[asia-apec 964] Will there be an APEC meeting in 1999

[Roberto Verzola]

 >Already the obituarists have written off Apec '99, Auckland $44
 >million debut on the international stage.  And the jamboree has not
 >even begun.

By late 1999, the problems due to the Y2K crisis will be very much in
the public mind, occasional panics will happen more often, and APEC
will be a minor issue.

I would suggest that NGOs take more seriously what computers experts
are saying about the Y2K crisis and how it will interact with and
worsen the global financial crisis.

It happened to us in the Philippines in 1986, those of us who talked
about "crisis" and "revolution" and yet many of us missed it when the
EDSA revolution took place.

I'm afraid a similar thing is happening regarding the year 2000, when
many of us talk about "crisis" and "paradigm shift" in the abstract
and yet are doing very little to prepare our organizations and
activists to play decisive and leading roles when the crisis that is
looming before us really hits hard sometime late 1999.

Roberto Verzola
Philippine Greens