved insiduously through programs involving economic and technical cooperation that are meant to ensure that protectionist policies are removed from legitimate social and environmental concerns.  Such is the policy handling of marine resources conservation, or promotion of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) for example.

Another aspect that makes the APEC distinct is its concern for trade facilitation.  Beyond implementing economic policies, the APEC addresses such issues as harmonization of standards and procedures among many others that actually make the difference in realizing free trade.

Finally, the APEC is more than just trade liberalization.  When it raised the slogan of "APEC means business!" in 1996 in Manila, the APEC clearly proclaimed its dictum of corporate rule.  The overall APEC objective is to realize not simply the promotion of business among APEC countries through increased trade and investment, but unabashedly uphold the primacy of business interests in the formulation of economic policy.

This is not to mean that corporate control has not been present in our governments this century.  What it simply means, is that under globalization, monopoly capital has become more aggressive and blatant in exercising control over the state in order to erode social protection and services over nations and peoples.

 Among multilateral and plurilateral organizations, only the APEC has so far gone beyond the tenets of neoliberalism and exposed the hand of monopoly capital in enshrining the concept of corporate-state partnership through the ubiquitous role of the ABAC in its affairs.  The ABAC (APEC Business Advisory Council) has become something of an arbiter of what should be done and what is right in the various working groups and committees of the APEC.

 The APEC has openly provided monopoly capital, in the guise of the ABAC, direct hand in influencing or determining the policies APEC countries must take in order to facilitate business.  In this way, the APEC becomes an effective tool in harmonizing and restructuring countries in the Asia-Pacific in order that monopoly capital realizes faster the benefits of globalization.  Under the baton of the US, this can only mean providing the US monopoly corporations the competitive edge in the Pacific rim.  Thus trade facilitation over and above economic and technical cooperation makes the APEC more powerful than simply implementing liberalization.

Some quarters have opined that the APEC has lost its direction and has reached a cul-de-sac in its development.  It may be true that the APEC has failed in its principal mission of fastracking trade liberalization.  But the US as the dominant force in determining the development of APEC remains aggressive in pushing forward the agenda for liberalization in the APEC member economies, as shown in its initiatives such as that on e-commerce, IT products, and the EVSL (Early Voluntary Sectoral Liberalization) initiative.  

However, the APEC has not been able to follow the pace that the US wants as its initiatives face the difficulties in the diversity of reactions and complicated processes among member economies.  Furthermore, as an organization for liberalization, economic cooperation and trade facilitation operating in several sectors and issues or concerns as the same time, the APEC has evolved into more than two hundred projects, many of them overlapping, giving the impression of confusion.  But these initiatives are all moving, albeit in extreme difficulty, in the direction of of realizing the goals set forth in Bogor and Manila.  

 As the initiatives for expanding and accelerating the overall process of neoliberal globalization moves to the Ministerial Meeting of the World Trade Organization in Seattle this November, the APEC has not become lost.  It has simply taken a back seat to the WTO.  And the APEC continues to play its supportive role in realizing the US agenda in the WTO.

 The Seattle Leaders' Meeting did not only bring forth a new APEC that put Japan and Mahathir's Malaysia in its proper place under US Pacific hegemony.  The APEC also became a foil that pushed the European Union back to the negotiating table for the final Uruguay Round agreement of the GATT.  Since then, the APEC continues to reflect the top issues in the US agenda for the continuing process of globalization.  As the Seattle Ministerial Meeting comes near, the APEC meetings increasing echo the forthcoming issues in the effort to accelerate the process of liberalization in such crucial areas as government procurement, e-commerce, investment, and competition policy.

The APEC cannot be reformed

 The APEC Leaders' Meetings have served the purpose of grandstanding the APEC agenda for globalization as well as push for specific policy initiatives for trade liberalization.  However, these media events have also become an occasion that has drawn the various political issues in the various APEC countries creating much political difficulty for organizing these circuses.  The recent example in Auckland is the issue of East Timor.  More importantly, these occasions have also provided the people's movements in various APEC countries an opportunity to develop their solidarity and raise an increasingly loud voice of protest that serve to delegitimize APEC.

 The APEC is deceptive because of the agenda for economic and technical cooperation and trade facilitation built into its program of liberalization.  Furthermore, the APEC has responded into such social concerns as the environment, migrant labor and women.  But in each case, government-business partnership that makes the APEC has succeeded in turning its supposedly egalitarian social and economic concerns into a triumph of the market each time.

