BAGUIO CITY (December 9) — Peasant delegates and indigenous leaders here in the Cordillera region will join the Hongkong protests to the World Trade Organization’s 6th Ministerial Meeting this week amid the pending negotiations on key issues on agriculture, natural resources, services and industrial goods which deadlocked in the 5th Ministerial Meeting in Cancun, Mexico, especially with the protests from developing countries.

Representatives of the Alyansa dagiti Pesante iti Taeng Kordilyera (APIT-TAKO) or Peasant Alliance in the Cordillera Homeland and the Cordillera Peoples Alliance (CPA) will join other delegates worldwide to protest the WTO policies.

In an interview, CPA Secretary General Windel Bolinget said that the WTO’s policies have done more harm than good to the country, especially to agricultural sector with the liberalization of agriculture.

APIT TAKO’s Fernando Mangili added that the Gloria Macapagal Arroyo government’s subservience to the WTO’s policies has made her all the more unpopular among the Cordillera peasants.

“Both the WTO and the GMA should both be junked”, he added. WTO policies have brought about the influx of cheap agricultural products, which has especially affected Cordillera peasants, who cannot compete with the cheap products from abroad, especially with the lack of government subsidy to agriculture.

Cordillera women’s group Innabuyog-Gabriela, along with other women’s organizations worldwide, will also join the protests.

The Doha Agreement
Also up for discussion at the Ministerial is the Doha Development Agenda which includes the mandated review of the Agreement on Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), the renegotiation of the Agreement on Agriculture (AoA) and the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), as well as negotiations on non-agricultural market access (NAMA).

Protests against the WTO already took place in some parts of the globe prior to the Ministerial, as past WTO agreements only served to strengthen the monopoly power of the world largest corporations, many of which are based in the US.

No benefits
A report by the IBON Databank states that trade liberalization has not benefited the world poorest people, but has driven them deeper into poverty.

IBON research show that labor conditions and job insecurity have worsened since the country’s membership to the WTO. From 1995 to 2004, 6 firms closed per day, displacing some 164 workers

Workers face growing joblessness, job insecurity and worsening labor conditions under the country’s trade liberalization regime and membership to the World Trade Organization (WTO).

A Federation of Philippine Industries (FPI) survery reports that among its members, 56 firms closed, displacing 80,319 workers while 29 firms were forced to downsize their workforce resulting in 4,019 jobs lost from 1995 to April 2001. This means that during the first seven years of the country’s WTO membership, 32 FPI workers a day lost their jobs because of trade liberalization.

It can be recalled that The 4th and 5th Ministerials in Seattle and Cancun collapsed due to massive protest from developing countries.*** AT Bengwayan