By Aziz Choudry
CHRISTCHURCH — The New Zealand government is the chair of APEC (Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation) for 1999. We are now entering a period of hard sell for the government and business leaders who support APEC's goal of a "free" trade and investment regime.
The Aotearoa/New Zealand APEC Monitoring Group, along with GATT Watchdog, Corso, CAFCA (Campaign Against Foreign Control of Aotearoa), Christian World Service and the NZ Trade Union Federation, is committed to telling the real story about APEC.
We have begun an education campaign that will continue throughout 1999. Our primary goal is to help people understand the link between APEC's goals and the destructive economic policies which have devastated this country and the lives of its peoples over the past 14 years.
APEC will involve a stream of meetings throughout the year. The first preparatory meeting of senior officials is in Wellington in February and the final ministerial and leaders' meetings in Auckland, September 9-13.
The Monitoring Group is coordinating education activities during all of these meetings.
The September meeting will be a focus of attention for the world's media. For us, it is also the opportunity to bring together groups from throughout the country that have been involved in APEC-related discussions during the year to share their understanding, strategies and alternatives to the failed free market approach.
The APEC Monitoring Group will be organising a public meeting in Auckland on September 10, followed by a forum on alternatives to the APEC agenda on September 11 and 12.
The Auckland conference will have a strong focus on the connections between our own experience of the "New Zealand experiment" and the regional and global drive towards economic liberalisation being promoted by APEC and other vehicles of free trade and investment.
Sideshows
There will be many sideshows for those who want to hitch onto the APEC wagon. All of these are intended to legitimise the APEC agenda.
In addition to the meeting of the APEC Business Advisory Council, made up mainly of representatives of big business, an APEC Women Leaders' meeting will seek to show the support of women for APEC's liberalisation agenda.
A meeting on Small and Medium Enterprises will try to convince small businesses that APEC is not really the vehicle for big business, and is good for them. There is bound to be something for Maori entrepreneurs.
Some NGOs may well be invited, and perhaps even funded, to participate on the fringes of APEC. The government has already hired someone whose job is to coopt NGOs into the APEC program.
The more people the government can get to participate in its activities, the more support it will claim for APEC's free market goals.
Those who oppose what radical free market policies have done here and around the world will find this offensive and unacceptable. However, the opportunity to rub shoulders with participants in the APEC process will be tempting for people and organisations that believe they can bring about some kind of change in the way APEC operates.
That misunderstands the nature of APEC, which can be summed up in two of its own catch-cries: "APEC means business", and "APEC is a community of economies".
Cosmetic measures
The only consultation that the government proposes for NGOs and Maori is purely cosmetic. It is a desperate measure to try to build, as Prime Minister Jenny Shipley put it in her speech to the APEC Business Leaders' Summit in Kuala Lumpur, "broader support for APEC among the wider communities of which we are part".
"Our experience of free trade and investment and free market policies tells us that APEC is wrong. We plan to expose and oppose APEC and the aggressive free trade and investment agenda which it promotes", says Leigh Cookson, a spokesperson for the Monitoring Group.
Since the 1994 APEC summit in Indonesia, the Aotearoa/New Zealand APEC Monitoring Group has been involved in ongoing research, education, campaign and media work.
For more details, contact the Aotearoa/New Zealand APEC Monitoring Group at <gattwd@corso.ch.planet.gen.nz>, fax 64 3 366 8035, ph 64 3 366 2803.