 The APEC must be junked as an instrument of globalization and corporate power.  It is intensifying the people's difficult plight through its agenda for monopoly capitalist profiteering in partnership with government.  It is a tool to destroy the sovereignty of nations through various ways and guises in advancing superpower domination.  Globalization and trade liberalization continues to marginalize and impoverish our peoples, destroying their jobs and livelihood.

 For example, the Philippines has been an exporter of sugar since the nineteenth century.  This century it has been a major global exporter at the rate of two million tons annually at its peak in the 1970s.  But semifeudal conditions in the production of sugar have eroded this productive capacity and now the Philippines is hardly self-sufficient in sugar.  On the other hand, reduction of tariffs under the GATT and the AFTA has resulted in the massive inflow of cheaper Australian and Thai sugar.  As a result, the hundreds of thousands of small and medium farmers are facing bankruptcy while the even more numerous farmworkers stand to lose their jobs.

 Another urgent issue is corn.  Corn has been left rotting in the fields in Cotabato, south of the Philippines, in this year's harvest season.  The reason being peddled in Manila is that there is a lack of postharvest facilities since the warehouses are bulging with newly harvested stocks.  What is not being revealed is that livestock raisers are no longer buying this corn since they have been allowed to import US corn at less than P5 per kilo, even lower than domestic production costs.  Warehouses are full of newly harvested corn because no one is buying the more expansive local yellow corn.

New issues in the WTO Seattle Ministerial Meeting

In the whole framework of trade liberalization and globalization, the APEC is directly linked to the GATT Uruguay Round and the WTO.  As the preeminent multilateral framework for trade liberalization, the WTO sets general standards for liberalization in the APEC.  On the other hand, the APEC helps pushes the US agenda in the WTO against EU and other countries.  Furthermore, the APEC can and does serve to protect and strengthen US hegemony in the Asia-Pacific.

The Seattle Ministerial Meeting of the WTO is exceedingly important because of the EU and US agenda to push for a Millennium Round in order to expand liberalization to new areas.  This is over and above their intention to strengthen the effectivity of the current agreements covered by the built-in agenda for review such as the Agreement on Agriculture, the TRIPS and the General Agreement on Trade in Services.

There is a growing movement among farmers and peasants all over the world led by La Via Campesina demanding that the agriculture must be taken out of the WTO.  Third World agriculture, in particular, has been ravaged  by trade liberalization through the GATT Agreement on Agriculture.  Through this agreement, self-sufficient agricultural systems in Third World countries are being destroyed through competition from cheap subsidized agricultural imports from the First World countries.  Furthermore, transnational corporations like Monsanto and Cargill are creating massive restructuring of agriculture, controlling inputs and trade and marginalizing small farmers in the process and leading them to bankruptcy.

There is also a growing global movement calling upon governments to reject the US and EU pressures for a new so-called Millennium Round.  This round must be prevented in order that their objectives to negotiate new agreements are foiled.  Among these new agreements are the effort to bring a multilateral framework on investment to replace the failed Multilateral Agreement on Investment.  On this point alone, the Millennium Round must be stopped.

But other equally damaging agreements to expand the scope of trade and investment liberalization are in the works.  The proposed agreement on competition policy is not about curtailing global monopoly transnational corporations of the First World, but about dismantling the effort of Third World countries to temporarily cushion the impact of trade liberalization by instituting controls such as import licensing.

There are also negotiations towards a new agreement for the liberalization of government procurement.  Previously privatization of the government in utilities and infrastructure besides states assets and social services has resulted in the megasales that have expanded the horizon for monopoly capital investment, and added tremendously to the phenomenon of commercialization under globalization.  Now, the proposed liberalization of government procurement  will ensure that transnational giants are able to wrestle their way into a major area for business transaction and trade in the procure of government supplies and equipment like computers, telecommunications and even office supplies.

More agreements are being proposed, including an agreement into e-commerce which would provide tremendous economic advantage to US corporations in banking and finance as well as in the software and information trade.  Another one is also bring brought forward into the APEC and the WTO which would ensure the free trade in products made from genetically modified organisms or what is euphemistically called trade in biotechnology products.

People's Alternatives to Trade

 Trade is necessary because of differences in our communities.  While New Zealand produces dairy products, trade brings these products to the Philippines where tropical conditions do not make it very efficient to raise dairy cows.  On the other hand, the Philippines raises tropical fruits like pineapples which would not grow very well or would have to be grown under very inefficient utilization of energy in temperate New Zealand.

