[asia-apec 481] Leather Jackets and a Liars Scrawl - APEC 97

[Gatt Watchdog]

Leather Jackets And A Liars Scrawl - APEC 1997, by Aziz Choudry

>From The Big Picture, Issue 13, February 1998
(Subscriptions = $15/year from
GATT Watchdog, PO Box 1905,
Christchurch, Aotearoa (NZ)

It rains a lot in Vancouver, but that didn't account for the
clouds that cast long shadows over the November 1997 APEC Summit.
It was the gloomiest APEC meeting since the first Leaders Summit
in Seattle in 1993.  The push to further trade and investment
liberalisation was dwarfed by concerns about the Asian economic
crisis which threatened to derail this agenda.

The APEC Summit was touted as the crowning glory in Canada's Year
of the Asia-Pacific, as 1997 was called.  But let's face it.
Vancouver was a fizzer.  APEC was supposed to be a showcase for
the Asian miracle, not a meltdown.  The dominant reaction within
APEC to the crisis was as predictable, unsatisfying and
formularised as a Celine Dion CD.  The main message to be
conveyed was that the APEC leaders were in control.  "We remain
convinced that open markets bring significant benefits and we
will continue to pursue trade and investment liberalisation that
fosters future growth" stated the final Leaders Communique. 
Assurances of stability and economic soundness aplenty were made
to soothe the market and calm rising economic panic.  Offstage
all kinds of scrambling was going on as economies, currencies,
businesses, and banks tumbled like dominoes.

It was dramatic stuff.  South Korea, the world's 11th largest
economy, and newest entrant to the OECD "rich nations' club",
announced that it was seeking an International Monetary Fund
(IMF) bailout only a couple of days before the Leaders Summit. 
Then Yamaichi Securities, Japan's 4th largest investment broker
collapsed, soon after the closure of one of Japan's top 20 banks,
Hokkaido Takushoku.  Meanwhile forest fires in Borneo and Sumatra
flared up again... and the effects of the crisis on ordinary
people's lives rarely rated a mention.

Very Serious 'Glitches'

There was denial.  Bill Clinton at first called it "a few little
glitches in the road"; he soon revised this - "we need to take
this very seriously, and...work very hard."  The meltdown became
"new challenges requiring new responses" in APECspeak.

There was disagreement - Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir
Mohamad stood firm in his criticism of unregulated currency
markets and scepticism of western free market orthodox economic
thinking. Outside the official meetings, many APEC critics
pointed to the turmoil in countries which had earlier been held
up as proof of the superiority of open economies and the free
market and said "told you so".  Filipino academic Walden Bello
described the crisis as probably the most significant economic
development since the unravelling of Soviet socialism.  The
Peoples Summit on APEC (one of the 'alternative' summits) stated
that "[f]inancial deregulation by governments allowed massive
profiteering by international speculators and brought down the
Mexican peso, leaving job loss, lowered wages and greater
impoverishment in its wake.  The recent Asian financial crisis is
wreaking the same havoc on the so-called "tiger economies", and
now threatens the whole neo-liberal paradigm".

There were new opportunities.  The crisis, and the prescribed
tough medicine in the form of strict IMF conditions, provided a
way to open up Asian currency and finance markets to foreign
(especially US) capital earlier than voluntary, non-binding APEC
commitments could.  Former US Trade Representative Mickey Kantor
meant what he said a few years earlier: "We will use every tool
at our disposal...to open up markets around the world".

And there was reluctance.  Some Asian countries unsuccessfully
lobbied for the creation of an APEC stabilisation fund, saying
that the IMF did not understand the region, and that an IMF
bailout would interfere with their financial sovereignty.  The
bailout, like APEC, the WTO, NAFTA and the MAI is a power tool
for transnational corporations and the world's major economic
powers to ratchet down any programmes or policies which get in
the way of profit margins.  APEC was never likely to take a long
hard look at the dangers of currency speculation, deregulated
currency markets, overdependence on foreign capital, and the
weaknesses of an export-led economic development model which led
to the crisis in the first place.  It only really had one way to
react - calling for more of the same, more free capital flows,
more deregulation of the financial markets, more free trade. 
Some even dared to suggest that Asian economies need and deserve
the crisis so they could liberalise.

