Today was the first official day of the WTO Ministerials and security was certainly a lot different from yesterday! There were police everywhere when we entered the Convention Centre to attend a debate between Walden Bello from Focus on the Global South and Alejandro Jara, one of the four Deputy Director-Generals of the WTO.
The debate was interesting, although both sides really pulled their punches and Jara was incredibly evasive in response to any questions that were critical of the WTO. At the end of the day, Bello’s main message was that the ‘Development Package’ being offered at this Ministerial was just a way of getting developing countries not to walk away from negotiations in order to try to maintain the legitimacy of the institution and that additionally they were a bad deal for developing countries anyway – the ‘Aid for Trade’ is money that has already been committed elsewhere and a lot of it is in the form of loans, which will only increase indebtedness.
Jara just kept repeating that he thought that the Ministerial would be successful, because they would be able to agree on a position from which to continue negotiations next year, and that they would be able to conclude the Doha round by the end of the year. (Funny how he is defining success as a postponement of any real outcomes.) I asked him if he thought that it was problematic that decisions were being postponed to be made in Geneva by the Secretariat and smaller groups of governments (as had been done in the July Framework in 2004) and whether this was essentially eroding the claim that the WTO is a consensus-based institution. He just said that the decision to do this would be made by everyone – i.e., he just totally evaded the question.
The next event that I attended was a briefing on the “Key Issues” by the Third World Network. Martin Khor spoke first and he was excellent (as promised). It was interesting to see that around a third of the people in the room (and it was quite a big room) were delegates from developing countries – clearly they were there to hear from someone who is very informed about what is really at stake in this round in order to form their own positions.
Like Bello, Martin Khor was very critical of this so-called ‘development package’ being offered; basically saying that it has nothing to do with development at all. In his view, only the large agricultural exporters have anything to gain in this round of talks, because although they feel cheated by the way that the US and EU simply shifted the way they give their farmers subsidies (from one ‘box’ to another), instead of actually reducing them as they committed to in the Uruguay round, they are still willing to give up something in order to increase their market access in agriculture. However, other than the big agricultural exporters, Martin Khor argued that small developing nations have absolutely nothing to gain in this round and that they have no reason to agree to any deal that is being offered – since their 150 demands for reforming the trading system (the so-called “implementation issues” that include things like by making TRIPS more flexible), which they tabled in 2000, have still not been met and have now even been taken off the agenda.
From the TWN briefing I caught the MRT to Victoria Park to attend the protest rally. It was just so cool to see people from all over the world assembling for the rally. Most of the people were from developing countries, particularly Asia, but also Latin America and Africa. In particular, there were heaps of farmers – all wearing matching hats and drumming together. There was also a big memorial to the Korean farmer who committed suicide at Cancun in protest again the impact of trade liberalization on farmers in Korea and around the world. Just looking at it made me cry.
We ended up marching with the people from Oxfam, because we were with the young people from the Oxfam youth exchange for trade justice. Behind us was a fantastic group of students from the Hong Kong Baptist University – the ‘Sociology Students WTO Concern Unit’ who danced along with their whistles. Behind them were people from Jubilee South who were drumming amazing rhythms. Along the way we realized that Gael García Bernal was marching with us (in the Oxfam group), and (this is perhaps the dorkiest thing I have ever done) I got my photo with him. He was very sweet and busy filming the protest with a massive video camera.
When we got to the protest end point, right near the Convention Centre, we all sat down. Some sex workers from Cambodia got up a danced with NO WTO attached to their rear-ends – they were tops. Then the Korean farmers came through the crowd singing and carrying a large funeral pier. A whole group of them jumped into the water (it must have been Freezing!) and started swimming towards the Convention Centre. They explained that they were trying to show the pain that the WTO caused them. As the funeral match moved forward, they matched towards the police line and suddenly used the pier as a ram with which to break their way through to the Convention Centre. That is when the tear gas was used and we decided it was time to leave.
After the rally I had arranged to interview Alberto Villarreal from FOE Uruguay about the struggle to protect public water in Uruguay. I was supposed to meet him in the NGO Centre in the Convention Centre, but had to postpone when I was met with a wall of riot police blocking my entrance. Once I weaved my way back in, I met Alberto and interviewed him for 25 minutes, ‘recording it’ (I thought) on my new MP3 player/recorder (my ‘Shuangsang’ – yes, I thought it was a Samsung until I turned it on…). The interview went great, until I tried to replay it and discovered that I had recorded nothing – I had instead just been replaying a recording that I made earlier in the day (the display for voice record and voice play is identical, of course!).
Anyway, I spend the last half hour trying to remember what Alberto said and typing up a “transcript” that I will email him for comment. I hate technology!
Now, I must get some dinner and recharge for tomorrow. There is a briefing by Tony Clarke on GATS from 8:00am-1:00pm and it should be good. I will ensure that I understand this bloody MP3 thing a bit better by then…
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