 |
Al-Ahram Weekly 17 - 23 February 2000 Issue No. 469 
|
||
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
| ||
|
Al-Ahram Weekly 17 - 23 February 2000 Issue No. 469
|
||
| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
| ||
Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Features Focus Profile Travel Living Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Humbug eats humble pie
By Gamal Nkrumah
It is the revulsion that he inspires that makes you feel in your heart of hearts that Michel Camdessus is insincere when he pleads the case of the poor. His latest performance was no exception. "The widening gaps between rich and poor within nations, and the gulf between the most affluent and most impoverished nations are morally outrageous, economically wasteful and potentially socially explosive," Camdessus expostulated in his valedictory address Sunday before the distinguished delegates who had gathered for the 10th United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in the Thai capital Bangkok. I wonder how many of those delegates really believed he meant what he said?
Thai women protest against globalisation in Bangkok
(photo: AFP)
The UNCTAD meeting, which is convened every four years, had opened on Saturday. Egypt, represented by Minister of Economy and Foreign Trade Dr Youssef Boutros Ghali, was elected deputy chair.
There was a full agenda, but before proceedings could advance very far, the tempestuous currents by which the world economic process is increasingly rocked broke across the meeting's bow. Over 1,000 anti-globalisation protesters descended on the conference venue in downtown Bangkok, and the stage was set for a little drama.
Not that those present were prepared to change their tune. Globalisation is the best means of "improving the human condition around the world," said Camdessus, who was attending his last meeting as head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). No sooner had he delivered himself of this memorable insight, than he was promptly punched in the face by a cream-and-fruit pie hurled at him by one of the protesters. The august director scurried for cover, but failed to avoid the blow. Drenched in cream, he stepped down from the podium and departed hastily to change his clothes and smarten up.
Camdessus, a hugely unpopular man of grim aspect and sardonic temper, has for long been a prophet of doom and gloom -- and the very personification of evil in the eyes of many of the world's poor. Uncharacteristically, this week he played the buffoon and proceeded to inflict the long worn-out arguments of the IMF with devastating timing on his smug, grey-suited audience. This was a decision in very poor taste. The pie was tossed at Camdessus precisely because during his tenure in office he habitually pretended not to hear the complaints of the world's poor. The structural adjustment programmes which he sold to Africa and other parts of the world have wreaked havoc on hapless communities and compounded many times over the socio-economic hardships of millions of people around the globe. In Africa and Asia, his prescription for economic growth and development imposed high interest rates that triggered off recession and led to the massive laying-off of workers.
The fracas in Bangkok left one with the unmistakable feeling that we have seen all this somewhere before. And we have. In Seattle, and then again in Davos. Where next?
Camdessus, like Microsoft chief Bill Gates and former WTO head Renato Ruggiero before him, appeared unmoved by the pie prank. Mustering all the dignity he could, in the context of this most undignified debacle, he came up with the sort of corky comment that has enraged his critics for the past 13 years. "A few people in the street with a few banners are not expressing the true wishes of the majority," said Camdessus, his finger as ever on the pulse. "I listen to the voice of the people from the representatives of the 182 countries who elected me. You know there are six billion people behind me," he added, tongue in cheek.
But his immaculate sense of irony hardly made what he had to say any more palatable. "Put Camdessus on trial!" screamed the placards of the activists' outside, as thousands of demonstrators stole the media spotlight from the globalisation goons and policy wonks within the hall.
Unfortunately, their protests fell on deaf ears. United States President Bill Clinton declined to go to Bangkok, dispatching in his place US Agency for International Development deputy head Harriet Babbitt, who proceeded to blabber out the dull Washington line. "Development," she informed the assembly, "requires a sound policy framework that will allow the private sector to flourish, good governance, accountability and transparency, protection of human rights and the rule of law."
Fortunately, not everyone agreed with her. "The argument is that a lack of transparency makes it difficult for countries to function well and that when players feel uncomfortable they just pull out their investments regardless of the consequences," Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamed countered upon his arrival in Bangkok. "We are asked to be transparent, but currency traders are not transparent." It is, of course, an inherently unequal contest.
United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan, however, was quick to come to Camdessus' defence. While acknowledging that the IMF head "perhaps made several mistakes", Annan laid into the protesters, warning that their actions serve no purpose and arguing that all the blame cannot simply be heaped on one man and one organisation.
However, Annan had some harsh words for the West, too. "Can we not attempt on a global level what any successful industrialised country does to help its most disadvantaged or underdeveloped regions catch up," he asked. The WTO summit in Seattle failed, he said, because "governments, particularly those of the world's leading economic powers, could not agree on their priorities".
It is all very well for Annan, who globe-trots on a wing and a prayer, to preach to the converted. In Bangkok, he took the opportunity to peddle the idea of a "Global New Deal" under which the world's wealthiest nations would reward those poorest countries which most scrupulously adhere to policies that favour foreign investment -- a proposal which smacks of the IMF and World Bank's "star-pupil country" approach. Yet the South cannot seriously rely upon charity from the North. Western benefactions inevitably come with strings attached, and the lack of environmental safeguards and cheap labour -- the developing world's greatest attractions for Western investors -- are already the subject of much debate within the WTO. When Clinton suggested that labour issues could be made included in a global trade deal, it was the representatives of the South -- Camdessus' voice of the people -- who remonstrated most vocally. Despite the nice words and fancy rhetoric, there is nothing fundamentally new about Annan's "Global New Deal". We've heard it all before.
UNCTAD was traditionally a forum for the developing nations of the South to brainstorm trade issues from their own perspective. Increasingly, those nations are complaining that the trade agreements proposed by the WTO only cut tariffs on goods exported by the affluent nations of the West, and not the South's principal exports -- primary commodities and agricultural products, textiles and garments. Nor can breathless estimates of an economic upturn in Asia and Africa conceal the magnitude of the social and economic ills that plague the world's two largest and most populous continents. Poverty is spiralling out of control, and the consequences are disastrous. The number of countries categorised as "extremely poor" by the UN has doubled in the last few years from 24 to 48.
An UNCTAD report released at the Bangkok meeting urged the WTO to remove all tariffs and quotas on products exported by the poorest countries. The South feels alienated from the decision-making process at the WTO, and has proposed that UNCTAD have a bigger say in global trade policies. But Babbit and other delegates representing the industrially-advanced nations of the North insisted that UNCTAD could not cope with such heavy responsibilities. "An operational role for UNCTAD in trade negotiations would involve a confusion of institutional roles and a diversion of limited resources to activities for which UNCTAD is not the best-suited organisation," Babbit said.
Vitor Ramalho, Portugal's secretary of state for economic affairs who represented the European Union in Bangkok, concurred. "UNCTAD is not a forum for the negotiation of multilateral trade rules, which is the prerogative of the WTO," he explained.
The West's reaction was, in short, both ungracious and parsimonious. The WTO's harsh conditionalities are unfair on the poorest nations, for they are neither conducive to economic development nor do they promote free and fair trade. As such, the organisation's practices fly in the face of the fundamental lesson of economic history, which is that the applicability of rules, laws and economic systems is always relative.
It was left to UNCTAD chief Rubens Ricupero, urging employers to have a greater sense of moral responsibility towards both their employees and the local community in general, to speak for the poor. "If we accept that the only logic is profit-seeking without any consideration for human values, then we will destroy the fabric of society and there will be an enormous backlash against globalisation," Ricupero said.
For many, that backlash cannot come too soon.
