Last week saw a series
of important events on the hot topic of Trans-Pacific Partnership
Agreement, with the official round in Brunei and a round table in Kuala
Lumpur, leading to the question: What next?
LAST week saw many important developments on the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA).
The 19th round of the negotiations concluded in Brunei after an intense
week. It emerged that many issues are still controversial and that the
target of signing the treaty by year end cannot be met.
Malaysia’s tone at the negotiations has also changed, with
Inter-national Trade and Industry Minister Datuk Seri Mustapa Mohamed
informing his counter parts of the domestic opposition to the TPPA and
various issues which Malaysia has problems with.
Malaysia’s
negotiators earned bouquets from NGOs for tabling a new proposal that
tobacco control measures should be excluded altogether from TPPA
disciplines.
Meanwhile in Kuala Lumpur, a roundtable workshop on
the TPPA brought together 200 people. Keynote speaker Tun Dr Mahathir
Mohamad reaffirmed his opposition to the TPPA and urged the Government
not to join it.
The Aug 26-27 round table was organised by the MTEM (Malay Economic Action Council) and the Perdana Leadership Foundation.
The participants came up with 75 “red lines”, or positions that are
non-negotiatble, that they would like the Government to adopt.
Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak received the “red lines”
document from the MTEM leadership at the group’s Hari Raya open house on
Aug 28.
Mustapa also announced that the Government was going
ahead with organising two cost benefit studies on the TPPA’s impacts on
national interests and on SMEs and the bumiputra economy. Only if there
are net benefits will the country sign the treaty.
It looks like the strong views voiced by various groups and politicians have influenced the Government’s thinking.
A strong sign of this was at the ministerial meeting of TPPA countries
in Brunei on Aug 22-23. Chaired by the American Trade Represen-tative,
the meeting was supposed to give ministers the chance to clear the
contentious issues that the technical negotiators could not settle, and
thus pave the way to a quick conclusion.
Instead, the ministerial
meeting turned into an anti-climax as some ministers did not attend,
and some others who attended did not stay for the press conference that
lasted only 20 minutes.
And instead of clearing hard issues, the
ministerial meeting gave a chance to some ministers to highlight
contentious issues themselves.
Mustapa was one of those who took
that opportunity. “I drew attention to the growing discomfort
domestically arising from Malaysia’s participation in the TPP
negotiations, the outreach activities that had been undertaken and the
concerns raised by the various stakeholders, specifically on the issue
of lack of transparency and disclosure of information on the texts being
negotiated,” said the minister in a statement.
He also
highlighted the difficulties Malaysia has on government procurement, the
need for exclusions of SMEs and preferences for bumiputra which are
required for the Malaysian government to continue with its
socio-economic development goals and affirmative action policy.
He also underscored that Malaysia had serious difficulties with the
current proposal on state-owned enterprises, which is seen to go beyond
the stated objective of creating a level playing field as it had serious
implications for Malaysian SOEs.
And on intellectual property,
he reiterated Malaysia’s strong position on access to affordable
medicines while on environment, that there was a need to safeguard the
state governments’ jurisdictions.
The following day, Malaysia
also caused quite a stir by putting forward a new proposal to totally
exclude tobacco control measures from the disciplines of the whole TPPA.
This was warmly welcomed by public health groups, which then called on
the US and other countries to agree to the Malaysian position.
At
the MTEM round table in Kuala Lumpur, Dr Mahathir gave a 40-minute
critique of the TPPA, the problems it would create for domestic policy
and why Malaysia can expand its trade even without such agreements. He
ended with a strong call to the Government not to sign the treaty.
For two days, the participants discussed specific TPPA issues in six
breakout groups and at the closing plenary they adopted 75 “red lines”
which they called on the Government to take on as part of its
negotiating positions.
The “red lines” include a rejection of the
investor-state dispute settlement system, the exclusion of the chapters
or sections on government procurement and state-owned enterprises, and
demands that the intellectual property chapter does not require
obligations that are stronger than the World Trade Organisation’s rules,
especially with regard to patents and medicines, and copyright issues.
It should be noted that some of these civil society “red lines”
correspond to the concerns that Mustapa had taken up at the TPPA
ministerial meeting.
It looks as though the Govern-ment’s position has been affected by the voices of civil society, business and experts.
A key question, of course, is whether in taking up these issues, the
minister and the negotiators will make their own “red lines” out of the
concerns.
The next question is whether the other TPPA
participants will accommodate themselves to Malaysia’s positions. And if
not, then what happens next.
In any case, it has been a very
interesting week or 10 days, full of events and developments, on the hot
issue of TPPA, both at the official meeting and on the home front.
Contributed by Martin Khor Global Trends:
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Showing posts with label Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement. Show all posts
Monday 2 September 2013
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