Gov has run away from serious questions in run up to world trade talks

national | anti-capitalism | press release Wednesday July 09, 2003 15:40 by Richi Brennan

Labour Party Spokesperson on Foreign Affairs, Deputy Michael D. Higgins has lashed the government, for its “disgraceful way of preparing for a conference as serious as the World Trade Organization talks in Cancun this September.”

Deputy Higgins claimed that the Dail has had “little opportunity of discussing the different approaches of various Departments and the issues which will lie at the heart of the consultations in Cancun.

“I ask the Minister of State with responsibility for Overseas Development, Deputy Kitt, if the Government position of Ireland going to Cancun has been proofed against the commitment made in relation to the World Millennium Development Goals?

“Where does Ireland stand in relation to establishing a hierarchy of responsibility in the World Millennium Goals? Is poverty reduction the major aim? Where is the commitment to needs-based Development strategies, to gender equality, sustainable development, fair trade and institutional adjustment.

The current unfair trade structures cost the Developing World $134 Billion a year-more than twice what it receives in Aid. In fact World Aid in 2000 was 30% less than it was in 1990.

“In relation to debt, $128 million per day is transferred from south to north on the debt side. At the same time, if the debt payments could be reduced for Africa and 1% added to the combined education and health budgets, it would save the lives of 11,000 children daily. This is the reality which Cancun is refusing to face.

“Where is there evidence in the Government's preparation of the commitment to the elimination of world poverty as a goal? Let us remember the aim to which the saints of the world signed up in Johannesburg, namely, reducing world poverty to a mere 900 million people by 2015.

“Why is the Government asking the developing world to accept additional powers for the World Trade Organisation? Why should its powers be extended into services? Why should the Government representing Ireland and through the European Union sign up to a demand that, for example, Brazilians must agree to sell their land to foreign companies?

“When did the Government seek a mandate from the House to grant the four new powers being sought by the World Trade Organisation? It did not do so, and has no mandate. Its representatives will go to Cancun armed only with this gibberish that passes as the neo-liberal model of economics. The Government representatives can sail off to Cancun with this deluded economics in one hand and a tequila in the other.

“My hope is that a fair trade regime and development issues emerge from Cancun. I also hope the Government members come home humbled and that they take out their textbooks and begin reading about humanity rather than repeating gibberish from discredited elites in the same way they repeated the gibberish from a discredited and unrepresentative elite that brought us to war.”