I love my leather jacket

The APEC summit and the activities of the "great leaders" echoed
Nero fiddling while Rome burned.  Clinton and (Canadian Prime
Minister) Jean Chretien went for a round of bilateral golfing in
the pouring rain.  The leaders posed for their annual ritualistic
photo - this year in denim shirts and leather bomber jackets
embroidered with their names - waving cheerily to the cameras.
Meanwhile East Timorese Nobel Laureate, Jose Ramos-Horta warned
the Peoples Summit that "[w]hen a group of leaders meets and
ignores the choking clouds of forest fires, the misery of the
poor who lost their savings and their jobs, indifferent to the
armies of peasants and workers expelled from their land, the
labour leaders, students and activists imprisoned because of
their opinions, then it is courting revolution".

Other things weren't going too well for APEC.  Ousted New Zealand
PM was not the only lameduck APEC Leader at Vancouver.  Questions
about the Clinton administration's credibility on trade issues
had been raised after it became clear in October that Congress
would not give the President "fast-track" authority to negotiate
new trade agreements - beginning with the expansion of NAFTA to
include Chile.  Many saw this as symptomatic of US public
opposition to the effects of globalisation.  Meanwhile, midway
through 1997, the Australian government had deferred proposals to
slash tariffs in its sensitive auto, textile, clothing and
footwear sectors.  Even employers and manufacturers in New
Zealand, predicting that tariff cuts would spell the end of a
number of local industries opposed government moves to
unilaterally abolish all tariffs well ahead of the APEC 2010
target date.

Great Power, Junkie Minds?

Within walking distance of the harbourfront Vancouver Trade and
Convention Centre, where much of the official APEC programme took
place, is Downtown Eastside, the poorest postal code per capita
in Canada.  The city's oldest neighbourhood is also a vibrant
community with a long history of political struggle.  To the
Canadian government, Vancouver's urban poor were merely
disposable objects in the city's bid for world-class status. 
Prior to APEC there were police "clean-ups" in the area to try
and get at least some of the city's estimated 27,000 homeless
people off the streets and out of sight before the APEC circus
rolled in.  Since a 1994 study of drug use, there have been over
1000 deaths in the Eastside from drug overdoses. Vancouver is
projected to have the highest HIV infection rate in the developed
world - its intravenous drug users already have the highest
prevalence of the disease in North America, according to a 1996
study. The very visible urban poverty was a reminder that the
richest fifth of the Canadian population gets 14 times as much
income as the poorest fifth.  Between 1994 and 1998 the Canadian
government will have cut CDN $7 billion in federal funding to
provinces for welfare, education and health to reduce its
deficits.  The 1998/9 government spending on social programmes
will be the lowest in proportion to GDP since World War II. 
Perhaps this is what the cliched rhetoric of "sustainable growth
and equitable development" in the APEC meetings really means.

APEC Summit, Militarised Zone

Across town, no expense was spared to provide security for the
Asia-Pacific's economic power junkies, especially the 70 VIPs
attending the meetings.  Aucklanders take special note!  Some
3000 RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police), and Vancouver Police
Department officers were backed up by around 1000 military
personnel, hundreds of local reservists, and an unspecified
number of CSIS (Canadian Security Intelligence Service)
operatives.  It was a good week to play spyspotting.  Bill
Clinton brought with him some - if not all - of the President's
men - about 200 Secret Service agents.  Canada's government
allowed about 40 security officers from 7 countries in as
supernumerary officers, able to bear arms, from the USA, Japan,
Indonesia, Korea, China and two other countries.  Navy and RCMP
divers searched and patrolled the harbour.  Concrete barriers
blocked off the area around the "secure zone" of the Convention
Centre and Pan-Pacific Hotel.  Police snipers watched from
surrounding rooftops.  Thousands of manhole covers were welded
shut in the vicinity.  A local radio station asked for new words
to fit the APEC acronym: someone suggested 'All Parking
Evaporates Citywide'.  The impact on the downtown business
district was described as "devastating".  And the media
complained that press restrictions at APEC made it very closed
off, that information presented at briefings was very controlled,
and access very difficult.

