ONE of the fiercest critics of international financial institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, and of the current model of economic globalization has been elected as the new president of the Freedom from Debt Coalition during its 10th National Congress held over the weekend in Quezon City.
Intellectual activist Prof. Walden Bello, who teaches sociology and public administration at the University of the Philippines, will be replacing development activist and feminist leader Ana Maria R. Nemenzo, who served six years as its president.
"I believe FDC faces an exciting period in the next three years under Walden's leadership. He brings a clear vision and principled commitment to an urgent task ahead—the need to craft an alternative national economic platform that challenges neo-liberal globalization," Nemenzo said.
In his acceptance speech, Bello stressed that the country's foreign debt today is at its highest level in history.
"We have paid our debts many times over, yet owing to the tyranny of global finance, we will never be able to leave the treadmill of debt repayment if we stick to unfair rules that mainly serve the interests of creditors," he said.
As of August 2007, the national government's foreign debt stood at P1.7 trillion (US$1=PhP46.85). This represents 44 per cent of the total P3.87-trillion national government debt.
He lamented that for the Arroyo government, debt servicing must proceed according to the terms of the creditors because, "in their view, that is the only way to continue to access international capital markets."
"But this is the bankrupt logic that has led to debt being piled on debt. We have not really escaped the infernal logic of contracting new debt to pay off old debt. Meantime, our total debt mounts dangerously and brings us closer to the edge of bankruptcy," warned Bello.
Bello explained that the relationship between debtors and creditors has been altered by several events during the last few years, and this has implications for the Philippines.
He cited the determination of Former Argentinean President Nestor Kirchner who showed the world that his government can take on a country's creditors and come out on top.
"As a result of Kirchner's successful campaign to drastically reduce debt repayments, Argentina has been growing at 10 per cent of GDP for each of the last four years, the result partly of the fact that money that would otherwise leave the country for debt servicing has been channeled into investment in the domestic economy," he said.
The former executive director of Focus on the Global South also explained how the IMF, which used to be the enforcer of the creditors, has become a severely weakened institution today as a result of the bad policies it imposed on Asian countries during the 1997 financial crisis and on Argentina in 2002.
"Some of its biggest borrowers have walked away from it, and since the Fund's budget stemmed in great part from repayments from these borrowers, the IMF is today facing both a crisis of credibility and a budgetary crisis. It is in real trouble," stressed Bello, also the former chair of the board of Greenpeace Southeast Asia.
Unfortunately, Bello said these developments have not registered with the Philippine government.
"[The government's] policies toward its creditors continue to be the old policy of being a 'model debtor' that was initiated by President Corazon Aquino in the 1980's. The conditions for a successful break with the old and the crafting of a new bold policy of unilaterally writing down the Philippine debt are better today than they have ever been," he said.
Bello stressed that in the coming three years, FDC must lead in getting our country towards the path of financial independence, and in the crafting of an alternative financial path that would truly serve the interests of the country.
Bello, who has authored 14 books, wrote Development Debacle: the World Bank in the Philippines (1982) which exposed the support given by IMF and World Bank through loans and grants to former dictator Ferdinand Marcos to remain in power during the Martial Law period. The story goes that 3,000 pages of confidential documents were "smuggled" or secretly taken out of the Bank and were used as the material for the book. The book became an underground bestseller, not only in the Philippines, but also in the development community worldwide.
In 2003, Walden Bello was given the Right Livelihood Award, also known as the Alternative Nobel Prize, "for outstanding efforts in educating civil society about the effects of corporate globalization, and how alternatives to it can be implemented."
The Belgian newspaper Le Soir has called Prof. Bello "the most respected anti-globalization thinker in Asia," while Canadian author Naomi Klein has called him the "world's leading no-nonsense revolutionary."
No comments:
Post a Comment