TPPA Negotiators Face Concerted International Campaign to Release the Draft Texts
Media Release: Professor Jane Kelsey
Friday, 10 December 2010
As Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations draw to a close in Auckland, an alliance of civil society groups in participating countries have announced a “release the text” campaign ahead of the next round of talks in February 2011 in Chile.
The co-ordinated campaign aims to mobilise central and local government lawmakers, civil society organisations and ordinary citizens to demand an end to the shroud of secrecy around the negotiations.
“The negotiators themselves say this is not an ordinary free trade agreement. It would reach deep behind the border into the realm of domestic policy and regulation, super-imposing enforceable constraints over decisions for which our elected parliaments and local councils are currently responsible”, said Professor Jane Kelsey, New Zealand.
There are now draft texts on the table on financial services and investment, and possibly more. Negotiators have flatly refused to release them at any stage in the negotiations, claiming there is no precedent in a free trade negotiation.
‘It is nonsense to claim that releasing draft texts is unprecedented. All nine countries are Members of the WTO, which now routinely posts country position papers and draft texts in progress on its website.
The New Zealand government itself recognised in its paper on IP, leaked earlier this week, that “groups are acutely aware of what they see as ‘secret’ negotiations to strengthen IP rights under FTAs and other international instruments.” After repeated leaks of the draft texts, the parties to the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) negotiations eventually released them for public scrutiny.
“We are repeatedly told this is a 21st century agreement; yet the secrecy that surrounds it is redolent of the Star Chamber. We would never tolerate such a blatant rejection of transparency and accountability in our domestic legislation, so why here?’”
“If this TPPA really is so good for us, why are they scared to release the draft text and open it to scrutiny?”, asked Professor Kelsey.
“The challenge then is for Parliament to convene an inquiry before the process has reached the stage where irreversible commitments have been made where we can test out the arguments for and against a TPPA and New Zealanders, including MPs, can know what we are signing up to for the next century”.
Ends.
Posted via email from TEU
“The negotiators themselves say this is not an ordinary free trade agreement.".
“ why are they scared to release the draft text and open it to scrutiny?”,
Absolutely this is not even a free trade agreement or even a treaty in the normal sense as has been understood since the middle ages. The TPPA promoting itself as a free trade agreement whilst shrouding itself in secrecy is essentially like a pirate ship of old flying a false flag in order to engage its intended victim by deception, that is to say to secure a binding agreement behind the backs of the citizens of sovereign nations.
It would not even be true to say this is about the Americans trying to pull a fast one on smaller nations. Essentially the agreement is designed to make international capital the sovereign power within nations with precedence over the elected assemblies that are presently considered to be sovereign. The incumbent leadership of the nations involved are attempting to tie the hands of future generations of elected representatives who may choose to make decisions based on their "national interest" rather than the interest of the worlds elite.
Arguably, the financial elite see the writing on the wall for the future of their ability to dominate the worlds economic activity. As the global financial bubble deflates, as it is doing right now and will continue to do so at an accellerating pace over the next few years, future governments and communities will need to pursue initiatives of relocalisation that will severely reduce the elites ability to make profit through trade, commerce and industry. The elites plan for the future is to use their present wealth (before it deflates to nothing in the financial meltdown) to capture resources (such as land, water, minerals) and enforce intellectual property rights so as to maintain their wealth and position through "rents" (In the economic sense of the word).
The TPPA agreement is a "traitors gambit " and should be exposed as such at every possible occasion. John Key, (through his connection to Merrell Lynch an obvious croney of the financial elite) had to climb down over the Crafar Farms sellout and even coined the populist slogan "Tenants in our own Country", but as usual the fuzzy glow of that climbdown will be used to blur the greater evil of this TPPA treachery.