Published: March 18 2001 20:08GMT | Last Updated: March 18 2001 20:14GMT The anti-globalisation protestors who paralysed Seattle in late 1999 have found a new bogeyman. This time it is World Trade Organisation talks on liberalising trade in services, which resume in Geneva today. The protesters - development campaign groups and public sector unions - want to halt the talks in their tracks. They claim the WTO is plotting to abolish state monopolies, overrule national regulations and open markets to ruthless exploitation and profiteering by multinational companies. The result, they say, will be destruction of public services and violation of democratic rights. The allegations are fantasy. The WTO cannot force any member to open its market. That decision is voluntary and countries that opt to liberalise may choose how far and how fast to go. WTO rules allow members to exempt sectors, regulate and privatise as they see fit. They may also suspend liberalisation commitments for health or safety reasons and even withdraw them. Equally wrong-headed are complaints that rich WTO members will bully poor ones into making concessions against their will. The rules-based trade system is the best defence the weak have against coercion by the powerful. That is why so many developing countries belong to the WTO. What this protest is really about is militant anti-capitalism and protecting public service union members' jobs. If it succeeds, poor countries will find it harder to attract the investment, technology and skills they desperately need to provide essential services efficiently. That so many falsehoods have gained currency shows politicians have still to learn the real lessons of Seattle. The time is gone when trade deals could be clinched behind closed doors and parliamentary approval was a formality. For global liberalisation to progress nowadays, its benefits must be sold to legislators and electorates with vigour, persistence and conviction. Although many governments are committed to liberalising services trade, few have bothered to explain their aims to voters, leaving the WTO's overstretched secretariat to take the flak. Such myopic behaviour risks undermining the project by handing victory in the battle for public opinion to opportunistic opponents with redoubtable public relations and lobbying skills. For the services talks - or any other WTO negotiations - to succeed, governments must come out fighting. They need to argue robustly for liberalisation and expose the protesters' scare-mongering as the self-serving nonsense it is. If the advance of globalisation's misguided foes is to be halted, now is the time to draw a line in the sand. _______________________________________________ CrashList website: http://website.lineone.net/~resource_base
