Understand what you protest at - don't just leave it to chants
By Tom Allard
November 16 2002
"This is what democracy looks like" was one of the chants which anti-globalisation protesters offered up between surges at the fencing around the Olympic Park hotel hosting yesterday's World Trade Organisation meeting.
They were talking about themselves, of course, but they should have been talking about the WTO - the world's most democratic international institution outrageously dubbed the "World Terrorist Organisation" by one placard-wielding activist.
Imperfect? Yes. Infuriatingly slow-moving? Absolutely. And with a brief, but chequered, history that has not served parts of the developing world well.
But intensely democratic, nevertheless. Just one country's refusal to support a WTO motion is enough to stymie any initiative endorsed by the other 140-odd member nations.
That's why calls to abolish the WTO, as many were demanding yesterday, are seriously misguided.
To do so would open the trading system to the kind of free-market anarchy which would really allow rich countries to exploit poor ones.
It's one of many misconceptions about the WTO and yesterday's "mini-ministerial" convened by the Trade Minister, Mark Vaile.
A press conference convened early yesterday by "civil society" groups highlighted as much. This "secret" meeting would make binding agreements, said Joy Chavez, from the Focus on the Global South group.
Poor countries such as her home nation of the Philippines, she said, would have to privatise water, education and other government services to satisfy the WTO.
Not true - on all counts. Scare-mongering and downright lies abounded among the incoherent and ill-informed rabble outside yesterday's meeting. None more so than its central charge that the WTO is anti-democratic.
What is true is that the democratic nature of the WTO - along with the complexities, vastly different interests and objectives of WTO members - means progress on any issue is glacial. Yesterday's inconclusive outcome on cheap drugs for poor nations highlights this.
But the benefits of progress are enormous. One positive step - say, cutting the $600 billion a year spent on subsidies and other trade barriers which stop poor nations selling rural produce to the West - would change the lives of billions of the world's poor for the better.
Developing nations - more savvy now about trade dealing after being dictated to in the first WTO trade round in 1994 - have, in the WTO, the perfect vehicle to press their claims.
So, protest against the United States and Europe and their poverty-causing trade barriers, not the WTO.
http://smh.com.au/articles/2002/11/15/1037080914140.html
This 'democracy' includes absolutist hereditary monarchies where the death sentence is in operation,such as Qatar.The Dohar round is named after the capital of Qatar.There may be something to fears of free market 'anarchy' though.Soros may have started a train of events leading to the Bali bombing according to the conservative au treasurer,Peter Costello.He reckons the collapse of the Tigers in 97 led to the fall of Suharto and the largest force commitment OS since Vietnam.(in East Timor)Thats where he left it but its not hard to join the dots from Timor to Bali,even without au's wholehearted Crusaderism.
The burning question on trade for me is will the WTO stop X-box dumping?
I am thinking of getting one as mod chips are kosher downunder.The ACCC said so.
