WHILE not doing anything keeps us bus all the days of the week, month and year, the General Agreement on Trade and Services (GATS) is about to come into operation shortly and open up frontiers of the entire globe to US giant corporations. It should worry us and worry us a lot because as Abraham Lincoln bemoaned one and a half century ago in 1864 “I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country, corporations have been enthroned”.
As observed by US historian Howard Zinn “though they look different but imperialism and WTO-GATS are greatly compatible. We don’t have to send armies into other countries. We send corporations instead.” One of the GATS’ purposes is to open up social sectors like health and education, etc and the public sector to eager-for-profit-giant corporations. It would literally dismantle government barriers to the privatisation of public services and make it impossible for governments to run public services on a not-for-profit basis. It will allow the WTO to legally restrict government actions relating to public services through binding constraints and sanctions.
The taste of the pudding is in the eating of it. Maude Barlow says Charlene Barshefsky, the US Trade Representative, before the GATS’ negotiations had asked US services industry, what it would want included in the GATS agreement. The European Commission also did the same. Between them, she points out, the corporations identified the following priority areas for trade liberalisation: health care; hospital care; home care; dental care; child care; elder care; education primary, secondary and post-secondary; museums; libraries; law; social assistance; architecture; energy; water services; environmental protection services; real estate; insurance; tourism; postal services; transportation; publishing; broadcasting and many others.” (Maude Barlow: Trade Madness,” Ecologist magazine, February 2001). Its implications are chilling.
Those who know say that GATS’ treaty is in fact complicated and contradictory and its impact depends upon its interpretation. Almost any claim can be made about what it will or will not do or what is a service and what is not, they add. For instance, GATS agreement excludes government services, which are not ‘in competition with (Private) service suppliers’. But consider this: Does education or health services provided by a government compete with private service operator and thus fall within the ambit of GATS? One would say no and contend that it is a social obligation of a government. But in WTO’s view the two services compete with private operators: “it is unrealistic in such cases to agree ... that no competitive relationship exists between two groups of suppliers”, observes the WTO. Member countries, the WTO suggests, should “reconsider the breadth and depth of their commitments on health and social services. (George Monbiot: “GATS’ Gaffes”: The Guardian, UK, March 22, 2001).
Investment houses like Merrill Lynch are on record as having gone to the extent of predicting that public education will be globally privatised over the next decade the way public health has been and that there is an untold amount of profit to be made when this happens. Maude Barlow has stated that the European Union has already announced “every publicly run school in Europe must be twinned with a corporation by the end of the decade.
To notice which way the wind is to blow in GATS dealings, let’s refer to the dispute before the GATS’ Dispute Tribunal that arose between Europe and the US relating to import of bananas by the former. Europe argued that bananas were a product but the US proved and GATS agreed that bananas were a service and therefore fell under GATS, GATS Dispute Tribunal handed therefore a judgment of $ 194 million in favour of US. You see banana is not a product but is a service!
If we ponder about the necessity of GATS and why has it come into being, it is clear that it is neither out of love for less privileged countries nor it is to boost their economies? The mega corporations of the First World need expanding markets for their products, export of their sophisticated services industry and for investment of their surplus funds at much higher rates of return than their own economy would allow. It is to facilitate a corporate take-over of the world.
We know all governments are elected on a mandate to make country’s national economy more and more strong. All other aspects, including foreign affairs, are subservient to this all-encompassing policy. If this premise is correct, no country would adopt policies that doesn’t benefit it more than other countries or adopt policies that run counter to its own economic interests?
Let’s for a moment imagine our country having the privilege of setting out trade rules for the world. The country has a free hand. The country is not accountable to other countries of the world and no other country is represented in the policy-making. Would we put in place any policy or rules that would benefit other countries more than our country? We certainly won’t. Others too do not have a more ‘fair pair of hands’ than us.
Huntington in “The Clash of Civilisation” has pointed out “... world economic issues are effectively settled by a directorate of the United States, Germany and Japan... to the exclusion of lesser and largely non-Western countries. Decisions made ... in the International Monetary Fund reflect the interests of the West (that) are presented to the world as reflecting the desires of the world community.”
