Reprinted from The Common Good, No 13, Spring 1999

www.catholicworker.org.nz

 

EDITORIAL

The Truth about APEC –

Cheating the poor, rewarding the rich

by Jim Consedine

It is certainly enough to make you angry.

To watch the $50 million red carpet being rolled out by the government to APEC leaders in Auckland in September will rank as one of the more galling experiences of the year. Already it feels a bit like standing with the peasants and farm labourers as the coaches roll up to the big doors at the manor house. The sycophantic way the government is pulling out all stops to impress the major nations attending, particularly the United States, reflects just how out of touch our national leadership is with the needs and aspirations of ordinary New Zealanders. There was a time when government leaders, despite their obvious ambition, seemed like most of us. Now they live in the same country, but in a different world.

In reality, APEC (Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation) has got little to do with governments and all to do with business. Its goal is to make the Asia Pacific region into one big free market by removing barriers to investors and trade for rich countries by 2010, and for poor countries by 2020.

APEC focuses on economies. That means that other important issues that make us human and part of God’s creation are ignored. The impact on indigenous peoples, worker’s wages and conditions, human rights, small businesses, local communities and the environment are all ignored. Business is about making money for the rich. This is primarily what APEC is about. It is anti-democratic and operates through a cycle of closed meetings and secretive discussions.

APEC is not just about free trade. It promotes a package of ‘reforms’ which include privatisation, deregulation and unregulated private overseas investment. In New Zealand we know already what this means. The rich get sleek, then fat, and die of overindulgence; the poor eat the crumbs, live miserably and die early.

If previous meetings are anything to go by, we can expect huge disruption in this country and a rash of human rights abuses rarely seen in peace time. For example, in order to host the APEC summit in Manila in 1996, 33 000 squatter families were forcibly removed, their shanty dwellings demolished. The Central Luzon province was placed under virtual martial law, while dissident groups were harassed and intimidated by security forces. In Vancouver in 1997, civil unrest reached such proportions that excessive police force, improper arrests and breach of civil liberties became widespread. Litigation from those abuses still continues. The effects on the Chretien Government have reverberated to this day. In Kuala Lumpur last year the same scenario unfolded. Unprecedented security and widespread violence were typical reactions to peaceful protests.

Auckland can expect little better. Security costs alone are expected to be more than $18 million. Certain foreign security people will be allowed to bring in, carry and, presumably, use their own weapons. And all for what? So the resources of the world can be further divided up to enable the rich and powerful maintain their dominance and control over the majority of citizens in each APEC country.

The philosophy behind APEC is called ‘selling your soul to the highest bidder’. In religious terms, it is called the ‘golden calf’ syndrome. New Zealand knows all about that. Sadly, we were the first in the region out of the blocks back in the 1980s when these fraudulent ideas were first being mooted. Hundreds of factories were closed down in the wake of deregulation, thousands of jobs went – and with them the skill base built up over more 100 years – and our manufacturing base was largely destroyed.

At the same time we sold off our assets. These included all our local banking institutions including the Post Office, the Rural Bank, the Bank of New Zealand, the Development Finance Corporation and Trustbank. State Insurance was also privatised. Capital market deregulation in the 1980s introduced a high level of speculation and created a big rise in foreign debt. This allowed financial institutions to increase interest rates and transfer the accrued profits to a rich elite. Its effect on ordinary people can be seen from a Massey University survey (July 1999) that showed that 80 per cent of the population were on average 7 percent worse off now than 12 years ago, whilst the top 10 per cent were much better off. It can’t come much clearer than that! But there is worse to come. The infrastructure is now in place to continue this process well into the next century.

Much of Catholic social teaching stands for the very opposite of what APEC represents.

In a recent widely praised pastoral letter, the Catholic bishops of England and Wales defined the basis of morality as the right and fair way for people to relate to one another and to the world around them. In its embrace sits one of the most important social moral principles of all – the development, enhancement and protection of the Common Good. This is the principle that has attempted to hold the fabric of society together on some form of just basis for centuries. It is based on the notion that each person is a social being and reaches his or her potential in relationship with others. Collectively, they form a society. The bishops defined the Common Good as being the whole network of social conditions which enable human individuals and groups to flourish and live a fully genuine human life. Far from each being primarily for him or herself, all are responsible for all.

They expanded the concept in order to meet the particular needs of the modern world. They said that the Common Good cannot exist today without the presence of four other principles that are essential to its realisation. The first is the principle of subsidiarity and solidarity, the protection of human rights and an option for the poor.

The famous philosopher and theologian Thomas Aquinas taught that the common good is the end of each individual member of a community, just as the good of the whole is the end of each part. It is defined within the context of a basic respect for the dignity of the human person. This surely is the most basic premise of a truly human morality. The ideology of APEC attacks this at its roots.

Pope Paul VI taught that political government, which should oversee the economic well being of a country, ‘must have as its aim the achievement of the common good. While respecting the legitimate liberties of individuals, families and subsidiary groups, it acts in such a way as to create, effectively and for the well being of all, the conditions required for attaining man’s true and complete good, including his spiritual end.’ He concludes by saying ‘the true aim of all social activity should be to help individual members of the social body, but never to destroy or absorb them.’ (Apostolic letter, Man in Today’s World, 1971)

The best summation of all these teachings is founded in John Paul II’s 1988 encyclical On Social Concerns. He wrote of the conditions which prevail to produce what he called ‘structures of sin’. He was referring to social systems which enslave or oppress people and attack the Common Good. These ‘structures of sin’ are found where people are crushed, marginalised or oppressed and are denied the opportunity to develop their God-given gifts. Can we not say that the development of the modern global economy is such a ‘structure of sin’? How can we as Christians stand in solidarity with the poor and their victims, speaking justice, development and peace, when so many are being crushed by such structures? Surely APEC is such a ‘structure of sin’? Like its sister organisation NAFTA in North America, it stands condemned by its own fruit.

There was more than a prophetic insight in the teachings of Peter Maurin who helped found the Catholic Worker. His idea of a decentralised economy where ordinary people maintained some control over their economic destiny through co-operative economic ventures, coupled with their reconnection with the land and its produce, makes more sense now than ever. These and similar ideas of how to make ‘small is beautiful’ micro-economic ventures are still a pathway that offers life and sustenance for the 21st century.

 

Jim Consedine presides at the Catholic Worker eucharist most Wednesdays at the Suzanne Aubert CW in Addington. He is not a card-carrying member of APEC.