 Trade allows the equalization of these differences where trade is conducted between communities and countries under conditions of equality, cooperation and mutual benefit.  In this manner, trade not only directly benefits the people who can enjoy these products but also can be made a contributory factor for economic and social development.

 Trade, however, can also be made and has historically acted as a force to perpetuate inequality among communities.  It has promoted this inequality and has become an instrument for economic subjugation of weaker communities, of colonization.  The principal reason for this is that trade is not simply an egalitarian intercourse between communities most of the time, but between merchants or by merchant entities who trade for profit.

 Under monopoly capitalism, trade becomes a powerful economic tool of imperialism.  Free trade for monopoly capitalism means giving free hand to monopoly capital to expand its monopoly and increase the extraction of superprofits from the colonies and semicolonies.  Trade not so much about exchange of commodities between countries as exchange of commodities between transnational corporations which control a full two-thirds of world trade.  And if we take into account the fact that one third of world trade is conducted as intra-TNC transactions, then trade clearly takes on a new dimension of corporate exploitation of labor and resources in weaker countries.

The APEC Agenda for Imperialist Globalization

 We all know that the APEC is not just about trade liberalization.  When we planned for the APEC protests and conferences in Manila we decided that APEC's agenda for imperialist globalization best captures the totality of the issue that APEC means for the people of the Asia-Pacific.  But some of us said that globalization, per se, is nothing new.  It has come in waves of imperialist colonization since the 19th century.

 But what is new with this new wave of globalization is that it has a neoliberal agenda to realize the objective of expansion of markets for trade and investment and intensification of exploitation for superprofits.  This phenomenon can best be summed up in four points:  First, a global crisis of overproduction that has reached critical proportions in the devastating recessionary crises in the 80's provides the conditions for intensifying competition among TNCs and the impetus to open up countries for more trade and investment.

 Second, globalists have foisted new myths of neoliberalism to justify the globalist economic policies.  These are the myths that would have us believe that globalization is about technology and is good, that globalization is about increased business and is absolutely necessary to survive, that there is no alternative to the inexorable process of globalization.

 Third, for the same objective to expand markets for goods and investments, colonizers utilize new instruments of liberalization of trade, investment and finance, deregulation and privatization.  Some have called this process recolonization.  However, for the Maori and Filipino peoples, for example, who have remained neo-colonized, this process is the intensification of this neo-colonialism.

 Fourthly, this is the neoliberalism of monopoly capital for whom it principally benefits.  Small and medium capitalists have been marginalized or even dispossessed in the rapacious process of accummulation as a result of the opening of markets and the resulting destruction of productive forces in various globalized countries.  This neoliberalism is an oxymoron, for these are monopolists utilizing liberal phraseology and policies in order to remove barriers to their monopoly operations.  

As a natural result, we are witness to a rapid process of even greater concentration of wealth and resources in monopoly conglomerates.  Every industry and sector of economic activity in the world today is monopolized further by a smaller group of supermonopolies, so to speak, as mergers and acquisitions continue everyday.  This also means the greater concentration of power and greater danger of fascism in the world today.

Alternatives to the APEC Agenda of Globalization

 Our response to neoliberalism cannot simply be a return to Keynesian economics of greater state intervention to prevent unbridled monopoly capitalism. Neoliberalism has in fact exposed in all its nakedness the violence and greed of capitalism.  It is not our wont and interest to strengthen capitalism through Keynesian neo-classical policies.

Neither can our response be to seek narrow nationalist protection from foreign inroads without critically pursuing equitable social benefits from trade and other economic endeavors for our peoples and communities.   This would simply be strengthening and protection our own bourgeoisie which are actually tied to global monopoly capital and whose interest is simply protecting itself while ensuring the opening up of other countries for their own benefit.

 Governments and the elite talk about economic development or even sustainable development as their goal.  We cannot disagree with this although we would emphasize that sustainable economic development must fundamentally be rooted in social development and the achievement of equity, soveriegnty and liberation, even.

 They say the objective to achieve this goal is through continuous economic growth while we say that the objective should be to ensure social development, food security, social services and welfare and so on.  They assume then that the key to continuous economic growth is business as the engine of growth while we say that the key to social development is people supported by a pro-people policy of governance.