The very phrase, “the world community” has become the euphemistic collective noun (replacing “the Free World) to give global legitimacy to action reflecting the interests of the United States and other western powers. Through the IMF and other international economic institutions, the West promotes its economic interests and imposes on other nations the economic policies it thinks appropriate. (USSR’s) George Arbatov’s characterises IMF officials as “neo-Bolsheviks who love expropriating other people’s money, imposing undemocratic and alien rules of economic ... and stifling economic freedom.”
The West in effect is using international institutions ... and economic resources to run the world in ways that will maintain Western predominance, protect Western interests and promote Western ... economic values.” (Samuel P. Huntington, “The Clash of Civilisation”, The Sunday Times, UK, 14 October, 2001).
George Monbiot, one of 25 most influential people in Britain and one of 40 international prophets of the 21st century, has pointed out that anyone who believes that governments of less privileged countries “are not bullied and marginalised during global trade talks has been looking the other way.” Michael Moore, head of the WTO, Monbiot says once confided to him “the people that stand outside and say they work in the interests of the poorest people make me want to vomit.”
The GATS is no archipelago. It isn’t to pull the tariff barriers down and enable poor to trade on equal terms with the rich. The rich countries shall be more equal than other countries. What the GATS really is, is best explained by remarks of the director of the WTO Services Division who, as pointed out by Monbiot, has said,” Without the enormous pressure generated by the American financial services sector, particularly corporations like the American Express and the Citicorp, there would have been no such agreement.” Maude Barlow has quoted a top US official saying bluntly of GATS/WTO process thus: “it won’t stop until foreigners finally start to think like Americans, act like Americans and most of all shop like Americans.”
The claim that there is a certain positive relationship between free trade and growth and that the GATS has been put in place to facilitate international growth is a bedside nursery story. Dani Rodrick, Professor of International Political Economics at Harvard University doesn’t agree with the existence of any such relationship. He has observed, “Do lower trade barriers spur greater economic progress? The available studies reveal no systematic relationship between a country’s average level of tariff and non-tariff barriers and its subsequent economic growth. If anything, the evidence for the 1990s indicates a positive relationship between import tariffs and economic growth. The only clear pattern is that countries dismantle their trade restrictions, as they grow richer. “This explains why today’s rich countries, with few exceptions, embarked on modern economic growth behind protective barriers but now display low trade barriers.”
It is appropriate at this point to add that surplus labour is not a problem of developed countries. So, neither globalisation, nor WTO, nor GATS, nor any other international treaty touches it. It is a non-issue, an apartheid issue!
The assurance by the GATS that it recognises the ‘sovereign right of government to regulate services to meet national policy objectives is a rhetoric. the WTO reports that GATS tribunal would not accept a defence of ‘safeguarding the public interest. Final authority will rest with the GATS’ Disputes Panel to determine whether a law or regulation is, in GATS’ memo’s language, ‘more burdensome than necessary’. Gregory Palast, prize-winning investigative reporter of 1997 through 2000, columnist of The Observer, UK and anchorman of BBC-TV’s late-night news has cited 24 February 2001 memo prepared by UK’s official that proposes ‘rejection of a nation’s right to remove its rules from the GATS jurisdiction once a service industry is joined to the treaty. (Gregory Palast: “Necessity test is mother of GATS Intervention”, The Observer, UK, April 15, 2001) On the basis of foolproof evidence based on GATS’ another internal memo he has revealed also the coming of Article VI.4 that will demote national parliaments and regulatory in effect to advisory bodies: GATS, not Parliament, will decide what is ‘necessary’. “GATS treaty is not about trade at all, but a sly means to wipe away restrictions on business and industry, foreign and local. Nations will have to shape laws protecting the air (its citizens) breathe, the trains (its citizens) travel in and the food (its citizens) chew by picking not the best or safest means for the nation, but the cheapest methods for foreign investors and merchants,” adds Palast.
The end game is to control economy and pluck the low hanging fruit of political sovereignty with no fingerprints left on the smoking gun.
A Danish proverb says, “Evening knows what the morning did not suspect.” The past is not that distant yet. Countries of this part of the world should know a lion is never a vegetarian.
There will be no Robinhood, no conquering hero, and no messiah, to deliver us from ominously ferocious future. We shall have to reach within ourselves to find strength to think and to fight. The million-dollar question is, would we?
BABU KHAN OUTPUT: EBR FILE NAME: GATS-23 120 cm