Costing The Earth

Despite assurances that APEC '97 would be a modest affair, the
costings told another story.  Estimates put the total price of
the APEC Summit at CDN $57.4 million, including around $15
million for security alone.  Besides the federal government, $5
million came from the province of BC, and $1.5 million from the
city coffers. The most heavily sponsored intergovernmental event
in modern Canadian history drew $9.1 million from 67
corporations, eager to do business and get some exposure.  A
Tourism Vancouver study, expecting larger numbers than the actual
figure of around 4700 delegates and 2700 media, put economic
spinoffs from the meetings at $23 million in visitor spending,
taxes and wages.  Guess who ends up paying for the massive
shortfall... Then ask why the New Zealand Government plans a
repeat performance in Auckland in September 1999!

Lacklustre APEC

The National Business Review warned: "Forget Apec gains - it's
down to survival" (28/11/97).  What did the meetings achieve?
According to some, it was that APEC leaders technically
maintained committed to trade liberalisation.  Canada tried to
take credit for getting some trade liberalisation measures pushed
through in the face of crisis.  Like many other APEC meetings, it
was determined that it was a success because it wasn't a complete
and utter failure.  Such is APEC's logic.

Business Interests Unimpressed

Fred Bergsten, ardent free trader, former head of the APEC
Eminent Persons Group and current Director of the Institute of
International Economics criticised APEC's lacklustre performance.
He called for more concrete deals and the need to send strong
signals to international markets, grumbling that APEC had not
"taken the kind of decisive action that's necessary if the
current situation is to be dealt with".  The APEC Business
Advisory Council (ABAC), in its second report to the Economic
Leaders criticised the lack of action on the recommendations it
had made in 1996, and in implementing last year's Manila Action
Plan for APEC (MAPA) which outlines APEC economies' commitments. 
"Most economies did not go significantly beyond their Uruguay
Round commitments", it wrote.  Leaders of corporations from 20
Asia-Pacific countries had met at the resort of Whistler for a
3-day PBEC (Pacific Basin Economic Council) conference and also
called for urgent action to remove all forest products tariffs
and "trade distorting subsidies".  A major CEO Summit, attended
by 250 CEOs from the region, hosted by the BCNI (Business Council
on National Issues - Canada's version of the Business Round
Table), featured meetings with trade and foreign ministers, as
well as addresses by Jean Chretien, Ernesto Zedillo, Tung Chee
Hwa, John Howard, Jiang Zemin, and Mahathir Mohamad.  Here,
arguably, was where much of APEC's driving force gathered.

Sensitive Sectors

By Vancouver, 9 sectors were chosen for early voluntary
liberalisation, supposedly starting in 1999.  These comprise the
sensitive areas of fish, fish products and forest products, as
well as medical equipment and instruments, environmental goods
and services, the energy sector, telecommunications and mutual
recognition arrangement, toys, gems, jewellery and chemicals. 
The Leaders instructed their Trade Ministers to finalise detailed
targets and timelines by their June 1998 meeting.  A further 6
sectors were to be considered for additional action this year.
Hardly spectacular stuff...

Fish And Forests

Canada tried to sell the fish/forest tariff (and other barriers)
elimination plan as the key to declaring the summit a success.
But at Ministerial briefings, Japan, Korea, Mexico and Chile all
indicated their intentions to opt out of liberalisation of these
sectors.  Japan and Korea experienced major political crises in
1993 when they agreed to ease trade restrictions on rice.  Fish
and forests are the sectors the New Zealand government is most
interested in - and our two main trading partners in Asia (Japan
and Korea together take nearly 60% of New Zealand logs, timber
and pulp exports between them) won't play ball.  Instead of
"concrete" actions, there were flimsy commitments.  It had been
bad enough that exports from countries whose currencies like the
ringgit, the baht and the won were in freefall were likely to
cost much less in countries whose currencies were not - and that
exports into these weak-currency countries would cost much more -
prompting fears that those in the economies with stronger
currencies would resist further liberalisation with the spectre
of floods of cheaper imports on their way.

