Feast inside, soup kitchen outside

BY SEAN HEALY

SYDNEY — The contrast was obvious and deliberate. Inside, in the warmth of the luxury ANA Hotel, was World Bank president James Wolfensohn lecturing a $150-a-plate dinner on the joys of "globalisation"; outside, in the cold and rain, 100 campaigners set up a soup kitchen and spoke of the real impacts of "the world's premier development institution".

Wolfensohn, in Sydney on a whistlestop tour, was addressing a dinner organised by the charity Opportunity International and took his chance to play cheerleader for pro-corporate economic policy.

"Globalisation" was getting an unduly bad reputation, he claimed, because economic data indicated that about three billion people were benefitting from it while perhaps one billion were not.

Outside, however, speakers from a variety of community organisations told a different story: of how the World Bank has refused to match rich country promises to forgive 100% of the debts of the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries, of how police shot dead six people protesting the World Bank's privatisation plans for Papua New Guinea, and of how the World Bank is pushing poor countries to sell off their water supplies to Western multinationals.

"The World Bank, like any other financial institution, must take responsibility for its disastrous lending practices", said James Arvanitakis, the campaign director of Aid/Watch, which organised the protest.

"For example, up to 30% of the billions of dollars lent the Suharto regime has gone missing. Bank loans have been used to forcibly resettle communities contributing to the violence in areas such as Kalimantan. The Bank chooses to ignore these facts and instead seeks to 'protect its balance sheet'."

Protesters also distributed an alternative menu to dinner-goers, which included "structural adjustment souffle with baby carrots" and "public goods privatised in fresh water marinade".

From GLW issue 459