[asia-apec 897] Naomi Klein on APEC 98

[Gatt Watchdog]

              November 19, 1998   Toronto Star

  Chretien dons the crusader's cape, for now

  At this week's Asia      [By Naomi Klein]
  Pacific Economic
  Co-operation summit, Jean Chretien is
  busily transforming himself from the
  traveling salesman we have all come to
  know into a principled crusader for human
  rights.

  Is it possible that Chretien has finally

  learned his lesson? Maybe. Or maybe he is
  still shilling the same half-empty
  package, only this time spruced up with a
  new high-minded pitch.

  Don't get me wrong: I think it's wonderful
  that our government is speaking out
  against Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir
  Mohamad's outrageous imprisonment of his
  former deputy, Anwar Ibrahim. That said,
  the practice of imprisoning or exiling
  political opponents on trumped up charges
  is par for the course in the APEC crowd
  and Canada never seemed to mind before.

           ------------------------
           Flaws like corruption
           are politely overlooked
           ------------------------

  Chretien's commitment to human rights was
  nowhere to be found when - to name but one
  example - former Indonesian President
  Suharto engineered the ouster of his major
  political opponent, Megawati Sukarnoputri,
  before she had a chance to beat him in the
  1997 elections.

  It's possible that Chretien's defense of
  Anwar proves he is turning over a new leaf
  after last year's APEC debacle.

  It is also possible, however, that
  Canada's inconsistent response to
  political ousters has less to do with
  democratic principles than with which
  politicians are doing the ousting.
  Suharto, for all of the blood on his
  hands, was always a committed free trader.
  Mahathir, on the other hand, has become
  the thorn in the side of the Asia Pacific
  liberalization master plan.

  In the era of APEC-means-business, all
  politicians are measured by their
  willingness to embrace free trade. If they
  are willing, little flaws like corruption
  are politely overlooked until well after
  the revolutionaries have lit the match in
  the presidential palace. However, if the
  politicians are unwilling to embrace the
  agenda, all tools available - including
  phony concern for human rights - are
  marshaled to marginalize them.

  It must be said that Mahathir is no hero.
  He is afraid of his own people's freedom,
  intolerant of dissent, megalomaniacal and
  anti-Semitic to boot. But make no mistake:
  all of that has nothing to do with
  Chretien's grandstanding in Malaysia.

  Of course Anwar should be released and
  Canada's pressure could well prove
  helpful. Still, we should be realistic
  about why his has become a cause célèbre.

  Western governments have wanted Mahathir
  out since he started going on about how
  vampiric foreign currency traders like
  George Soros were drinking the blood of
  the Third World.

  They also didn't like it much when he
  suggested that the financial crisis was a
  conspiracy orchestrated by corporate
  America to send Asian companies into
  bankruptcy, then buy their assets at
  fire-sale prices.

           ------------------------
           They have no choice but
           to follow IMF reforms
           ------------------------

  What makes Mahathir so dangerous to the
  West is that he is insufficiently
  desperate.

  The governments of South Korea, Thailand
  and Indonesia have borrowed so heavily
  from the International Monetary Fund that
  they now have no choice but to follow the
  rigid, IMF-proscribed free-trade reforms.

  Malaysia, on the other hand, managed to
  avoid an IMF bailout, freeing Mahathir to
  find his own way out of his country's
  crisis.

  At first, the Malaysian Prime Minister
  went along with the IMF austerity plans
  but when he failed to see positive results
  elsewhere in the region, he had the gall
  to change course. Now he is committing the
  cardinal sin against capitalism: trying to
  spend his way out of the recession and
placing new controls on foreign investors.
And that's where the current trouble
began.

Anwar Ibrahim - who has always been
something of a free trade poster boy -
refused to go along with Mahathir's plan.
He wanted Malaysia to swallow the IMF
medicine and reform its banking system to
meet foreign standards.

There is no doubt that with Anwar in power
instead of Mahathir, Malaysia would be
back on board APEC's free-trade bandwagon
- which is precisely why he attracts so
much Western sympathy.

In Anwar, Chretien has found the perfect
post-Peppergate issue: a human rights case
that is really about trade.

What is happening in Kuala Lumpur this
week is not a victory for the forces that
protested at APEC in Vancouver last year.
Rather, Chretien and his aides are
co-opting the language of human rights as
a mask to disguise the same goal as
always: A road to global free trade,
uncluttered by all obstacles and
naysayers.

Last year, they had to remove the human
rights protesters. This year, the target
is Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir
Mohamad.

           -------------------

Naomi Klein writes on Thursdays.