The Leaders Summit strongly endorsed the Manila framework
proposal for an IMF bailout package, urging APEC to take a key
role in stabilising financial markets, deregulating financial
markets, and developing capital markets throughout the region,
envisaging a close working relationship with the IMF, the World
Bank and the Asian Development Bank in further work in this area.
 This seemed to herald a stronger future role in APEC for central
bankers and finance ministers.

Three new members were accepted into the APEC fold.  Vietnam,
Russia, and Peru will all attend the 1999 APEC meetings, but a
ten-year moratorium has been imposed on further membership.

Giving Business A Helping Hand

Business facilitation - cutting "red tape" got some focus with
the endorsement of "The Blueprint for APEC Customs Modernization"
as a model to simplify and harmonise customs clearances by 2000.

Business leaders continued to lobby for visaless travel for
businesspeople around the region, and the CEO Summit was exhorted
to keep up pressure for freer trade because entrepeneurs are more
"action-oriented" than government bureaucrats!  As for the third
main "pillar" of APEC, economic and technical cooperation, and
with ABAC estimating that $1.5 trillion will be needed for
infrastructure projects between now and 2004, the Leaders Summit
endorsed greater public-private sector cooperation, arguing that
there is a strong link between macroeconomic stability and
infrastructure development.  Many companies eyed up potential
opportunities to get into largescale infrastructure-building,
whether it be in roads, airports, telecommunications,
constructing power plants, building dams or a host of other
profitable activities in hitherto hard-to-access economies.

Mahathir On The Offensive

The US strategy of using APEC as a springboard to give momentum
to upcoming World Trade Organisation negotiations and to push the
132-member WTO along was not a big success either.  APEC's
endorsement of the WTO financial services pact, to be concluded
on December 12, was somewhat muted.  Malaysia once again
expressed strong reluctance to follow the freemarketeers blindly.
Mahathir's speech at the CEO Summit warned that "[t]he pendulum
[market forces] is in danger of swinging too far". 
"Self-interest is what moves market forces - and self-interest is
not far divorced from greed".  He asked: "How can they do this
and destroy the economies of so many countries and the livelihood
of so many millions of people?  The answer is the free market. 
The free market allows them to do this.  It is too bad that
countries and people have to suffer and pay a heavy price.  but
that is the way a free market works.  Market forces cannot be
interfered with.  It is sacrosanct."

With Malaysia hosting this year's APEC process, some feel that
1998 could be a crunch year for the forum. In October Malaysia
had increased its tariffs on construction equipment and other
items. At December's WTO Financial Services Meeting, it dug in
its heels and refused to totally open up its insurance market
much to the USA's annoyance.

Both pro- and some avowedly anti-APEC voices talked of
opportunities to export Canada's values with its goods and
services, and of using Canada's reputation for "integrity and
fairness" to pressure those APEC (read 'Asian') economies with
'poor human rights records' to change.  Asian leaders, some said,
just need exposure to Western-style democracy...

Stage-Managed Anti-APEC Summit

On the sidelines was the government-sanctioned Peoples Summit on
APEC, with the Walk (not march) for Global Justice which
attracted several thousand people.  The provincial and federal
government funding for the meeting which represented the
acceptable face of "opposition" to APEC was clearly designed to
blunt criticism of the APEC process.  Much of it was
stage-managed by Canadian government-funded "NGOs" like the
International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development,
who sought a seat at the APEC table for "civil society" - i.e.
those NGO and union bureaucrats who believe APEC can have a
caring human face.  Meanwhile Canada's government tried to make
much of its emphasis on "involving" youth and women in APEC.  The
first APEC Ministerial Meeting on women was timetabled for Manila
this year.  The highlight of the meeting of youth - "the leaders
of the future" - was described as a "walk-by of the Youth
Communications Centre by Leaders as they walk from their agenda
meeting to the family photo".  Women and youth exist only as
entrepeneurs or human resources according to APEC.

