Editorial

28th November 1999

WTO: Swim or sink

As the political bandwagons criss-cross the country gathering dust on the one side, and the smoke filled atmosphere of a military offensive gone wrong in the North blurs our collective eyes, in far away Seattle, on the West Coast of the United States of America a conference takes place next week to shape the future of the modern world.

We must clear the dust and smoke from our eyes and witness this transition to the New World Order for the next Millennium via the vehicle of the WTO – the World Trade Organisation.

We must witness this not as silent spectators, but as active participants in what is, under the pretext of being called globalization a move to have a universal uniform system of rules and regulations with a distinct American flavour to it.

It is a well known secret in the corridors of power of the economically developing countries, which includes Sri Lanka, that US pressure – sometimes bullying – has arm-twisted a host of such countries in Asia and Africa, the Pacific and Latin America to effect minimum standards on a variety of fronts.

Only last week US Trade negotiations struck a deal with China that set in motion China’s entry into the WTO. The very fact that it was the imprimatur of the US that has enabled China to join the WTO is indicative of the US muscle in the modern post cold-war world.

Under the WTO, modern commerce is not a simple case of import and export. The enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights is part of Trade. Access to domestic markets and ownership in local companies by foreigners is part of Trade.

In still a further extension to these requirements there is a push to include minimum labour standards (sweatshops, child-workers, etc.), protection for the environment, and even good governance as part and parcel of Trade.

Countries like Sri Lanka find themselves in an awkward situation. While one cannot argue against proper labour standards, protection of the environment and good governance – especially the latter, socio-economic imperatives are quite different in the economically developing countries to those of the industrialised West which not so long ago encountered these very issues on their upward mobility towards economic progress.

Asia after all is the home for 900 million of the world’s poor. An Asian Development Bank study says one in three Asians are poor.

For instance, is it alright to employ an under-age private bus conductor – or do you deprive his family of that income? Should you build a factory and give employment to a hundred people at the expense of cutting down forest. Is all this related and relevant to international trade? When tyrannical governments go against their own people can other governments, on grounds of trade, crack the whip? Is all this conducted on a level playing field? Can for instance Sri Lanka, accused of treating its minorities harshly accuse the US of doing worse with their own?

The hard irony of all this is that whatever we may think of these issues, this is the New World Order. We either swim or sink with it.

As was reported recently while the developed countries are terrified with the Year 2000 bug that could stop their computers, five years later, in the Year 2005 the sewing machines of countries like Sri Lanka can stop.

For the WTO, all quotas to the US and Europe will stop. There will be free trade and a free for all. China can swamp the world garment trade, and Sri Lanka whose garment industry is among the top three foreign exchange earners, and provides jobs to thousands, may well be in a knot.

A prolonged insurgency is sapping our every resource – and yet the Administration is only looking towards the next election; the next Paris Aid meeting.

Our representation at Seattle is awfully low key. There is no concerted Think Tank or Study Group working out the market swings and the need for collective action and common strategies under this New Order.

Weak and ill-prepared,encircled by threatening competitors and held back by short-sighted managers, is it not time we in Sri Lanka thought seriously about our future ?

As always, we wait till it hits us in the face and bewildered, have post-mortems as to what happened blaming one political party or the other for the sorry state we get ourselves into.

The Political Column

Editorial/ Opinion Contents