 Naturally, if these neo-classical economists want continuous economic growth through business development, then the problem lies in the lack of efficiency in various economic sectors, an inefficiency that is also brought about by protectionism.  We say this means colonization and monopoly.  What is needed is the dismantling of monopoly and the institution of social protection and welfare.

We must fight for the people's alternatives to globalization.  I will not go into specific models of the peoples' alternatives.  It is for us to develop these models, to work on these models as we advance our resistance to globalization.  In fact, this resistance stands as our first and most important alternative to globalization.  

Models for working alternatives to globalization are also drawn from our own daily experiences and from that of our communities.  And finally, these models are rooted in our histories as peoples and as communities.

In developing these models, we draw guidance and inspiration from fundamental principles that put the people first in our agenda and underscore our opposition to globalization.  First is equality.  Our economic alternatives must be founded on the objective to achieve equality of access to resources, opportunity to livelihood and economic well-being, and share in the social fruits of labor.

Second is power.   Related to the issue of equality is the issue of distribution of power over resources and production, and over the fruits or bounty of society.  Related to this issue is the objective of achieving sovereignty for the people and their empowerment in the society's economic, social, political and cultural life. 

Third is democracy.  The foundation of democracy is of course the people's empowerment, that sovereignty resides in the people and not simply on discrete political institutions of government.  And this is why I usually talk of the myth of democracy, not only in Third World countries like the Philippines which is obviously not democratic, but more so in the developed countries in the Free World where democratic institutions supposedly exist and the people enjoy democracy.

Sovereignty rightfully resides in the people and therefore it must be reclaimed, asserted and expressed by the people.  Assertion of the people's economic sovereignty means reclaiming their control over the communities' resources, ensuring the people's livelihood and economic welfare, achieving economic development for our societies and implementing the equitable redistribution of resources, opportunities and the products of society's labor.

Sometimes I wonder which country is more democratic.  Or maybe the people in the First World enjoy only a little more democracy than the Philippines.  Our country is so obviously not democratic that we do not take democracy for granted and must fight for it all the time.  Thus our media is very boisterous and also very precious for freedom-loving Filipinos.

This is the reason why we have this funny concoction called "people power" where if one feels oppressed then one finds recourse not so much in government or the justice system but in the streets through militant protest.  This situation has reached absurd proportions where government officials who feel they have been wronged by higher officials resort to "people power" by their supporters in order to find redress or even to pressure higher offices of government to grant their demands.

We now have the case of Charter Change which is a very big issue in our country.  The democratic forces are fighting the government's effort to globalize the Constitution and in the process extend the term of President Estrada and his party.  I was asked in a forum by a fourteen year old high school student why we should bother preventing charter change when the constitution is not at all good and is not being respected in the first place.

Indeed, the Cha-Cha as it is called in the Philippines, is not a grand democratic process of fighting for a better, democratic Constitution.  Rather it is simply a political fight between neo-liberals who want to globalize the Constitution and the progressive movement which is simply trying to prevent the Estrada government from turning this Constitution into a worse one.  In this way, we hope to protect what little Constitutional or legal protection we still have for national patrimony and the people's economic rights.

For example we have an Indigenous People's Rights Act in the Philippines which does not really give the indigenous peoples their democratic rights and ancestral domain, but instead provides the opportunity for corporations and individuals to legally take away the indigenous people's ancestral domain from them.  Thus we have many cases of indigenous peoples such many Manobo tribes in Mindanao which have decided not to deal with this law nor with the government and would rather fight in the towns and in the forests to keep their ancestral domain.

Finally, we have solidarity.  A people's solidarity founded on equality underpins our national and international relations and struggles.  This solidarity can only be achieved until those who are dominant whether by class, gender, race, ethnicity and so on recognize their dehumanization by their dominance or are dethroned by those they dominate.  

For example, many men activists in the Philippines fashion and call themselves feminists in recognition of the gender issue and women oppression.  I may be recognized as one of the foremost supporters of the women's movement in the Philippines but I have come to realize in time that I am only a theoretical feminist.  That one can become a true feminist if one has fully understood and felt the pain in being a woman in this patriarchal world.

It is easy for us to talk about strengthening the public domain, or of making public key industries, assets and enterprises for the public good.  But unless the foundation by which this public sector is based on genuine solidarity and equality, is based on struggle to achieve that equality, then what is made public simply becomes new structures for domination.

 Indeed, the struggle is also within ourselves.  But this struggle and our objective can only be achieved as we struggle against all forms of domination and subjugation, against colonization and imperialism.

Auckland, 11 September 1999