The APEC and TPPA
summits in Bali recently showed the winds of change are blowing in the
region, symbolised by the US President’s absence but also reflecting the
aptness or otherwise of policies.
THE winds of change are blowing, bringing shifts in perceived wisdom and the old order, especially in the Asian region.
The recent APEC summit and associated meetings in Bali were marked not so much by results but by perceptions.
In fact, the lack of results, rather than results, was the main
story. This lack was not so much in the APEC itself, but in the Trans
Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA).
The leaders of TPPA countries met in a separate venue away from the
APEC summit. The Indonesians were the host of APEC and not the TPPA,
which they are not involved in, and were unhappy that the TPPA
threatened to take away the limelight from the main event.
But that was the secondary story. The main news was that United
States President Barrack Obama had to give a miss not only to his
scheduled visits to Malaysia and Indonesia, but to the APEC summit
itself.
This was damaging to the United States, symbolically and in practical
terms. Obama could not be blamed personally, as everyone knows the
problems he faces at home with the onset of the “government shutdown”
and the looming debt-ceiling crisis.
The problem was deeper. Obama’s absence confirmed the already growing
perception in the region and the world that there is a dysfunctional
governance system in the United States, at least for the moment, and it
is becoming a long moment.
Sympathy outside the United States lies with the President, a
sympathy tinged with pity for a legitimate leader confronted with the
fringe (but a powerful fringe) of the opposition party that refuses to
accept his healthcare reform bill that has come into law, and which is
willing to damage the operations of the administration and apparently
even the country’s financial creditworthiness to achieve its ideological
objective.
Every democratic country has its moments of clashes between governing
and opposition parties, and sometimes it can paralyse the country until
the crisis is resolved, one way or other.
But here we are talking about the United States, the world’s most
powerful country, and the greatest advocate of democracy. What happens
in the United States has ramifications for the rest of the world.
Suddenly the unthinkable becomes a reality – the partial government
shutdown – and a possibility: a default on loans, with disastrous
effects on the world economy.
The crisis emerging from the present configuration of the division of
powers between executive and legislative wings of government – a major
pillar of Western democracy – calls into question how stable that system
really is and what can be done if the paralysis lasts more than just a
passing moment.
The lack of clear results in the TPPA leaders’ meeting in Bali is
partly attributed to the absence of Obama, since the President had been
assigned the role of galvanising the other leaders to meet the aim of
concluding the talks by year-end.
In the end the leaders’ statement merely said the negotiations are on
track, but did not mention they would finish by December. The growing
perceptions is that the TPPA talks are facing turbulence.
Obama’s absence cannot really be blamed for that. Instead, the TPPA
meetings of ministers and then political leaders only confirmed what has
been known in recent months, that the TPPA agenda has been overloaded
with too many issues and by too many demands, especially by the United
States, that are too extreme for other countries to simply accept.
According to reports, most of the TPPA countries cannot agree to the
US demands on intellectual property that go far beyond the WTO rules.
Several countries have problems with various other issues, including environment, investment and competition.
Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak was the most outspoken. At
an APEC side event, he said the TPPA’s year-end timeline is not cast in
stone and asked that more flexibilities be given to countries.
“We do have a few areas of great concern,” he said, adding: “As you
go into areas of intellectual property , investor-state dispute
settlement, government procurement, state-owned enterprises, environment
and labour, you impinge on fundamentally the sovereign right of the
country to make regulation and policy. That is a tricky part and that is
why we ask for flexibility.”
These comments by the Prime Minister summarise succinctly the “agenda overload” problem in the TPPA negotiations.
The areas that are trumpeted by the United States as a set of 21st
century issues that make the TPPA a trail-blazer may turn out not to be
so first-class after all.
Instead, they make some politicians, officials and parliamentarians
uncomfortable, and many public-interest NGOs and business
representatives, very unhappy.
The APEC summit and the TPPA meetings in the sidelines gave the big
perception that US leadership is in question if not in decline in the
region and the big talk was the corresponding rise of China, whose
President’s presence and performance was the reverse mirror image of
Obama’s absence.
But it is not only the contrasts in relative presence and economic
and political power that counts. In the end it is also the content of
policies advocated and the willingness to be genuine partners, and not
to make use of new pacts and treaties to benefit one’s own country or
interests, at the expense of others.
Contributed by Global Trends Martin Khor
> The views expressed are entirely the writer’s own.
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