Attacking the Critics

Another way that the Canadian government sought to involve youth
and women in APEC was to pepperspray and arrest those who dared
to challenge its agenda.  An organiser for the APEC Alert
Network, Jaggi Singh, was nabbed by plainclothes police and
bundled into an unmarked car which took off at high speed, in a
clearly political move to get him out of the way, during a panel
session on globalisation and corporate rule at which I was
speaking, on the University of British Columbia campus, the day
before the APEC Leaders Summit was scheduled to be held there. 
Meanwhile dozens of students had set up a tent city on campus to
protest the presence of the APEC Leaders Summit, and promised to
"crash the Summit". Next day, a crowd of about 2000 protesters
was set upon by police with pepper spray.  Some Canadian media
people were sprayed - which probably helped to spread the sense
of outrage at the police heavy handedness.  This went far beyond
securing the safety of the leaders.  It was aimed at sparing them
any embarrassment. About 50 arrests occurred, 4 Indonesian
security staff included - two of whom were monitoring the crowd
(many of whom shouted anti-Indonesian slogans), and two were
caught on a hotel roof setting up electronics equipment.

Don't Mention The War...

In many of the alternative meetings, the individuals and
organisations which berated the populist demons - Suharto and
Jiang Zemin were singled out for special attention - were
curiously silent and dispassionate about events closer by.  To me
the assumptions and insistence that the Canadian government is on
the whole a democratic, humanitarian government were as
irritating a mantra as that spouted by the free market
fundamentalists.  The white knight in shining armour and maple
leaf.

Some NGOs and unions scour APEC documents for warm fuzzy words to
justify their position of lobbying to reform APEC rather than
reject it, but messages about APEC's real agenda came thick and
fast.  One of Canada's representatives on ABAC, Dorothy Riddle
said: "In the end, APEC will mean what the business community
wants it to mean" (Vancouver Sun 20/11/97).  The year's theme had
been "APEC Means Business" and as Lawrence Clarkson, CEO of
Boeing told the CEO Summit: "Business people everywhere just want
to get on with it". Chretien spelt out the dominant view within
the APEC forum about including considerations of human rights
within its discussion: "I don't think APEC will ever have human
rights on its agenda....It's an economic organisation...The
question of political rights is not the same thing as economic
rights" (Vancouver Sun 20/11/1997).

The doomsday scenario of a world under corporate rule, of
transnational plunder, environmental and social disaster which
many NGOs and peoples organisations which oppose APEC and free
trade warn of has long been everyday reality for the Indigenous
Peoples of North America.  While many in the alternative meetings
in Vancouver railed against the corporate sector, and identified
them as the driving force behind APEC, struggles like that of the
Lubicon Cree in Northern Alberta against gas, oil and timber
transnationals which are invading their unceded territory with
the complicity of the Canadian state barely rated a mention.  Nor
did the fact that the same "liberal democratic" government which
hoped to influence Asian trading partners with Canadian values
sent more armed forces against the Mohawk people in the 1990
standoff near Oka, Quebec than it sent to the Gulf War.  Nor that
a similar massive military land operation had taken place only a
few hours drive from Vancouver at Gustafsen Lake in 1995, against
a small group of Indigenous Peoples defending their sacred lands.

There is one word for this situation - war.  With or without APEC
Canada is a state which welcomes corporations with open arms,
offering up resources and lands over which it has no legitimate
claim.  The global free trade and investment regime is
intensifying and locking in this process.  Sound familiar?

Cree singer/songwriter Buffy Sainte Marie wrote "still our
history gets written in a liar's scrawl".  There was much
scrawling going on in Vancouver.  If we are serious about
building local or global movements to oppose freemarket policies,
the issue of Indigenous sovereignty is one of far more relevance,
urgency and importance than indulging in the NGO Olympics and
selective human rights gabfest that so many of the alternative
meetings in Vancouver turned out to be.  Understand how
"democratic" governments like Canada and New Zealand can sanction
the ongoing assault on Indigenous lands and resources and you
won't find it too hard to understand why, at an international
level they are forcefully following down the same free market
path.  Ultimately, APEC, the MAI, GATT/WTO, NAFTA and domestic
laws designed to further deny sovereign rights are all teeth in
the same mouth chewing the food for the same hungry throat. But
after Vancouver, APEC might need to see a good dentist real soon.

February 1998

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